State investment incentives are detrimental to the quality of the business environment and create unequal starting conditions for entrepreneurs to implement investment plans. In some cases, however, it is necessary to regulate the allocation of inward investment to regions within one country and thus decrease the disparities. Investment incentives are instruments that in general might violate market principles and thus are regulated within the EU internal market. Despite being aware of this fact most economists and politicians advocate these kinds of measures as necessary and relatively cheap in order to push the economy forward or win international big private equity investments. Investment aid is regional aid to stimulate investment in disadvantaged regions and to create new jobs in the Slovak Republic. Beneficiaries of this assistance may be natural and legal persons authorized to carry on business in the territory of the Slovak Republic and whose investment activities and projects meet the conditions of Act no. 561/2007 Z.z. on Investment Assistance and on Amendments to Certain Acts. This paper will focus on how investment incentive attracts foreign investment in the Slovak Republic and based on the data from 2002 to 2017 we will analyze their effectiveness on the created jobs. Despite the possible support from the Slovak government not all foreign investors areapplying for investment incentives, either are in contact with the government during their investment phase.

Size distribution is generally accepted as an important characteristic of business structure, one which impacts on competitiveness, with firm size often regarded as the key determinant of entrepreneurial innovativeness. This article describes the size distribution of enterprises taken from a statistical set of Slovak business entities with a special focus on the relation between size and ownership of the businesses. A change in the probability firm size distribution is an undisputable indicator of a change in the business structure. This article seeks to create an eventual starting point for better policymaking in Slovakia, a country which bases its competitiveness primarily on large and medium-sized foreign investments. The authors’ main objective is to determine the size distribution type of the firms. The Anderson-Darling and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used to determine if the dataset has been taken from a population with a specific distribution. Among the main results with regard to Slovak business structure, a statistically significant dependence was shown between the ownership type and the size type of SMEs. The authors confirmed the Pareto, Power and Generalized Gamma distributions as appropriate probability distributions of firm sizes. The probability distribution of SMEs in general as well as according to individual ownership type shows a Lévy distribution. The authors used the environment of the R programming language along with the software EasyFit.

Research background: The literature overview shows a blank space regarding the effects of ownership on the determination of enterprises' spatial distribution. Various papers identify differences between determinants of the spatial distribution of foreign direct investments, exporters in foreign ownership, and domestically owned exporters; however, they mostly agree on the role of big cities, economic centres, and state of infrastructure as well as historical patterns. Purpose of the article: The article focuses on the spatial distribution analysis of enterprise units from their owner's perspective on the empirical evidence from all 79 districts of the Slovak Republic. Special attention is given to the category of the least developed districts. Methods: Within the presented article, the authors investigate the characteristics of the regional spatial distribution of business entities concerning standard ownership categories using the cluster analysis. The presented approach is twofold: firstly, the authors investigate the share of individual ownership types on the district level, and secondly, the number of enterprises by ownership categories is adjusted to 100,000 inhabitants. Cluster analysis and methods of spatial statistics are applied in both approaches. Findings & value added: The main results show a relation between the district's inclusion into the group of the least developed districts and enterprise ownership characteristics in these districts mainly through the relative underrepresentation of the secluded inland, foreign and international types of ownership, as well as their geographical clustering. The results of the presented research can be used in policy-making targeting business activity in underdeveloped districts. At the same time, the results provide basis for limited theoretical generalisations based on a single-country case study with regard to principles of business ownership structures development.

In the centre of this essay is a tension that under certain circumstances may appear between various state actors involved in economic diplomacy. In the case of the Slovak economic diplomacy both the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the Ministry of Economy are the main actors in external economic relations. The paper briefly describes the origins of the tension between them and the reconciliation process that took place in the 10 years since the last reform of Slovakia’s economic diplomacy. The crucial reconciling role of the Government’s advisory body, the Council on Export and Investment Promotion, co-chaired by the ministers of foreign affairs and economy, is explained within the presented descriptive case study inbureaucratic politics. The article contributes to the conceptual discourse on economic diplomacy, while extending the theoretical and empirical knowledge of the subject with regard to the behavior of its main power actors econand the tensions between them.

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