Agriculture,nutrition and development in Yugoslavia

Improvements in food consumption and nutrition, being important indicators of the standard of living, can only be analysed properly within the context of socioeconomic development. The authors examine the developments of food and nutrition policy in Yugoslavia, a country disadvantaged by a backward economy and poor social conditions inherited from the prewar and pre-revolutionary period and exacerbated by the second world war.     

Domesticating fears and fantasies of ‘the East’: integrating the Ottoman legacy within European heritage

ABSTRACT

‘Europe’ has no fixed geographical, historical, religious or cultural boundaries. Claims for the existence of European civilization as a discrete construct are continually made yet dissolve on close scrutiny. Here, we examine these claims at one of the grandest points of existential crisis and belonging for Europe, the relationship with the ‘Other within’: Turkey, the Balkans and Ottoman heritage in Europe. Through a hybrid semiotic and Foucauldian analysis of catalogues of eight high-profile exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium and Portugal we argue that an unsettled discursive struggle is at play, in which one ‘Europe’ articulates ‘reconciliation’ of profound civilizational difference while another, Ottoman, ‘Europe’ stakes a claim of right as an intrinsic component of what it means to be European in a contemporary context. We attempt to trace the role of museum marketing in the perennial accommodation/exclusion of the Ottoman Empire as an intrinsic component in the diversity of Europe’s cultural heritage.     

Effects of Private Ownership,Trade, and Foreign Direct Investment on Labor Productivity Growth in Transition Economies: Evidence from the Croatian Manufacturing Industry

In this study, we investigate the determinants of labor productivity dynamics in transition economies using data from Croatian manufacturing industries. Capital intensity growth and human capital accumulation have been significant contributors to stronger productivity gains. Private-sector development has positively affected productivity growth—but mostly through the increasing role of new private companies. Still, unfinished privatization represents a significant obstacle to stronger productivity gains. The effect of increasing trade openness is significant but negative, most likely owing to weak export competitiveness of Croatian companies. Neither greenfield nor (predominant) brownfield foreign direct investment inflows have contributed to higher labor productivity growth. Further privatization and structural reforms seem to be the most promising policy measures that need to be undertaken in order to achieve higher productivity gains.     

Estimation of the most influential science and technology factors for economic growth forecasting by soft computing technique

Economic growth may be developed on the basis on combination of different factors. In this investigation was analyzed the economic growth forecasting based on the different factors. The main goal was to analyze the influence of science and technology factors on the economic growth. Gross domestic product (GDP) was used as economic growth indicator. The method of adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was applied to the data in order to select the most influential factors for the GDP growth rate forecasting. Ten inputs are considered: research and development (R&D) expenditure in GDP, scientific and technical journal articles, patent applications for nonresidents, patent applications for residents, trademark applications for nonresidents, trademark applications for residents, total trademark applications, researchers in R&D, technicians in R&D and high-technology exports. The ANFIS process for variable selection was also implemented in order to detect the predominant factors affecting the forecasting of GDP growth rate.     

On the formal definition of the systems’ interoperability capability: an anthropomorphic approach

The extended view of enterprise information systems in the Internet of Things (IoT) introduces additional complexity to the interoperability problems. In response to this, the problem of systems’ interoperability is revisited by taking into the account the different aspects of philosophy, psychology, linguistics and artificial intelligence, namely by analysing the potential analogies between the processes of human and system communication. Then, the capability to interoperate as a property of the system, is defined as a complex ability to seamlessly sense and perceive a stimulus from its environment (assumingly, a message from any other system), make an informed decision about this perception and consequently, articulate a meaningful and useful action or response, based on this decision. Although this capability is defined on the basis of the existing interoperability theories, the proposed approach to its definition excludes the assumption on the awareness of co-existence of two interoperating systems. Thus, it establishes the links between the research of interoperability of systems and intelligent software agents, as one of the systems’ digital identities.     

