The insurance market in Albania has been started to operate in the last years of centralized socialist system. It was represented by state insurance Company INSIG. It was the first important segment of the financial market to develop faster once Albania entered into the free market economy model on the last decade of the past century. It is the largest and most advanced market in non-banking financial sector. Together with investment funds, pension funds securities markets those are under the supervision of Albanian Financial Supervision Authority, not Central Bank. The insurance market, has had a lot development and positive growth in terms of wide range of products offer and the geographically expansion all over the country and in some neighboring countries in the Balkan region where Albanian population live. This potential is based on the favorable economic conditions, improved regulatory and supervisory system, low market penetration rate, as well as, on business community and population, which are dynamic and easily adaptable. The Insurance Industry has been undergoing dramatic changes during the last ten years. This industry can help the business companies and other entities on having economic and financial support, mitigating their risks and losses as well from natural disasters or other uncertainties. This sector can give a good support on social development and financial contribution on economy by reducing the risk of future losses. There are a lot of empirical research based on financial analyses of Albanian Insurance Companies in which you can see a causal relationship between insurance sector effects in economic growth by bearing risk on business investment. The study of qualitative and quantitative information on Main Insurance Company in Albania, their business model and risk drivers shows the development stage and challenges and steps needs to be in line with EU directives. Incorporation of international best practices combined with an efficient regulatory and supervisory approach will certainly play a very big role in the non-banking financial market development and growth.

Problem/Relevance: Investigation of exchange rate behaviour has been an important topic in international monetary economics because of the impact of exchange rates on economies. One strand of the literature has focused on explaining the observed movement of the nominal or real exchange rate in terms of macroeconomic variables. Another strand of the literature has evaluated the behaviour of the real exchange rates in relation to the equilibrium exchange rate, which is the real exchange rate that is consistent with macroeconomic balances. Albania implements a free floating exchange rate regime; therefore, evaluating whether the actual real exchange rate is too strong or too weak compared with the real equilibrium exchanges rate has great relevance for the Albanian economy. Research Objective/Questions: Generally, the real exchange rate is defined as the nominal exchange rate adjusted for the relative price differential between domestic and foreign goods and services. So, an appreciation of the nominal exchange rate or higher inflation at home relative to other countries may lead to an appreciation of the real exchange rate. Such appreciation weakens the competitiveness of a country, widens the current account deficit and increases vulnerability to financial crises. The opposite holds true when the real exchange rate depreciates. The aim of this paper is, first, to estimate the equilibrium real exchange rate for the Albanian currency against the euro and, second, to assess the total exchange rate misalignment during the period of 2001Q1-2017Q1. Thus, the equilibrium real exchange rate is used as a benchmark for evaluating the misalignment of the actual real exchange rate. Methodology: This paper explores the determinants of the real exchange rate for Albania, during the period of 2001Q1-2017Q1, based on the stock-flow approach, the so called Behavioural Equilibrium Exchange Rate (BEER), which effectively employs reduced-form modelling of the exchange rate based on standard co-integration techniques. The stock of net foreign assets and productivity changes has been considered fundamental for the real exchange rate. We have used the Johansen co integration technique to test the existence of long-run relationships between our main variables and to evaluate the path of the equilibrium real exchange rate based on vector error correction model (VECM) results. Then the analysis is completed by calculating the degree of misalignment as the difference between the actual real exchange rate and the equilibrium real exchange rate. Major Findings: Based on the Johansen co-integration approach, we find one long-run relationship between the real exchange rate of the Albanian lek against the euro, relative productivity and net foreign assets during the period of 2001Q1 to 2017Q1. The model implies that the real exchange rate is affected, as we expected, by relative productivity and net foreign assets, confirming that an increase in both variables leads to an appreciation of the real exchange rate in the long run. Our results show that the behaviour of the actual real exchange rate is similar to the path of the equilibrium exchange rate and that the degree of misalignment throughout the period is estimated to be moderate. Implications: Our empirical results confirm that the degree of misalignment is reasonable, suggesting a consistency between macroeconomic (especially monetary) policies and the free floating exchange rate regime. Assessing real exchange rate misalignment is a very important issue for policy makers because of the severe welfare and efficiency costs that such misalignment can have for an economy.

Considering several developments recently, especially at local self-government level, on budget design and application, we can notice that citizens have a deeply different perception on local PA performance than this last itself. Local government continuously claims their increasing performance, especially on accountability processes, even measuring it through effectiveness and efficiency of their investments as well as number and size of public services offered to the local community. Their pay-offs are not far of being glorious and making happy everybody taking notice on the presentation. While, on the other side, citizens of the same community have a far different view and estimation on this regard. They complain on communication, quality of public services, distribution quality of investments, division of local budget through sectors, till that point to refuse paying local taxes and tariffs, as well as burning career of “highly performance” local leaders (mayors) voting ‘no’ on elections not considering their ‘glorious increasing performance’ during the governmental mandate. Introducing citizen participation in a process of budget decision making in local self-government, especially during priority selection stage, as well as budgeting an important part of the local budget through common decision making – PA and community representativeness, analysing, first, the state of nature through adverse pricing or asymmetry reduction, both in their perception on prioritization, as well as estimating investments to each priority through independent estimation by each participator in a common Committee PA&citizens, Participatory Budgeting Committee, and second, presenting their project proposal, as well as defending it in front of the City Council, could produce a far better perceived performance by both sides.