The manufacturing industry is a key sector in many national economies and is involved in creating sustainable economic growth. At the same time, it is a sector sensitive to internal and external impacts that result in fluctuations in the economic cycle, copying its development or even outstripping the development of economic cycles. The main objective of this contribution was to identify the relationship between manufacturing and GDP, which represents the economic cycle in European Union countries. The time series of selected indicators of the manufacturing industry and GDP from the Eurostat database for Q1 2000-Q4 2016 were used for analysis purposes. An analysis of 296 time series with a quarterly periodicity from 22 EU countries (including the United Kingdom) was performed. The results of analyses indicate that the processing industry is a sector with significant cyclical behavior. In most countries, production and sales in the manufacturing industry behaved as concurrent indicators, changes in production and sales almost immediately reflected in the growth or decline in GDP. Labor market indicators have been shown to be delayed cyclical indicators. Changes in the economic development of the countries have a strong impact on employment, the remuneration of employees and the number of hours worked in the sector. Strong cyclical industries must be constantly monitored, as negative changes in these sectors will automatically exacerbate the economic cycle recession. The results of our analyses represent a valuable platform for economic policy makers and regional strategic plans.

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Monitoring and predicting economic cycles have returned to the awareness of economists with the impact of the economic crisis in 2007/2008. To determine the current and future state of the country's economic cycle, Composite Leading Indicators (CLI) can be used. Their structure is being dealt with by institutions at the national and international level (OECD, Eurostat). Correct predictions of public finance development and the entrepreneurship sphere are very important for competitiveness of the country. The aim of the paper is to propose a new Composite Leading Indicator (CLI) to monitor and predict the German economy. The analysis of 140 quantitative and qualitative indicators of industry, services, retail, construction, foreign trade, labor market, money aggregates, stock indices, confidence indicators, consumer expectations was performed for the needs of the indicator. As the reference series represents the German economic cycle, the GDP indicator is selected at constant prices for 2010. All selected quarterly time series are applied with seasonal index methods, the Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP filter) in the R program, cross-correlation with time shifts, methods selection and scoring, data standardization, identification of the same and different data and the subsequent construction of the CLI of the German economic cycle. The generated CLI can predict the German economy cycle two quarters ahead with a cross-correlation value of 0.867. The forecasting capabilities of the assembled indicator were better than the prediction capabilities of OECD, Eurostat and IFO indicator.

Research background: Public procurement is designed to efficiently spend public sector financial resources. This should lead to savings in public funds. Domestic and foreign studies point to the fact that sufficient competition on the supply side is the condition for achieving those savings. Slovakia currently belongs to a group of countries with low competition on the supply side of the tender. Every year, about 10,000 tenders will be made in Slovakia for 5 billion Eur. However, contracting authorities have difficulty with establishing the estimated contract value and defining non-discriminatory criteria. On the other hand, contractors lack the expertise to prepare tenders, specifications are often tailored to specific bidders or products, and the price criterion has a negative impact on the quality of the goods and services purchased. Purpose of the article: The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of selected efficiency determinants on savings in public procurement in Slovakia in 2010–2016. The number of bids, the subcontractor's participation, the narrower competition and the impact of the narrower competition and the expected price on the number of bids have been examined. Methods: The survey sample consisted of 800 randomly selected public procurement con-tracts from different sectors in 2010–2016. The contracts were split on the basis of the median estimate of the above-limit (409 contracts) and below-limit (391 contracts) contracts; the divestment value was the estimated price of 400,000 Euro (without the tax). Findings & Value added: The number of offers positively influences the creation of savings in public procurement, an average of 5-6%. The impact of a narrow competition was significant, which led to a decrease in savings of 3-4% compared to the open competition if the sample was 800 contracts and over 400,000 Euro (without the tax). For below-limit orders, this determinant was shown to be statistically insignificant. The size of the contract did not affect the number of successful candidates. Also, the negative impact of narrower competition on the number of tenders was demonstrated. These findings are in line with the presented research studies. In the future, we plan to perform sectoral analyses to verify the validity of the hypotheses under review based on the results of our research.

, Technická univerzita v Košiciach ÚvodV súčasnosti sa stretávame s viacerými spôsobmi monitorovania cyklického vývoja ekonomiky, ktoré vychádzajú hlavne z prác Moora, Burnsa a Mitchella (1946). Tí položili základy sledovania hospodárskeho cyklu za pomoci kompozitných indikátorov. Podstatou tohto prístupu je vytvorenie skupín cyklických indikátorov, ktoré sú schopné pomôcť pri odhalení pozície ekonomiky v jej cyklickom vývoji. Tieto indikátory hospodárskeho cyklu teda slúžia k monitorovaniu a analýze pozície ekonomiky v hospodárskom cykle a ich pomocou je možné stanoviť aktuálnu fázu a možný budúci priebeh hospodárskeho cyklu.V dnešnej dobe sa monitorovaniu hospodárskych cyklov vybraných krajín za pomoci kompozitných indikátorov venuje pozornosť na úrovni svetových organizácií, akými sú OECD, Eurostat a Conference Board. V Českej republike sa kompozitným indikátorom hospodárskeho cyklu venuje Český štatistický úrad a na Slovensku je to Infostat (Inštitút informatiky a štatistiky). Metodiky svetových a domácich organizá-cií majú však odlišnosti, ktoré je pre úspešné vytvorenie kompozitného indikátora pre českú ekonomiku dôležité poznať.Cieľom príspevku je navrhnúť merateľný kompozitný predstihový indikátor (CLIcomposite leading indicator) určený k monitorovaniu a krátkodobej predikcii vývoja hospodárskeho cyklu Česka. Snahou je vytvoriť taký CLI, ktorý by dokázal krátkodo-bo predikovať vývoj hospodárskeho cyklu Česka a bol by kvalitatívne porovnateľný s CLI vytvorenými OECD a Eurostatom. Teoretické vymedzenie kompozitného indikátoraKompozitný indikátor je indikátor zložený z čiastkových indikátorov hospodárskeho cyklu. Tento zložený indikátor odráža vývoj ekonomiky lepšie než jednotlivé indikátory samostatne. Výber cyklických indikátorov do kompozitného indikátora nie je náhodný, ale je podmienený ich ekonomickou významnosťou, vypovedacou hodnotou, predikčnou schopnosťou, mierou korelácie s HDP a podobne. Zloženie kompozitných indikátorov sa v jednotlivých krajinách odlišuje, a to predovšetkým z dôvodu rôznej významnosti jednotlivých indikátorov pre danú ekonomiku (Czesaný, Jeřábková, 2009b).