Technology,employment and the business cycle in post-transition countries of the EU

This article analyses the importance of technology and non-technology shocks in the business cycles of European Union post-transition countries. Different assumptions of New Keynesian and Real Business Cycle theory are tested. The results demonstrate that a non-technology shock is more important in explaining business cycles in post-transition countries, although a technology shock is not trivial. The technology shock cannot replicate basic business cycle facts observed in the data: it produces a low or negative correlation between employment and GDP, and a strong negative correlation between labour productivity and employment. Technology and non-technology GDP components are analysed in the transition and post-transition period. The results show a non-technology shock was the dominant source of business cycles both during and after the transition period.     

Overconfidence and Market Efficiency with Heterogeneous Agents

We study financial markets in which both rational and overconfident agents coexist and make endogenous information acquisition decisions. We demonstrate the following irrelevance result when a positive fraction of rational agents (endogenously) decides to become informed in equilibrium, prices are set as if all investors were rational, and as a consequence the overconfidence bias does not affect informational efficiency, price volatility, rational traders’ expected profits or their welfare. Intuitively, as overconfidence goes up, so does price informativeness, which makes rational agents cut their information acquisition activities, effectively undoing the standard effect of more aggressive trading by the overconfident. The main intuition of the paper, if not the irrelevance result, is shown to be robust to different model specifications.We would like to thank Alberto Bisin, Xavier Freixas, Ken French, Moshe Kim, Jose Marín, and Terrance Odean for comments on an early draft, as well as an anonymous referee and seminar participants at HEC Geneva, the 2004 EFA meetings, the 2004 European Econometric Society meetings and the 2005 SAET conference. Diego García and Branko Urošević gratefully acknowledge financial support by SECCF (Belgrade).     

Sensitivity Analysis of an Efficient DMU in DEA Model with Variable Returns to Scale (VRS)

In this paper we consider the Variable Returns to Scale (VRS) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. In a DEA model each Decision Making Unit (DMU) is classified either as efficient or inefficient. Changes in inputs or outputs of any DMU can alter its classification, i.e. an efficient DMU can become inefficient and vice versa. The goal of this paper is to assess changes in inputs and outputs of an extreme efficient DMU that will not alter its efficiency status, thus obtaining the region of efficiency for that DMU. Namely, a DMU will remain efficient if and only if after applying changes this DMU stays in that region. The representation of this region is done using an iterative procedure. In the first step an extended DEA model, whereby a DMU under evaluation is excluded from the reference set, is used. In the iterative part of the procedure, by using the obtained optimal simplex tableau we apply parametric programming, thus moving from one facet to the adjacent one. At the end of the procedure we obtain the complete region of efficiency for a DMU under consideration.     

Application of International Financial Reporting Standards in the Transition Economy of Serbia

This paper explores the attitudes of the preparers of financial statements in the emerging economy of Serbia towards International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Our research shows that preparers are mainly satisfied with the quality of IFRS and the environment for IFRS application in Serbia and that they generally support the process of global convergence of financial reporting standards. Nevertheless, we find that there is a need to improve the environment for IFRS application in Serbia, and we identify areas that financial reporting regulators in emerging economies should address when attempting to improve the environment for IFRS application. Our research also shows that perceived IFRS quality is dependent on the preparer's experience in applying IFRS and his or her perceptions of the environment in which IFRS are applied. Perceived IFRS quality and attitudes towards the compatibility between IFRS and the environment for application of IFRS affect the level of support for the global convergence of financial reporting standards.     

Do the stock and CDS markets price credit risk equally in the long-run?

In this paper, we examine the existence and stability of the long-run equilibrium relation between the price of credit risk in the stock and CDS markets for a sample of non-financial iTraxx Europe companies during the 2004–2017 period. We show that standard cointegration tests with no breaks frequently fail to detect cointegration. Once we formally account for the breaks in the cointegrating vector, we are able to detect cointegration over the entire sample period for the vast majority of the companies considered. An application of these results to CDS-equity trading shows that the profitability of traditional trading strategies crucially depends on the presence of cointegration and on the stability of the cointegrating vector. Finally, we find that CDS illiquidity factors decrease the likelihood of the stock and CDS market cointegration.