issue #4 (Volume 17 2018)

In modern conditions households play an important role in the country's economy. Improving their effective functioning and quality of life of the population is one of the priority tasks of socio-economic development of the country. The set of subjective and objective indicators for determining the level of vital activity of households using an expert method, which based on a collective notebook, is substantiated. The expert group involved leading experts in the field of studying the population’s quality of life, the development of socio-economic and innovative processes; the method of "Snowball" is used for this study. It is proved that peculiarities of activity of households in the conditions of a new economy require the allocation of three system-forming groups of indicators: social, economic, innovation and educational life, the use of which provides a deeper and more comprehensive assessment of households' livelihoods. It is substantiated that in the group of indicators of economic life it is expedient to use two new indicators for households, such as household profitability index and household saving index, which provides a deeper assessment of the index of economic activity of households by expanding their economic opportunities. The distribution of the studied regions of Ukraine according to the level of vital activity of households was carried out using the Harrington scale. To visualize the results of the distribution, the means of “Front-end development” were used and the Illustrative map of Ukraine was built. Recommendations for improving the living standards of households in Ukraine aimed at, first of all, increasing the attention of the state authorities to the socio-economic activity of households are proposed. The methodical approach to the assessment of household living standards is based on the use of the proposed system of indicators consisting of three system-forming groups (social, economic and innovation-educational activities) that are integrated into the integral index (household living standards index) by the taxonomy method.

Proved that to achieve socio-economic development of state it is necessary to ensure not only invarionmental security of state, but also of enterprise. There are a sufficiently large number of methods to evaluate the economic and ecological security of enterprise and, at the same time, there aren’t any practical methods to evaluate its environmental security. This confirms the necessity to analyse this issue in a more detailed way. The aim of the article is to analyse and identify the drawbacks of existing methods to evaluate the environmental security of enterprise and develop a system of indicators for environmental security of industrial enterprises. The following research methods were used in the article: method of analysis and synthesis to determine the drawbacks of existing methods to establish the level of environmental security, the graph analytic method to build a scheme of the process to develop the system of indicators for environmental security of industrial enterprise. It is determined that the process to develop the system of indicators for environmental security of industrial enterprise is a process of successive stages of determining the purpose and tasks to diagnose the state of environmental security of industrial enterprise, to select and process the necessary information and, directly, to develop a system of indicators of environmental security of industrial enterprise. The practical significance of this study is to determine the level of environmental security of industrial enterprise as an integral indicator. Its core is a set of social and economic, technical and technological, scientific and innovative, managerial and organizational indicators which have to account the criteria related to the external and internal environment of the enterprise activity. The proposed process to develop the system of indicators for environmental security of industrial enterprise allows determining the level of environmental security.

The crisis in the political and economic spheres in Ukraine has led to an aggravation of macroeconomic imbalances, which in turn worsen the socio-economic situation, complicate the moments of doing business, manifestation of violations and instability in the public administration sector and social tension in society. As the result is the accumulation of macroeconomic imbalances to a critical point that threatens the normal, gradual development of economic processes that should take place in the economic space of Ukraine. The article deals with the main imbalances indicators of the country's economy and their applicability under modern Ukrainian economic policy conditions. The interconnection of the main macro-instability factors in Ukraine economy and other countries of the world is considered, which allows to identity a number of endogenous (external) and exogenous (internal) factors that create imbalances. The mechanism of imbalances detection is proposed, which combines certain categories, methods, principles and methods of their research. The simulation model for identifying macroeconomic imbalances in the Ukrainian economy was developed, based on which the dynamic properties of the macroeconomic imbalances system were investigated, a short-term indicators forecast was constructed, and assessment of the imbalances probability in the future was implemented. Forecast macroeconomic indicators were estimated that fall into critical areas also the gross external debt, changes in the real effective exchange rate, changes in the share of the export market show that external imbalances and disproportion exist. Other macro indicators that form the imbalances table, according to projected calculations, show trends that are close to the ultimate limits and instability risks which confirms the vulnerability of the country's financial and economic system. The obtained forecasting results will allow to prevent new imbalances through the timely and appropriate rapid response management action.

Methodological and practical aspects of expenditure division into permanent and variable in crop production have been considered in the paper. A graphical method was used to determine the value of constant expenditure in the production of wheat and maize for grain on the example of agricultural enterprises of Kharkiv region. This analysis was carried out as a whole for all costs, as well as for individual articles. It has been found that the value of constant expenditure varies depending on the level of production intensity. Changes in the proportion of constant expenditure in their general value were nonlinear, characterized by a decrease in the relative magnitude of constant expenditure of enterprises with the most intensive level of production. This allows the given group of companies to have a higher level of competitiveness and a lower level of production risk. The author’s approach to determination of constant expenditure proportion has been proposed by calculation of the constant expenditure structure coefficient. This coefficient allows you to determine the proportion of constant expenditure more precisely by taking into account its value by individual articles. On the example of enterprises engaged in the production of wheat and corn for grain we have calculated coefficients of the constant expenditure structure. The obtained results have confirmed nonlinear dependence of changes in the value of constant expenditure, depending on the level of production intensity.

The study has the general objective to determine the extent of the relationship between technological innovativeness and firm growth using small scale manufacturing firms in Lagos State. The independent variable of technological innovativeness was operationalized into product-oriented innovativeness and process-oriented innovativeness, while the dependent variables of firm growth were operationalized into sales growth, employment growth, growth in firm size and market shares growth. This study employs exploration correlational research design. The sample population of a small scale enterprise in Lagos State accounts for eleven thousand and forty-four (11,044). Yamane’s formula was used to get the sample size of three hundred and eighty-six (386), this was approximated to the nearest hundred to have 400 for equal distribution. Data gathered for this study was analyzed using the Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation analysis in order to determine the relationship between them and a simple linear regression analysis to establish the extent of relationship between them using statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 2.3. The correlation statistic shows that the linkage between the independent and dependent variables was low to moderate that product-oriented innovativeness shows a moderate positive relationship with sales and employment growth, while the process-oriented innovativeness shows low positive relationship with firm size thus allowing for regression analysis.