The aim of this paper is to analyze changes and impacts on the level of labour productivity in the agricultural sector in Macedonia in the period from 2006 to 2017. Labour productivity is an important determinant for establishing the competitiveness of a particular sector or overall economy and helps in creating the necessary conditions for economic development. Agricultural sector in many countries represents the basis for growth in gross domestic product. Agriculture plays a key role in development of the national economy in Macedonia as a third largest sector after services and industry. Therefore, in order to increase the agricultural labour productivity, it is necessary to increase agricultural production, i.e., the part of gross domestic product created by the agriculture sector. In this direction, the paper also analyzes the relationship between agricultural labour productivity and gross domestic product and employment in agriculture. Synthesis and analysis, induction and deduction, descriptive statistics, comparative analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis are used for the purpose of the paper. The results show that changes in gross domestic product in agricultural sector in Macedonia have a greater impact on agricultural labour productivity for the analyzed period compared to the impact of changes in the number of employees in the agriculture sector where the relationship is weak to moderate. Research results also showed that there is a positive and strong quantitative relationship between agricultural labour productivity growth rate and GDP growth rate in Macedonian economy. Agricultural GDP is the determinant which has to be influenced through intensification of agricultural production in order to increase the agricultural productivity.

The link between education and economic growth has been the subject of public debate, and it has been widespread interest among economists in solving key economic problems. As a determinant of human capital, which is one of the factors of production, education has its own contribution in the process of globalization where economies are transformed and based on knowledge. Particularly higher education has a high economic value because it causes the formation of human capital and it is often seen as vital for a continued growth performance, prosperity, and competitiveness in national and global economies. Higher education contributes to the economic growth by producing higher-level skills and competencies needed for a shift towards knowledge-based economy. For these reasons, countries all over the world especially the developing countries such as North Macedonia, are giving higher education special attention to facilitate the economic growth. In this study, the co-integration between higher education and economic growth in North Macedonia is analyzed using dynamic methods. Toda Yamamoto's approach for Granger's causality (TY) developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) is used to analyze the causality between economic growth and higher education. For this aim, a bivariate VAR model is constructed. This study provides an evidence for the causality between higher education and economic growth in North Macedonia. Moreover, a key role of higher education institutions is to drive innovation, with the aim of finding solutions to global challenges. Today, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a danger that COVID-19 will destabilize this educational level, with serious consequences. Therefore, the challenges that higher education is faced are emphasized in order to help education institutions and policy-makers to reflect on them and be prepared to address them, while re-emphasizing the role of higher education in supporting to conform the post-COVID19 pandemic.

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.

The aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between the labor productivity and real net wages in Macedonia at the level of the whole economy, and in the sectors of industry and agriculture, both, in the period 2006-2015, i.e. shortly before the commencement and after the Great financial and economic crisis. The paper starts from the assumption that greater labor productivity causes changes in real net wages which are in the same direction. Studies that are previously made show that there is an expressed quantitative relationship between the labor productivity and real net wages in Macedonia in the period 1995-2003. But results obtained in this paper show that the Great financial and economic crisis has influence on this relations. Thus, quantitative relationship between labor productivity and real net wages in the analyzed period is very low, and even that their relationships are with the opposite sign. This leads to the conclusion that during and the period after the crisis, changes in labor productivity did not have an impact on the real net wages in Macedonia, or they had a little impact, and in some cases the impact is in the opposite direction. Taking into consideration that in the period during and after crisis are recorded small but permanent increasing of the wages in the country, it is obvious that such increase is not due to changes in labor productivity but more to other factors.

Labor productivity is a crucial determinant of one economy's competitiveness, and it varies across different countries and areas. Productivity growth is important because it contributes to growth in output, income and living standards. There are only two measures which can be used for increasing the level of economic output: one is by applying more labor effort in the production process (such as more jobs) and the second through increases in the productivity of the workforce. Or in other words, it means bringing additional inputs into production; or increase productivity. As labor force growth slows and unemployment remains at relatively low levels, economies increasingly have to enhance productivity in order to maintain the high rates of output and income growth that have become common place over the past few decades. Although there are several reasons for differences in the level of economic development among countries, generally, we can start from the assumption that differences in economic development results from the differences in productivity. At the national level, higher productivity increases living standards as more real income improves people's ability to consume and demand more goods and services whether they are necessities or luxuries, enjoy leisure, improve housing and education and contribute to social and environmental programs. Despite the significant productivity growth from 2002 to 2008, and again from 2014 to 2017, Macedonia still lags behind the EU average. Macedonia's labour productivity has negative growth rate from 2017 upwards. It drops by 4.4% in the first quarter compared with a drop of 2.1% in the previous quarter. There are various countries specific case studies and various literature that are exploring the determinants of labour productivity growth in a particular country. This study intends to identify the potential determinants of labour productivity in Macedonia. Based on an extensive literature review, we identify several factors that determine Macedonia's labour productivity. We quantify the relationship between the productivity growth and physical capital through gross capital formation, human capital through educational structure of employees, foreign direct investments and real wages. On the side of methodology, correlation and regression analysis for testing the relationship between the dependent variable and independent variables are used. The fundamental assumption for a clear econometric analysis is the stationarity of data time series and the regression analysis is followed by studying the stationarity of time series using Unit root test. The study is based on time series and the data on empirical analysis is taken from State Office of the Republic of Macedonia and World Bank. The sources of productivity are complex and they differ from country to country. While growth in productivity and in labour utilization are both sources of improvement in living standards, productivity growth can make a major contribution over the long term.