DRIVERS OF WAGES IN CROATIA AND SLOVENIA: THE INFLUENCE OF MACROECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT, LABOUR MARKET FUNCTIONING AND INNOVATION

The paper examines the drivers of wages in Croatia and Slovenia based on yearly data on the set of variables obtained from the Eurostat database. The set of variables reflects the possible directions which could affect wages considering, for example, household consumption, high-tech exports, human resources in science and technology. To enable comparisons between the two countries included in the research, namely Croatia and Slovenia, we conducted the analysis with the same set of variables. Due to constraints with the availability of data, which represents the major limitation in this research, we specify the number of common drivers, namely: functioning of the macroeconomic environment, labour market functioning and innovation. We apply a bivariate and multivariate analysis to study the relationships between observed variables and defined constructs. Based on the results obtained, the model for Croatia has not proven to be significant, whereas for Slovenia we can conclude that innovation is the predominant factor in explaining wages.