Private pension plans envisage a voluntary choice of a person to make additional savings for the retirement by joining a private pension plan and making contributions. In 2023, six open private pension funds offered twenty pension plans. Private pension funds provide three types of investment strategies: conservative, balanced and active ones. The research aim is to assess the performance of the private pension plans in Latvia. The research is based on the analysis of the statistical data on the return of assets and other performance indicators of private pension plans as well as it employs the correlation and regression analyses. The data analysis shows a steady increase (annually 6.24% on average) in the population participation in private pension plans. Active plan participants account for 51.42% on average, while the proportion of deferred participants is also large, i.e. 30.40% on average. Short-term returns of private pension plans are very fluctuating with expressive increases and decreases where the active pension plans demonstrated the most unstable return trends. The sharpest return decline was observed in 2022, when the arithmetic total average return of all private pension plans was – 14.63%. The basic reasons mentioned are the changes in investment portfolio, global downturn of stock markets and sharp growth of inflation. Long-term returns show a positive growth through the entire period analysed, i.e. 4.16% on average. This means that a short-term decline of returns does not signal of future decrease in the amount of pension, since contributions to pension plans are considered to be a long-term investment.

Cooperation and financial stability of agricultural companies, especially small and medium ones, is very significant for the development of agricultural sector. In Latvia, cooperatives represent different sizes and industries: dairy, grain, fruit and vegetable, forest, agricultural services and home production. The research aim is to assess financial distress in agricultural cooperatives in Latvia by applying the prevention system indicators. The evaluation of financial indicators is based on the methodology developed by Deutscher Raiffeisenverband e.V. (DRV) – the leading association of agricultural and food industry cooperatives and cooperative-oriented companies in Germany. This system prescribes reporting and monitoring requirements for cooperatives to perform the preventive case analysis to ensure a successful operation of a cooperative or to prevent financial problems, if any. Therefore, financial indicators of cooperatives in Latvia were analysed adapting the DRV analysis methodology to the situation of Latvia to identify cooperatives requiring support to ensure viability. The evaluation of cooperatives by the number of employees, assets, sales and other financial indicators convincingly demonstrates that the largest and most financially strong cooperatives in Latvia operate in the grain sector, followed by the dairy sector. The assessment of financial distress reports that 10 out of 51 analysed cooperatives experience risk of operation. The most common threat to a cooperative in Latvia is related to its equity; however, it is recommended to evaluate this indicator in line with other indicators, for example, changes in equity in recent years and length of a cooperative’s operation.

Performance is a concept which is critical to both conventional businesses as well as social enterprises. However, for the latter, performance is closely tied to social impact which social enterprises and governments supporting the social entrepreneurship field are seeking to achieve. Despite the criticality of the topic, in Latvia performance of social enterprises has not been analysed in detail before; therefore, this study serves as a valuable starting point for discussions and evidence-based policy and also as a benchmark for future development in the field. Research results indicate that the Latvian social enterprises regard their performance across the social dimensions to be stronger, compared to their results in the business/financial dimensions. A greater balance between the social and businesses/ financial performance dimensions is desirable, providing ample space for interventions aimed at strengthening the business skills and capacities of social enterprises, paying particular attention to those engaged in work integration.

A regional analysis of performance indicators for Latvian business incubators provides a valuable insight into the performance of the business incubator ecosystem in various regions and helps to make future policy decisions on providing funding for the incubators that aim to support the growth and success of start-ups. The present research performed a regional analysis of operational programmes for two periods from 2007 to 2021. The strengths and weaknesses of Latvian business incubators across various regions of Latvia could be identified based on the analysis. This can help to make policy decisions and guide resource allocation to contribute to the development of the business incubator ecosystem in the future.