Latvian voters' choice in the 10th Parliamentary elections
Janis Paiders, Juris Paiders / November 2010
Latvian national politicians have to understand that from time to time both the ideological cliches and accepted dogmas have to be mathematically and statistically examined. The time will come when slogans and dogmas repeated for two decades will no longer be true. By contrast, the Concord center has to understand that they are no longer the Russian party with a Latvian Jānis Urbanovičs leading it. It is a political force, which gains confidence both form the Latvian national minorities and a very substantial part of Latvians. ru

EU enlargement: A new era in Latvian-Russian economic relations?
Alf Vanags, BICEPS
The EU enlargement that takes place on 1st May 2004 will usher in a completely new framework for Latvian-Russian economic relations, perhaps even a new era This new framework will be defined by two related characteristics:
• Latvia will adopt the EU common external tariff and adhere to the EU's common commercial policy
• Latvia will be integrated fully (eventually) into the EU Single Market
The aim of this presentation is to explore the implications of these changes for Latvian- Russian economic relations. This must also be seen in the context of the development of Russia's own international economic relations eg Russia's path to the WTO

The Influence of Restructuring of Economy on Investment Processes in Latvia
Deniss Titarenko, TSI
The primary aim of the paper is to estimate the influence of economy restructuring process on investment activity in Latvia. The heterogeneity of the investment processes in Latvia is analyzed at both sectoral and regional levels for the period of 1997 - 2004 identifying the main factors that influence the heterogeneity of the distribution of investment resources. Based on the analysis, conclusions about the efficiency of investment in different sectors of Latvian economy are made. Also the peculiarities of sectoral structure of foreign direct investment stock is analyzed to bring out the conclusions about the possible influence of foreign direct investment inflows on the domestic investment processes in Latvia.
Keywords: nonfinancial investment, regional and sectoral composition of investment resources, Herfindahl-Hirschman index.

The Influence of Foreign Direct Investment on Domestic Capital Formation Processes in the Baltic States
Deniss Titarenko, TSI
The primary aim of the paper is to estimate the extent of foreign direct investment (FDI) influence on domestic capital formation processes in the Baltic states. Author analyses the theoretical issues of FDI effect on capital formation process in the host economy. The main conditions for crowding in or crowding out effects of FDI on domestic investment are specified. Also the peculiarities of FDI dynamics and sectoral structure of FDI stock in Baltic states are analyzed. The results of econometric analysis of the total investment model presented in this paper show the evidence of crowding out long-term effect of FDI on investment in all three Baltic states.
Key words: foreign direct investment, crowding in/out effect, econometric analysis of the total investment model.

The Level of Education, Employment and Effectiveness: Situation in Central Europe
Andrey Nikolayev
In modern economy the level of education has a serious impact on the level of unemployment. People with higher education have much better prospects on the labour market, this situation being characteristic of all European countries. Simultaneously, the development of education is one of the factors of economic growth. The analysis of the situation shows that the level of education in new EU member states approximately corresponds to that in EU-15 countries. However this potential is used less effectively. As a result, many companies of Central European countries appear to be unable to turn the potential of their employees into real income.