2 1 2020 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/issue/volume-2-issue-1 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com

assurance-of-non-financial-information-statements-a-new-challenge-for-the-audit-profession 2020 2 Background: The issuance of European Directives 2014/95/EU and 2013/34/EU has forced large European companies to issue a statement of non-financial information. Most of them had already been reporting similar statements: social responsibility or sustainability reports. For the first time, it has been detailed what type of information should be included in such a statement and it is recommended to have it assured. While the extent to which verification is mandatory will depend on each member state, it is logical to assume that in order to give more credibility to the information included, most companies will choose to request verification by an independent accredited body. Purpose of the research: In most countries, it is audit firms that are taking the initiative in verifying statements of non-financial information. But obviously, this verification is far from being similar to the audit of financial statements, mainly due to the lack of systematization of non-financial information and the lack of measurement criteria. Our objective is to point out those aspects that should be regulated or required to ensure that the assurance is carried out in a homogeneous way and guaranteeing the quality of the process. Methodology: We have carried out a bibliographic review of the state of the art, raising research issues that will need to be addressed in future research. Results and mayor conclusion: Internationally agreed standards are crucial to ensure the credibility of NFI statements in a financial market without borders. In this regard, issues such as materiality and independence must be revisited by the policy maker. Further research needs to be carried out on strategies to place higher value on NFI reporting, by means of increasing transparency or avoiding that audit independence is impaired by becoming provider for NFI assurance.

]]> Assurance, audit profession, non-financial reporting, integrated reporting 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/articles/assurance-of-non-financial-information-statements-a-new-challenge-for-the-audit-profession 1 1-9 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://tefmj.ibupress.com/file/164/13.pdf / /

]]> Nieves Gómez Aguilar University of Cadiz - Spain true Estíbaliz Biedma López University of Cadiz - Spain María Conesa Carril University of Cadiz - Spain 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com

how-is-covid-19-impacting-higher-education-a-brief-reflection 2020 2 In 2020 the world woke up with the news of the existence of a new virus and quickly spread all over
the world and changing our lives and our "normality". From the night to the day, society shut down,
and people had to stay at home, (re)adapting to the circumstances. Among all these changes, one needs
to refer the education, and in almost 48 hours, teachers had to provide education remotely, using the
tools available. After almost three months after the beginning of the shutdown, slowly, institutions are
starting to open up the doors and trying to come back to "old" normality, not without wounds. One of
the institutions where we witness these changes is higher education. In this paper, we present a brief
reflection about what might be the impact of the pandemic crisis not only in education per se but also
in higher education, including its management and financial issues. In conclusion, the reflection shows
that this virus can be an opportunity to disregard old behaviours and embrace change as an occasion to
grow.

]]> Higher Education, COVID-19, Challenges, Research, Learning, Management 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/articles/how-is-covid-19-impacting-higher-education-a-brief-reflection 1 10-14 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://tefmj.ibupress.com/file/163/14.pdf / /

]]> Anabelа Mesquita Polytechnic of Porto & Algoritmi RC - Portugal true 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com

north-macedonian-export-structure-and-relationship-with-economic-developemnt 2020 2 North Macedonia as a small and open economy, highly integrated into international trade has export - oriented growth model. The main challenge for the Macedonian government is the improvement of the economic situation in the country, taking into account the country specificities and aspiration of the country for EU membership. The paper investigates the relationship between export structure and economic development in the Republic of North Macedonia, decomposing the change in the growth of exports into four components (Global component, Geographical component, Composition component and Performance component) using the constant market shares (CMS) approach. The paper focuses on the export volume, destination and product mix using the secondary data from UNComtrade database, the third disaggregation level according to SITC Rev.3. The findings from analysis can enhance the government in taking corrective action in terms of product mix, business partners, or individual sectoral policies. This would identify the products and markets, which are of the great importance for the North Macedonian exports, respectively for the economic development of the country.

]]> Export Structure, Economic Development, CMS analysis, North Macedonia 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/articles/north-macedonian-export-structure-and-relationship-with-economic-developemnt 1 15-23 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://tefmj.ibupress.com/file/162/15.pdf / /

]]> Snezana Bilic International Balkan University – Skopje true Galina Zaharieva D. A. Tsenov Academy of Economics - Bulgaria 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com

do-managers-have-what-it-takes-to-be-successful-in-the-21st-century 2020 2 The question if management is a science or an art is frequently present, even nowadays. The correct answer to this question depends first upon a clear understanding of the meaning of the key terms: science and art. Many successful managers emphasize the importance of utilizing both, science and art in their everyday working. Even though managers can be science-oriented in their decision-making, they often need to solve issues based on their experience, intuition or instinct. However, managers can perform better by using the organized knowledge about management. Hence, it can be said that, managing as practice is an art and the organized knowledge underlying the practice may be referred to as a science. Therefore, when it comes to management, science and art are not mutually exclusive, but are complementary. Additional approach to observing the managerial activity entails categorizing the skills required to perform the work. Any effective managerial activity requires possessing different types of skills, depending on the activity itself. There are three main types of skills that managers need to posses. Unanticipated situations that companies face, like the COVID-19 pandemic, force them to think strategically about the potential future changes they can undertake. Furthermore, many companies will very likely face future of uncertainty. Future scenarios of potential disruptions of different kind are considered by many, to be very likely. Being in uncharted territory is especially challenging, since many of the decisionsin these situations can be often either very positive or very negative for the organization.

