Suchergebnisse

The paper refers to the development of corporate governance phenomenon in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) during the 1990s of the twentieth century. It is about the country established by disintegration of the former socialist Yugoslavia, which was in the immediate war zone, under the United Nationsʹ sanctions a full eight years and had one of the most undemocratic regimes in the world. In those circumstances, under the influence of factors from external environment, but also in a situation of unfinished privatization and transition processes and almost complete centralization of entire social and economic life, the specific forms of corporate governance developed, that did not bear much resemblance to the practice in other countries. Many ex‐socialist countries of the Central and Eastern Europe which at that time were in the initial phases of transition also faced certain ʺchildhood illnessesʺ characteristic of the corporate governance development. That was a logical consequence of the long‐standing existence of socialist systems, absence of private ownership, the real corporations and market economy institutions. Meanwhile, however, it became possible to find adequate solutions too many problems and deviations. In Yugoslaviaʹs case, the opposite trends and one strange kind of corporate governance have appeared, due to the rise of unusual forms of corporations, uncharacteristic ownership, and specific mechanisms of control and governance. In that situation, ʺchildhood illnessesʺ were not adequately cured, but soon began to take on some degenerative forms. Since eventually the necessary political changes were effected in Yugoslavia in 2000, the bases for radical departures from the past and correction of many mistakes and misconceptions were formed. One of them has certainly referred to the departure from the strange kind of corporate governance.

In this paper the impact of political risk on the movement of stock prices in the capital market of the Republic of Serbia is analysed. This is the market with a short history of trading, characterized by a high degree of volatility, with frequent and high jumps in prices. In addition, it is a very narrow and depth lacking market dominated by share trading in that period; the market where the trading in neither treasury, nor corporate bonds was well-developed. All stipulated above indicates a high degree of correlation between the stock price and the current local political events, with the exception of the financial crisis as a global factor. Serbian political shocks are frequent, unpredictable and well defined, which allows us to clearly identify political risk. We have identified the dates/periods when certain jumps in the volatility of the market index return happened, which were then brought into connection with the occurrence of appropriate political news. In that way we were able to quantify the effects of political events on the volatility of return. This is the first paper that deals with the impact of political risk on stock returns in Serbia. Additionally, it is shown that Serbia's score of political risk in December 2009 was the highest in the Eastern Europe region. In 2015 it is around regional Balkan's average, and it lies between Albanian and Macedonian score of political risk index.

The goal of this chapter is to point out the core changes in the development of the European financial system in the past several years. A number of factors have influenced these processes, such as: the aspiration of the European Union for increase in competitiveness of its own economy, negative effects of the first wave of the global economic crisis, its mutation and outbreak of the second wave coupled with problems of public debt of some EU member states, the crisis of common currency euro, etc. All changes in the EU have significant implications and create new challenges for the countries of the Western Balkans, which are undergoing different stages of the process of the European Union integrations. We shall observe occurrences in the European financial system in the three directions – through adopting new regulations, creating new institutions and rising ethical standards. Common characteristics for countries of the Western Balkans region are that they are at a lower level of economic development and overall competitiveness of economy, as well as less developed financial systems. The surveys we conducted have shown that they were more affected by the impact of the global crisis than many of the EU nations. Countries of the region have reacted differently to negative impacts from the global environment, mainly within the field of regulative adaptations. In that manner, they have followed up flows of regulatory reforms of the European financial system. However, in the fields of creating new institutions, rising of ethical standards and regional cooperation, the changes were taking place at much slower paste.

The aim of this work is to analyze the outstanding issues and opportunities for upgrading corporate governance in state-owned enterprises - (SOEs) through a comparative analysis of this type of enterprise in Serbia and Slovenia. This is a very remarkable group of copanies that have a major role in the overall economic life of both countries. Increasing efficiency and effectiveness in their management can contribute to raising the overall level of competitiveness and meeting the economic criteria for the integration of some countries in the European Union. In this paper we will try to identify several areas and examples of good practice which lead to improved corporate governance, and thus the better performance of this type of enterprise. In a variety of areas in which the corporate governance may be improved, we focused our analysis on the three areas, as follows: policy of ownership, regulations in terms of increasing transparency and functioning of the boards of directors.

