engleski

No association tests between variables in the business survey for the retail trade sector – the case of Croatia

The Retail Trade Confidence Indicator (RTCI) is a composite indicator derived from Business survey results. Business survey is an important tool for tracking and predicting changes in different sectors of the economies: the manufacturing industry, construction, retail trade and the services sector. This is a qualitative economic survey. Such surveys are intended for short-term economic analyses, especially for predicting changes in the economic cycles. They are important, because survey results of economic variables are available before the same or similar data from the official statistics is published. The RTCI has three components. There are quantitatively expressed managers answers (expressed as balances between positive and negative answers) to the questions on the present and future business situations and to the volume of stocks (the last with inverted sign). The RTCIs on the national level and on the EU level are calculated in accordance with The Joint Harmonised Business and Consumer Survey Programme. The last several results in EU and in Croatia have shown that only the retail trade sector managers in the national and European economy are optimistic. All other Confidence indicators are going down, but the RTCIs in EU have the same value in January 2009, as in December 2008. In March the RTCI increased, reinforcing the rebound, which started in February. In the last three quarters, Croatia's RTCI increased too. This means that only the retail trade sector managers are optimistic. The business survey results can be used to find out whether there is no association between the component variables of the RTCI and other seven variables in question: employment, prices, liquidity, order books over the next 3 months, future business situation in the next 6 months, turnover in the past 3 months and ownership. Some different statistical tests of no association for qualitative variables are applied. An analysis on a stratified sample of managers in Croatia's business survey in the retail trade sector (n = 118) was conducted. The survey was conducted for the first quarter of 2009, (end of March).

RTCI– Retail Trade Confidence Indicator; Pearson Chi square Test; ML Chi Square Test; Phi Coefficient; Contingency Coefficient; Cramer´s V

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