Buračas, Antanas

Purpose. The existing international competency indices fail to capture the structural differentiation in AI-driven educational transformation across EU moderate innovator economies, rendering evidence-based policy design inadequate. Author attempted to evaluate it. Methodology. The simplified multiple criteria assessment methodology based on global and regional expert evaluations of education quality determining knowledge and innovation development was employed. Analyzing the Visegrad Group (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) over 2022 - 2025, the study produces three original scientific results. Findings. First, it identifies and empirically documents how the AI integration raises measurable technical skill acquisition by 60–80 percent while simultaneously intensifying demand for metacompetencies - creativity, ethical reasoning, adaptability - that current frameworks cannot reliably assess, generating a 34 percent wage premium for workers combining both (Eurostat LFS, 2022–2024). Second, it provides the first systematic empirical documentation of two distinct regional catch-up trajectories - Digital Leapfrogging (Baltic States: R&D efficiency through knowledge-intensive services, return ratio 7.2:1) and Industrial Deepening (Visegrad Group: AI as manufacturing process optimizer, return ratio 3.8:1) - with quantified efficiency differentials. Third, it validates the Creativity Assessment Framework significantly outperforming GPA-based prediction. The Estonia - Hungary differential in AI integration scores illustrates the compounding consequences of coordinated policy versus governance instability. Originality. Revealed the AI Competency Paradox; proposed Multi-Dimensional Creativity Assessment Framework; systematic documentation of regional innovation strategy divergence. Policy implications address national AI-education coordination, culturally calibrated creativity assessment, and digital diaspora engagement mechanisms.

The feature of contemporary stage of modern metaeconomic approach to global reality is more integrated application of multiple criteria methods permitting to evaluate more precisely and deeply the complicated aspects of intellectual potential and knowledge economy development, as a result, the sources and engines of sustainable economic growth. The successful revealing of these processes was demonstrated not only in multiple researches of individual authors but also in series of world-known WBI and WEF analytical publications dedicated to international assessment of global competitivity, innovations, IT a/o indices (The Global Competitiveness Report, The Global Enabling Trade Report, The Global Information Technology Report, and The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report a/o), in developing Innovation scoreboards a/o. New and most interesting trends in researches also include interconnections of benchmarking tools of classical input-output and social matrixes, multistage regressive analysis of surrounding social, psychological a/o processes of economic activity, also modern expert evaluations and SWOT analysis helping better take into account shadow economy, financial and sustainable effects still officially non measurable.