The importance of microfinance is in availability of funding business for those segments of the population with difficult access to conventional means of business financing from banking sector. Microfinance represents a way of funding which can create new jobs and reduce the proportion of socially vulnerable population. The existing model of microfinance in Serbia has a limiting effect on its efficient operation and satisfaction of demand for micro credits. The paper aims to point out the importance of microfinance as a support for the development of SMEs in the Republic of Serbia. A research subject is current economic development, characteristics of the SME sector, legislative framework on the microfinance, government program for supporting microfinance, major microfinance institutions in Serbia and national models of microfinance.

Small and medium enterprises and small farms are recognized as important factors in the development of agribusinesses in the Republic of Serbia. The wealth of natural, human and material resources which have not been effectively exploited in agribusiness, as well as agribusiness' significance in the economic development of Serbia are opportunities for SME development. Due to their national importance, this paper is about SMEs and small farms in agribusiness in the Republic of Serbia. Long-term inadequate agrarian policies in the agricultural sector have led to uncompetitive and inefficient agrarian production, decrease in the number of entities in agribusiness, small households, and insufficient government support in agribusiness development. This paper will present the current situation of SMEs in agribusiness and outline the problems threatening their development through a SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis will showcase the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats faced by agribusiness in the Republic of Serbia. In accordance with the results of the SWOT analysis, this paper will conclude with recommendations and suggestions to the government. Adopting these recommendations and suggestions would ensure that some opportunities in the agribusiness sector are transformed into strengths, and some existing weaknesses and threats are reduced or eliminated.

In this paper we analyzed mortgage securities as a source of financing credit activities in the mortgage market of the European Union. Although they basically provide the same products – mortgages, credit institutions differ in the way of financing their activities. While some institutions finance their activities by deposits, others issue mortgage securities (mortgage bonds and mortgage-backed securities) through the capital market. This analysis based on relevant literature and appropriate statistical data showed that the importance of mortgage securities vary from country to country. At the level of the European Union its overall importance is very high, since more than ¼ of all credit activities on the mortgage market are financed by these instruments. Moreover, it has been proved that mortgage bonds and mortgage backed securities in many ways satisfy various needs of creditors. The selection of the instrument depends on the creditor's and investor's requirements and it is determined by historical, legal and regulatory framework, as well as with the structure of the mortgage market in which the creditor operated. In many countries, mortgage bonds and mortgage backed securities are accepted as alternative and complementary source of finance, which results in the coexistence of these two types of mortgage securities. Historical data and recent trends suggest that, in the future, both of these instruments (especially mortgage bonds) will represent a significant source of financing credit activities in the mortgage market.

In this paper we will try to identify key characteristics of public enterprises restructuring processes and analyze their contribution to overall economic competitiveness in Serbia and some neighboring countries, such as Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Special attention will be paid to public enterprises in the Republic of Serbia, where no major restructuring activities have been observed so far. Consequently, this sector in Serbia still faces low level of competitiveness. At the same time, a lot of challenges and open issues concerning mostly rationale for and against privatization, legal and regulatory practices, government oversight and corporate governance, transparency and accountability are present in Serbia. Last, but not least, we will try to identify key factors, on national as well as regional level, which could help increasing public enterprises competitiveness. This paper consists of five parts. The first part gives brief introduction as of changes which occurred in the region. The second part deals with the analysis of basic characteristics and some problems of public enterprises in the four observed countries. The third part analyzes the relation between the public enterprise sector and the source of national competitiveness. The fourth part treats the efforts made by the Republic of Serbia so as to restructure the sector of public enterprises, while the fifth part gives conclusions.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) in general and particularly innovative ones are becoming an increasingly important factor on the road to achieving smart, sustainable and comprehensive development. Because of their propensity to innovative undertaking and risk, SMEs contribute significantly to economic growth but are generally less productive and pay the cost of high rates of death and lower rates of profitability. Financing SMEs is risky and uncertain and for innovative SMEs it is even more difficult to access financing. When financing innovative activities, investors perceive high risks and it is even more emphasized in times of crisis when there is an increase in the cost of capital. Institutional support and governmental programmes have an important role in closing financial gap that innovative SMEs are faced with. Because the survival and development of SMEs is to a great extant determined by their ability to access favorable financing, the main objective of this paper is to provide policy recommendations for promoting availability of financing to innovative SMEs in order to foster economic recovery and more dynamic development of Serbia. The recommendations are to emerge from analyzes and evaluation of currently available sources of finance for innovative SMEs.

