Weaknesses in the institutional environment of Central Europe challenge the sustainability of economic development. Institutional theory stipulates that institutions drive economic development, and institutions are configured by individual values and practices. The World Governance Indicators, the Corruption Perception Index, and the Doing Business Indicators indicate weaknesses in the institutional environments of the Visegrád countries. This paper explores the micro level perspective of institutions, focusing on values and practices, in terms of leadership and ethics. A survey of 868 private and public sector managers from Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia provides evidence that leadership practices and ethical values are congruent, suggesting a positive influence on the institutional environment. The results also provide evidence for the presence of the gap, spanning between the micro and the macro level factors affecting sustainable economic development. These results imply that a bottom-up view of sustainable economic development is more suitable to the Central European context, and promotion of sustainable economic development needs to focus on the micro level factors.

Exchange rate fluctuations in a small open economy are closely related to political trust. Various political announcements exert significant influence on the exchange rate by affecting the expectations of economic actors. Due to information technology and social networks, these statements spread quicker and gain more publicity than ever before. In this paper, we present a dynamic model with adaptive expectations to describe the short and long-run effects of political announcements on the exchange rate. We found that relevant announcements cause significant fluctuations in the short-run but do not affect the long-term equilibrium exchange rate. Our results are also supported by case-studies from Hungary.

In recent years, researchers have sought to specify precisely what is meant by the ecological footprint, and there are some methods for calculating it. This paper features a new calculation method for determining the ecological footprint (EFP). The basis of our model is the dynamic Leontief model. If our method is applied, one can determine that a dynamic ecological footprint is a sequence of footprints for periods. We also calculate the ecological footprint for both closed and open economies. Our model contains elements taken from the Leontief model: capital accumulation, and integration of exports and imports into the model through input-output panels. All periods are treated as interdependent, rather than as a series of stand-alone data. Most notably, the model separates capital accumulation from the final use of capital, i.e., investment and final consumption. We illustrate the results with numerical examples.