Continuity Under a Different Name: The Outcome of Privatisation in Serbia

Normally, privatisation is seen as beneficial. This paper considers the case of Serbia – a latecomer in the matter – where privatisation was partly a result of exogenous pressures and where the process has been deemed a failure. In Serbia, a sizeable number of privatised firms were bought by bureaucrats and politicians and all firms were subjected to a period of supervision. We argue that the design of this process allowed rent-seekers to conserve their privileges through asset-stripping, which explains the failure. In order to do so, we perform an empirical analysis of the determinants of liquidation, merger and bankruptcy of privatised firms from 2002 to 2015. We construct a novel data set from primary sources, free of the ‘survivorship bias’ and containing proxies for various types of owners, indirect signs of asset-stripping strategy and a broad range of controls. Our results indicate that firms owned by politicians faced significantly higher risks of bankruptcy, especially after the end of supervision.     

Dreaming of the West: The power of the brand in Soviet Lithuania, 1960s–1980s

Abstract

The article reveals the interest in foreign trademarks observed in Lithuanian society from the 1960s through the 1980s, when the demand for brand names spread after Western culture reached the Soviet Union. The consumption of Western cultural products, or imitations thereof, became one of the key symbolic expressions of freedom in Soviet society. In Lithuania, the most popular clothes were those bearing fake trademarks, even though Soviet authorities attempted to prevent the desire for and the wearing of these garments through the use of ideological tools.     

Multigroup validation of the service quality,customer satisfaction and performance links in higher education

The notion of ‘students as customers’ continues to be prominent, yet is insufficiently explored, especially from the standpoint of various stakeholders. To address this inadequacy, the present study employs a multigroup analysis of the service profit chain (SPC) model in higher education (HE). Its purpose is to examine the complete SPC model regarding stakeholder perceptions in order to inform its validation and implementation. A cross-sectional survey was employed in order to enable multigroup comparison of a comprehensive research model on subsamples of employees and students by means of structural equation modeling (SEM). Results provide support for the proposed SPC model within the sample of vocational colleges. Besides strongly linked constructs (quality–satisfaction–loyalty), some notable weaknesses (cracked ‘satisfaction mirror’) are found. Multigroup analysis also indicates some important differences between employees and students. Implications are provided for strategic service management in HE, which should acknowledge the differences among stakeholder perceptions.     

Do Neighbours Influence Value‐Added‐Tax Introduction? A Spatial Duration Analysis

The spatial survival models typically impose frailties, which characterize unobserved heterogeneity, to be spatially correlated. However, the spatial effect may not only exist in the unobserved errors, but it can also be present in the baseline hazards and the dependent variables. A new spatial survival model with these three possible spatial correlation structures is explored and used to investigate the implementation of value‐added tax (VAT) in 99 countries over the period 1970–2009. Estimation is performed by a Bayesian approach through the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. The estimation results suggest the presence of a significant spatial correlation among the VAT introductions of neighbouring countries.     

Exporting status and success in innovation: evidence from CIS micro data for EU countries

Using a large sample of micro data from four waves of Community Innovation Survey for EU member states, we investigate the relationship between firms’ export status and different sorts of innovation activities. We find systematically positive relationship between the two, whereby the strongest correlation is found in case of product innovation and the weakest in case of organizational innovations. While aggregate data show that innovation success is increasing in firm size, we find that exporting has the strongest effect on innovation in the medium-sized firms. We also explore cross-country differences in the impact of export status on innovation. Countries with a higher share of exports in GDP and greater share of spending on research and development generally display a stronger correlation between exporting status and innovation.     

Inflation in New EU Member States: A Domestically or Externally Driven Phenomenon?

This article empirically analyzes the domestic and external inflation determinants for eight non-eurozone new EU member states (NMS), using a structural vector autoregression model. Results indicate that foreign shocks are a major factor in explaining inflation dynamics in the medium run, while the short-run inflation dynamics are mainly influenced by domestic shocks. Moreover, the importance of the foreign inflation component has had a rising trend in the precrisis period in all NMS and mostly coincided with their accession to the EU. This trend ended with the onset of the global financial crisis. The study implicates the need to augment the classical Taylor rule with foreign factors in the case of small open economies.