It is difficult to separate a nation's behavior that results from the culture of behavior from that which is caused or encouraged by the economic system. Modern economic growth is directly related to capitalist institutions. However, there are different forms of economic systems that have a link between the real values that lie in the national culture and the nature of a successful modern business. Sometimes the differences between countries can be explained by geographic or religious factors. There are indications that the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East recorded a long period of weak economic development in spite of their favorable geographical conditions (temperate zone, specifically the Mediterranean climate and coastal orientation). However, there is no evidence that they continued to show poor results after 1965, and several Muslim countries have significantly exceeded the world average rate of economic growth, at least during the last ten years. The significance of international factors in social change has been very high, at least during the last two centuries, and is likely to be even higher in the future under the pressure of the globalization of society, politics and economics. The analysis of cultural explanations of economic performance is very important under the current conditions of global business. An interdisciplinary approach is definitely an unavoidable feature of modern management. Many organizations have international activities and orientations, and are forced to deal with different cultures. In addition, there is an urgent need to comply with organizational elements of national culture. Finally, we found that, in those organizations where there is harmony between the elements of organizational culture and the formulation of a strategy, durable competitive advantages may be created which leadto better business performance, and may have a positive impact on the national economy as a whole.

This paper has attempted to analyse certain influence aspects the global crisis has had on the Western Balkans countries, above all on Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Our analysis focuses on events on stock exchanges, for which we have applied comparative analysis method and noticed that indexes at Western Balkans countries stock exchanges have significantly more fallen (from -46,09% to -73,86%) for the same period of time from 1 January 2008 until 20 August 2009 than indexes at leading world stock exchanges, which have fallen in the ratio of -25,00% to -35,59%. In addition, we have discovered that reinforcement of the global crisis has led to a notable capital withdraw in Western Balkans countries; investors have lost trust in banking and financial system, as well as to a number of other negative occurrences. The world crisis has proven to have had a rather strong influence on countries in this part of Europe, which is an additional issue for governments of certain countries in finalising transition process and quicker accession to the European Union (EU). Different countries have reacted in different ways and this paper aims at underlining some of the most important undertaken measures, as well as at assessing their potential effects. The paper consists of five parts. The introduction reviews global crisis phenomenon, emphasizing a great number of issues open to debate and dilemmas it has brought about, trying to discover answers to some of them within this paper. The second part has been devoted to the crisis cause influence and its development phases, not only in developed countries, but in Western Balkans countries as well. The third part analyses empiric data on indexes fluctuation at stock exchanges of developed and Western Balkans countries. Following the review of negative effects of the global crisis, the forth part deals with a short analysis of measures that governments of the respective Western Balkans countries have undertaken in fighting the crisis, so that we are able to sum up in the fifth part and try to draw the most important conclusions.

In this paper we have tried to highlight the main characteristics of doing business in Serbian economy having in mind strategic cooperation between Fiat, the Italian car manufacturer, and Zastava, the only car manufacturer in Serbia. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part the most important transition indicators in Serbia have been analyzed as well as general ambience of doing business. Serbian government have put tremendous efforts in making economic ambience as attractive as possible for prospective foreign investors. Still there are open issues of how successful these efforts have been and what else has to be done. In the second part of this paper, recent global trends in automotive industry have been analyzed and their influence in Serbia and Western Balkans region. Finally, in the third part, the most important aspects of strategic cooperation between Fiat and Zastava have been analyzed, in order to put out the direction into which Serbia government can direct its activities so as to improve general economic ambience for business activities and further attracting of foreign investments.

The challenges the local governments (LGs) are facing in contemporary developed societies are getting larger and more complex. LGs have to deal with tasks relating to fulfillment of certain parts (in certain cases of a whole) of some of the key public functions which are arranging the life in local communities: land use of urban planning, organization and management of public services (like local water supply system, solid waste disposal, waste water treatment, public cleaning, maintaining and managing of city green areas, organizing distant heating system, etc.) along with some of conventional local governmental (administrative) functions. In the recent years, one of the LG functions, which is certainly becoming one of the most important one, is – an active role in economic development initiating through attracting the foreign investors, encouraging the self-employment process, SMEs development, etc. In such conditions, the strategic management planning becomes an essential tool that "managers" of local governments are using in order to provide efficient use of local governments resources and their long-term prosperity.