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Abstract: The thesis of Keynes that public investment may act as a remedy in recession years is well-known. This thesis is examined on basis of the behavior of different criteria measuring the construction sector during the recession years 2008–2009 for 20 European Countries. During these recession years all these criteria showed a pro-cyclical movement instead of an anti- cyclical one. MULTIMOORA, a multi-objective optimization method, aggregated the different criteria. In addition knowing that public investments, in fact public works, take a long time between decision and execution one may conclude that they are not an anti-cyclical instrument in recession years. It would mean that the thesis of Keynes is wrong. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The construction sector constantly offers new products, more effective technologies and novel solutions aimed at improvement of the quality of human habitats and wider distribution of technologies. Currently, effective technologies that require less time and costs for production, installation and use are gaining greater significance. Among them are construction materials and technologies with increasingly popular sustainability features. Considering the above, the article offers a complex algorithm for assessing the deployment and distribution potential of a new technology/product. For this purpose, a multi-stage model of alternatives and criteria was suggested and an analytical multi-stage evaluation model has been designed. The practical example illustrates the assessment of micro environment using a combination of AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and Permutation methods. The designed multi-criteria assessment model promotes accessibility of users to a technology, new product, a part of the product and a technological process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recession 2008-2009 which influenced the World economy has set new challenges for the development of the European construction sector. In the years 2008-2009 a great number of countries faced serious production and employment breakdowns. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the construction sector from a macroeconomic point of view by comparing construction market variations appeared during the crisis in twenty European countries. Therefore statistical indicators of the construction sector were used and a multiobjective evaluation method under the name of MULTIMOORA was employed. However these traditional indicators of the construction sector deliver an incomplete definition of real situations within the sector as during the recession plenty of constructed buildings remained unsold. Therefore the authors of this article propose a rather complex comparison of construction indicators for different European countries. The case study provides the analysis and calculations performed with the help of the MULTIMOORA method. This method enables the evaluation of European countries in accordance with the investigated objectives and ranges them into different groups according to the objectives set for the construction sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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