Slovenia

Understanding adults’ attitudes towards the environment is necessary to gauge the opportunities and challenges of creating effective and politically-feasible climate policies. Using data from the Wellcome Global Monitor 2020, the European Social Survey (Round 8), World Values Survey and EM-DAT, this paper examines how adults’ environmental attitudes vary within and across countries and details how environmental attitudes are associated with adults’ engagement in pro-environmental behaviours and support for environmentally-friendly policies. The paper explores whether the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment over the state of the economy or vice versa depends on individuals’ exposure to natural disasters or negative labour market conditions. Results indicate that people’s economic vulnerability and the sectors they work in impact their attitudes towards their environment and support for public policy. Furthermore, the findings suggest that increases in unemployment and exposure to natural disasters influence the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment.

Slovenia’s living standards measured in GDP per capita are currently some 20% below the EU15 average and have not yet reached their pre-crisis level. Given that most of this gap comes from differences in labour productivity, the paper looks at productivity trends and sources of productivity growth over past two decades. The largest labour productivity lags are in agriculture and mining and utilities, but lags are also present in services sectors such as information and communication activities, financial and insurance activities and professional services. The importance of the high and medium high technology manufacturing has risen in the last two decades, and their share in total manufacturing value added is relatively high in Slovenia. Growth accounting shows that total factor productivity (TFP) and physical capital were the main sources of economic growth before the crisis in Slovenia, while the contribution of human capital was low. With the crisis, however, the GDP growth turned highly negative due to large drops in TFP and the labour input contribution. The contribution from physical capital was also reduced, reflecting subdued investment activity. Slovenia has a high level of state control in the economy and low foreign direct investment (FDI). Using two different panel datasets – one spanning the OECD countries and another spanning Slovenia's economic activities - we find that improving both measures could significantly raise productivity.