Growth Aspirations and Cultural Support for Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Post-Socialist Countries

Based on GEM data this paper explores whether significantly different growth aspirations of early stage entrepreneurs in Slovenia, compared to those in Hungary and Croatia, are also accompanied by significantly different opportunity recognition, cultural support for entrepreneurship and self-efficacy. Our results suggest that a higher degree of alertness to unexploited perceived opportunities, and cultural support for entrepreneurial motivation may be the cause of higher growth aspirations of Slovenian early stage entrepreneurs, while self-efficacy with regard to entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and experience was not found to be crucial.      

How to Increase R&D in Transition Economies? Evidence from Slovenia

The recent initiative of the European Union Lisbon Agenda to increase levels of R&D investment is addressed by studying the determinants of R&D investment in one of the recent EU entrants, Slovenia. Previous empirical literature—mainly cross‐sectional in nature—has tested the demand–pull hypothesis and found that overall R&D expenses may be driven by output demand. We use a panel of more than 150 of the largest Slovene firms over the period 1996–2000, modeling firms' R&D behavior within an error‐correction framework and estimating it in a system GMM specification. While we find that sales have a significant role in inducing R&D expenditures, we also show that the availability of internal funds and wage bargaining represent important factors determining R&D expenses. Moreover, firms owned by insiders (workers and/or managers) and/or firms with dispersed ownership (small shareholders) display higher R&D investments than firms owned by privatization investment funds or by other firms.