Globalisation of national economy : possibilities and challenges of measuring

It seems that in expectation of a unified methodology and legal basis for monitoring economic globalisation, this field no longer offers research challenges for EU members. However, the entanglement of contemporary globalisation opens the space of creativity not only in the sphere of content improvement, but also in the field of the methodology of globalisation measurement. In the introductory part of the paper we will make a systematic review of s. c. recommended indicators of economic globalisation. In the continuation, some approaches toward measuring globalisation and their uncertainties will be presented. On this basis we will discuss extensions of contemporary globalisation, the aims of measurement and the functioning of contemporary national economy as a system of mutually dependent institutions, processes and relations. We will state the main indicators that could be, with the view of present technoeconomic paradigm, reasonably included in the framework of indicators of economic globalisation. We will find out that globalisation demands monitoring of the various subtle viewpoints within and between companies as well as interactions between companies and the state, which increases the relative importance of s. c. soft indicators. In addition,the demands from users of statistical data have undergone changes, namely in the direction of gaining fast, complex and evident information on international position and potential of the country in the period of contemporary globalisation. In this connection we will draw attention to some deficiencies in the benchmarking of countries and to the potential arising in this field from the development of knowledge about the construction of composite indicators. In the empirical part of the paper we will perform a case study of the construction of composite indicator of global national competitiveness. The first part of the analysis will comprise a description of the theoretical basis for the selection of indicators. In the second part of the analysis, we will conduct standardization of indicators and their final selection by the principal component analysis, where we will use two criteria. The main criterion will be communalities of individual variables, the second, however, the weights of factors. In practice this means that each indicator comprising the same component will have the same weight. The actual weight, however, will be defined by the structure of correlation with other indicators. Reliability of the composite indicator will be verified by the Crombach alfa method. On the basis of the composite index, we will assess the position of Slovenia in comparison to nine selected countries and state its main opportunities in the period of contemporary globalisation