The Investments Efficiency Toward Economic Growth: ICOR of the Republic of Croatia and Slovenia - Comparative Analysis

Most developing and developed countries, today are faced with a lot of economic, social, and political challenges as a result of internal or external factors such as the World Financial Crisis and Covid19. In these circumstances, the crucial objective of any government is to improve the national economic performance by increasing domestics and foreign investments. Investments efficiency is the main pillar in the increase of the economic growth of any economy. This paper aims to measure the efficiency of the investments towards economic growth in the Republic of Croatia and Slovenia by applying a comparative analysis. The specific objective of our paper is to determine the best ICOR level, the correlation between ICOR and GDP, and the impact on the economic growth of both countries. The research methodology will include the analysis of the efficiency of the investment measured by the indicators Incremental Capital-Output Ratio (ICOR) based on the World Bank approach. The period of observation includes the period from the year 1995 to 2020. The investment efficiency (ICOR) in both countries is expected to move between 1 and 6. The findings of this research are that each one-point decrease of the ICOR level of Croatia increases the economic growth by 1.961 percent, while the ICOR level of Slovenia increases less the Economic growth by 0.259 percent.