]]> Management, science, art, skills, crisis 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/articles/do-managers-have-what-it-takes-to-be-successful-in-the-21st-century 1 24-30 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://tefmj.ibupress.com/file/161/16.pdf / /

]]> Natasha Kraleva International Balkan University – Skopje true 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com

studying-international-migration-in-public-administration-discipline-a-methodological-discussion 2020 2 This paper aims to discuss international migration in terms of the methodology of public administration discipline. Thus, it seeks to gain insight of recent challenges the public administration has faced by utilizing international migration as a global policy issue. Public administration, which has witnessed debates on its object of inquiry, came across new epistemological challenges as public policy issues have become more complicated than ever. This fact forces scholars to consider its scope, unit of analysis, and object of inquiry in that it has faced unprecedented blurring of lines between political and administrative realms. In addition to that, increasing interdependency and interactions across borders have posed challenges against classical notion of the nation state and public administration, including advices for revisiting their previous definitions and constructions as to how we recognize them. International migration constitutes the new policy challenges that public administration has to deal with. This paper argues that public administration should function as Science of the State and respond to contemporary challenges with interdisciplinary methods. To this end, first it sets descriptive elements of international migration. Then, it discusses them in terms of the scope, unit of analysis and research methodology of public administration.

]]> International Migration, Public Administration, Science of the State, Methodology 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/articles/studying-international-migration-in-public-administration-discipline-a-methodological-discussion 1 31-41 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://tefmj.ibupress.com/file/160/17.pdf / /

]]> Ahmet Barbak zmir Katip Çelebi University – Turkey true 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com

review-of-banking-performance-in-republic-of-north-macedonia-during-economic-downturns-expected-outcome-from-covid-19 2020 2 The main role of the banking system is to enable entities with excess financial resources to invest and transfer to entities that lack financial resources (and have sustained plans for new projects), with the ultimate goal of making a profit. Recessionary tendencies in the world economy, as well as the slowdown in domestic growth are negatively reflecting on the financial capacity of enterprises and their ability to regularly service liabilities. These problems in the corporate sector spill over into the banking sector over certain time delay, decreasing the bank’s profitability and efficiency as well as rising its vulnerability. After the global financial crisis 2007-2009, which made significant impact on the banking industry, new adverse macroeconomic conditions emerge globally due to COVID 19 pandemic. For a short period of time the lockdown caused a collapse of financial markets, breakdown of global value chains, and restrictions in financial flows in general. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance of the Macedonian banking sector during the last financial crises, regarding its profitability and risk profile, and compare them with the recent banking performance indicators, so to derive assumptions: if the lockdown caused by COVID 19 would affect the performance of the Macedonian banking sector. In this research, secondary data are used regarding particular indicators for banks that are offering services on Macedonian territory. These data will be additionally analyzed and described by conducting comparisons for different time periods and for different group of banks. The results from the analysis show that the banking sector won’t be immune to the impact of the unfavorable economic conditions, but the intensity of the decline in their performance will be directly under the influence of the operating efficiency of bank management. Large banks, because of their high value of operating efficiency, stable deposit base and more effective embedded systems for risk management will be more resilient to this turbulence.

]]> bank’s performance, bank’s profitability, credit risk, liquidity risk, solvency, NPLs 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/articles/review-of-banking-performance-in-republic-of-north-macedonia-during-economic-downturns-expected-outcome-from-covid-19 1 42-51 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://tefmj.ibupress.com/file/159/18.pdf / /

]]> Andrijana B. Danevska International Balkan University – Skopje true 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com

impact-of-covid-19-on-economic-performance-in-republic-of-north-macedonia 2020 2 The global economy is experiencing the worst economic crisis in the last century caused by the COVID19 pandemic. North Macedonia as a small and opened economy is not invulnerable from the negative economic effects as its economy depends on health and economic developments of external sites. Also, the containment measures affected domestic demand and supply by considerably decreasing the economic activity. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to examine the economic impacts of COVID-19 crisis by means of selected macroeconomic indicators as well as to develop an ARIMA model to predict and forecast the real GDP growth of North Macedonia.

]]> Economic impacts, COVID-19, ARIMA, forecast 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/articles/impact-of-covid-19-on-economic-performance-in-republic-of-north-macedonia 1 52-61 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://tefmj.ibupress.com/file/158/19.pdf / /

]]> Luljeta Sadiku International Balkan University – Skopje true 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com

macroeconomic-approach-of-the-pandemic-covid-19 2020 2 The pandemic COVID – 19 represents not only a global health crises, but also a global finical crises, coming up with human and economic costs that tend to be higher at developing countries, due to their health care system, informal economic sector lower fiscal space, corruption, etc. Although each country have taken its individual measures regarding the pandemic COVID – 19, it is needed an international coordination in the economic policy, health care and science to face with its consequences. In this regard, the main objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of the economic measures that governments around the world have taken in response to the Covid-19 pandemic which can vary in length and scope, to review the recent papers regarding the macro effects of the pandemic COVID – 19 as well as to emphasize the COVID-19 Economic Stimulus Index (CESI) that contains fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate measures, created by Elgin et al. (2020), based on the data for 166 rich, middle and low income countries. In addition, in this paper are only taken into consideration the fiscal and monetary stimulus. The results imply that richer countries have a larger economic stimulus package and adopt a larger fiscal and monetary stimulus.

]]> pandemic COVID-19, CESI index, economic growth, fiscal stimulus, monetary stimulus 2020-06-30 https://tefmj.ibupress.com/articles/macroeconomic-approach-of-the-pandemic-covid-19 1 62-67 en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://tefmj.ibupress.com/file/157/20.pdf / /

]]> Liza Alili Sulejmani 1 International Balkan University – Skopje true 2671-3357 2671-3365 Balkan University Press https://tefmj.ibupress.com