The paper examines how the implicit coordination mechanisms between the policymakers could help in overcoming negative macroeconomic consequences which are provoked by the problem of zero lower bound (ZLB) on the nominal interest rates. For the long period of time, before the global recession started, the ZLB problem was not found to be interesting for researchers. Immediately after the crisis outbreak, more attention was put on that problem within different approaches since conventional monetary policy faced substantial limitation in overcoming business cycles. Many authors have proposed new unconventional measures in both monetary policy and fiscal policy sphere. The theoretical approaches to the ZLB problem include many different aspects. In the paper we chose to use regime switching models adjusted to simulate occasionally binding constraints in order to investigate different scenarios within the New Keynesian framework. We found that coordination between more passive monetary policymaker and more active fiscal policymaker is crucial in the ZLB environment. Central bank has to follow monetary policy rule in which both inflation stabilization and output stabilization have certain positive weight. However, credible policy-making which is supported by the relevant institutions is a necessary precondition for implicit coordination, which substantially decrease the losses occurred as a consequence of ZLB on interest rates.

Numerous turbulent events in the recent past have raised the issue of an asset that could play the role of safe haven. Although for many years it was considered that gold has the role of a safe haven, an increasing number of recent works challenge such a point of view. The emergence of cryptocurrencies after the Global financial crisis has opened up numerous questions, one of them being whether cryptocurrencies, as an asset (money) independent of governments, can play the role of safe haven. Therefore, the paper examines whether gold and bitcoin, the latter as the best representative of crypto-currencies, can play the role of safe haven in relation to European indices. In the paper, this hypothesis was confirmed for gold and rejected for bitcoin.

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The main goal of our study is to theoretically and empirically contribute to the analysis of relation between institutional features and R&D in business enterprise sector and consequently on sustainable economic growth. We exploited the available measures of institutional quality from World Government Indicators of World Bank and data on R&D in business enterprise sector. We employed First-Differencing GMM method to estimate the model on the balanced panel data including the following European countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and the Slovak Republic, for the time span of 2007-2017. The institutional features are statistically significant factor of R&D in business enterprise sector. We found that Government effectiveness and Control of corruption in particular are very important in supporting the R&D. These measures of institutional quality are key institutional determinants of R&D in business enterprise sector. R&D in business enterprise sector is one of the crucial parts of the overall R&D, and therefore policymakers have to develop favourable conditions for those activities in private firms. Institutional features should be an important variable in explanation of R&D intensity. The presented analysis empirically contributes to the body of knowledge on determinants of R&D for European countries that have to develop their institutions further in order to grow sustainably. This study is using contemporary methods for testing the underlying problem.

One of the crucial fiscal sustainability preconditions is fulfilment of budget constraint. We applied the approach of budget revenue and expenditure cointegration in some EU candidate countries, because of the reliability of this method for the observed countries. This is the first research of this topic in the majority of these countries based on the above-mentioned methodological set. We showed that weak fiscal sustainability is immanent to Serbia. In Albania and Turkey, we could not find budget sustainability evidence. Our results are very important to economic policy makers in these countries, but also are of special concern to EU bodies in the European integration process. This is emphasised because of reported public debt crisis and macroeconomic spillovers in the European Union.