This paper focuses on the processes of school-to-work transitions in a selected group of countries from South-eastern Europe (SEE), namely: Bosnia and Herzegovina; Croatia; Montenegro; North Macedonia; Serbia; and, Slovenia. Each of these countries display the same roots of development in their educational systems: however, due to their transition and integration processes within the European Union, they implemented different concepts of reforms within their educational systems. In addition, the challenges of youth employability are a common problem for each of the selected countries, and the effectiveness of the processes of school-to-work-transition varies across the countries. By using panel data and multiple linear regression models, this paper estimates the impact of different educational levels on youth employability and changes in the rates of NEET population (aged 15–24) in the selected group of countries over the period 2009 to 2019. The results suggest that the impact of the attained level of education has an ambiguous effect on the rates of youth employment; moreover, the relationship with changes in NEET rates are statistically significant and negative in most of the selected group of countries.

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Milton Friedman’s traditional claim is that flexible exchange rates facilitate external adjustment by means of their cor- rective movements before the balance of payments crisis occurs. In order to test this hypothesis, we employ the first order autoregression based on the panel data on exchange rate regime and external balance expressed as the share of balance of goods and services in GDP. The sample covers 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) and 12 Common- wealth of Independent States (CIS) transition countries over the period 2000-2019. The results, which are based on the sample of all transition countries, failed to prove that more flexible exchange rate regimes facilitate external adjust- ment. When the analysis was performed on two groups of countries separately, the results showed that the deficit of balance of goods and services in CIS countries has a higher persistence compared to CEE countries. However, a more flexible exchange rate regime does not facilitate external ad- justment. On the other hand, in CEE countries, the relation- ship between exchange rate regime flexibility and the rate of balance of goods and services reversion exists, proving that Friedman’s hypothesis does hold.

Starting from the mid-1970s, there has been a significant disbalance in labor markets in almost all world economies. The postulates of classical economics that the causality between labor productivity and workers' compensation is positive, and that the increase in marginal labor productivity is followed by a directly proportional increase in workers' compensation, no longer stand on solid foundations. In the last few decades, there has been a significant distortion of the functional distribution of income, especially between labor and capital. The widely held thesis that "a rising tide will lift all boats," implying that increased labor productivity will be equally distributed among workers, is becoming less relevant. The world, especially EU economies notice a significant disruption in the relationship between productivity growth and labor compensation. In the paper, an attempt is made to analyze the state of the labor market in the Republic of North Macedonia, through the prism of productivity and labor compensation. Given the fact that there are significant differences in the degree of efficiency and productivity in individual sectors, this analysis focuses on the relationship between the distribution of productivity and labor compensation in different industries. Based on the results of the study, the Republic of North Macedonia exhibits the phenomenon of Reverse Decoupling, where the trend of labor productivity lags behind the trend of workers' compensation. In contrast, productivity and workers' compensation show significant differences by different sectors.