Alfred Wong and Christine Ribeiro
Income inequality has gained considerable prominence worldwide in recent years. The growing discontent among the lower-income segment of industrialized societies is limited largely to resentment because of economic wealth being perceived to be steadily concentrating among fewer people. Quantified economic inequality does not necessarily mean the extreme deprivation of people, especially in Europe and North America. There will be no revolutionary-scale social unrest among the middle class if their expectation of satisfactory wellbeing is continually met. The connection between income inequality and poverty is uncertain because of the variable definition of poverty. The classical characterization of poverty is largely deficient as the actual economic hardships encountered by the lowest-income segment of society are never fully described in the socio-geographic context. What is deprivation in Europe and North America may be considered to be “luxurious” in economically poorer countries.
Dejan Trifunović
In this paper, we present the problem of matching students to schools by using different matching mechanisms. This market is specific since public schools are free and the price mechanism cannot be used to determine the optimal allocation of children in schools. Therefore, it is necessary to use different matching algorithms that mimic the market mechanism and enable us to determine the core of the cooperative game. In this paper, we will determine that it is possible to apply cooperative game theory in matching problems. This review paper is based on illustrative examples aiming to compare matching algorithms in terms of the incentive compatibility, stability and efficiency of the matching. In this paper we will present some specific problems that may occur in matching, such as improving the quality of schools, favoring minority students, the limited length of the list of preferences and generating strict priorities from weak priorities.
Danijela Despotović1 and Slobodan Cvetanović2
For a few last decades, economists have been showing a continuous interest in doing research in the key factors of regional growth and the developmental convergence (divergence) of the region. However, beside the wealth of theoretical and empirical research in the mentioned categories, it is obvious that there is still no generally accepted explication of the key factors of regional growth. The same conclusion can be borne in mind in relation to the existence of the connection between the accepted economic growth of a country and a tendency to increase, i.e. decrease regional inequalities. The paper presents a theoretical explication of a) the key factors of regional growth and b) the phenomenon of developing the convergence (divergence) of the region, five representative theoretical approaches to the regional economy (classical, neoclassical, endogenic, new economic geography and spatial innovation systems). The current economic reality on the global plan which speaks of an increasing regional inequality confirms the accuracy of the theoretical considerations of the representatives of the contemporary theoretical approaches related to the analyzed issues.
Slađana Savović
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are the important mechanisms through which companies can achieve growth, gain access to new markets and diversify their activities. Although companies engage themselves in M&As with optimism, empirical evidence shows that many M&A transactions are not successful. Therefore, research is often focused on the identification of the ways to improve post-acquisition performance. One of the key success factors of M&A is to provide adequate transformational leadership during the process of change, especially in the critical phase of the post-acquisition integration. A transformational leader should provide incentives and support to the employees in order for them to accept changes and focus on achieving challenging goals. This paper explores the impact of the different dimensions of transformational leadership on the post-acquisition performance based on the example of a company operating in the Republic of Serbia’s retail sector, which was the subject of a cross-border acquisition. In order to ensure the adequate representativeness of the sample, a questionnaire was distributed in all parts of the company throughout the Republic of Serbia. The results of this study show that all the dimensions of transformational leadership positively impact post-acquisition performance. The “individual consideration” dimension of transformational leadership has the strongest impact on post-acquisition performance, whereas the “intellectual simulation” dimension has the weakest.
Srđan Šapić
In terms of modern life, consumers have an increasing number of options when it comes to choosing a restaurant when they do not wish to eat at their homes. Fast food restaurants represent one of those options. In addition to domestic fast food restaurants, the development of global restaurant chains is also noticeable. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that affect the evaluations of products and services and the intentions of users in terms of using the services of fast food restaurants. In relation to that, it is important to analyze the factor of cosmopolitanism and tradition. Cosmopolitanism, as the willingness of people to cooperate with other cultures and tradition, and tradition, as a reflection of respect for the customs and ideas that are imposed on individuals by their culture or religion, affect consumers’ intentions and their willingness to use the services of foreign fast food restaurants. In accordance with that, the purpose of this research study is to determine if and how cosmopolitanism and tradition affect the evaluations of products and services and consumers’ intention concerning foreign restaurant chains and domestic fast food restaurants of both the local and the family types. The results of the conducted empirical research show that cosmopolitanism positively affects the evaluations of the products and services of foreign restaurants and that tradition positively affects the evaluations of the products and services of domestic fast food restaurants.
Slavica P. Petrović
Issue 2 of Volume 19, Year 2017 of the Economic Horizons scientific journal contains two original scientific papers, two review papers, a preliminary communication and the acknowledgements to the reviewers of the manuscripts submitted to the Editorial Board of the Journal, in 2016.