On 26 June 2019, the National Bank hosted the 33rd Research Club session. Vice Governor Ana Mitreska delivered the keynote address that was followed by presentation of research papers “Mutual action of the conditional (lowest acceptable) salary and the duration of unemployment: Empirical evidence from Macedonia” by Tereza Kochovska and "Relocation, urbanization, and firm's productivity: examining the efects of changes in urban setting on productivity of firms” by Filip Jolevski. 

In the first paper, Kocovska estimates the determinants of the lowest acceptable salary in the youth in our country, with an emphasis on the connection with the duration of unemployment. The data she uses come from the Survey on the transition from school to work for 2012 and 2014, covering the population at the age of 15 to 29 years. The results obtained by Kocovska show that the increase in the duration of unemployment reduces the lowest acceptable salary in the young population. At the same time, the youth living in families who are recipients of remittances have a shorter duration of unemployment and lower lowest acceptable salaries than those who do not receive remittances, she said in her presentation. According to Kocovska's conclusions, the increase in age increases the duration of unemployment and the lowest acceptable salary in our country. On the other hand, the good financial condition increases the duration of unemployment. Within the presentation of the paper, Kocovska emphasized that the respondents who are on postgraduate studies have a shorter duration of unemployment compared with those who have a lower education.

For this paper, recently, Tereza Kocovska received the National Bank's Annual Prize for young researchers for best paper in the field of macroeconomics and banking for 2019.

In the second paper presented at the session, Filip Jolevski premised its paper on the theory that the location, that is, the positioning of companies in urban areas is in favor of their productivity. In doing so, the author uses different methods to estimate how much of the benefits that companies have in such cases are the result of spillover of the positive effects of urban areas or are the result of a so-called "selection of companies". Using the data from company surveys conducted by the World Bank, he analyzes how the change in the location of the company affects the productivity measured in the Cobb–Douglas production function. Jolevski comes to a conclusion that production companies that are located in relatively more densely populated areas register a reduction in productivity, which is relatively small, which is an unexpected result, and such negative estimated connection opens space for further research.

At the end of the session, encouraged by the presented views and conclusions, the participants discussed the issues related to the two papers.

The next Research Club session will be held in September this year.