Ana Krstić
Milјan Leković
Investment diversification is a widely accepted investment strategy, aimed at reducing investment uncertainty, while simultaneously keeping the expected return on investment unaltered. The development of investment diversification coincided with the development of portfolio theory. At the time when traditional portfolio theory was recognized as the leading portfolio management practice, the simple diversification of investments was the most commonly used strategy; however, due to its inability to recognize the importance of the correlation between returns on different investments, simple diversification was later rejected in modern portfolio theory and replaced with efficient diversification. The research study is aimed at conducting a comparative analysis between the simple and efficient diversifications of investments, together with the inevitable analysis of the optimal number of securities in a portfolio and the testing of the validity of the international diversification of investments. By applying a qualitative research methodology, it is concluded that the benefits of the international diversification of investments are still substantial, and as such outweigh specific limitations, and that the number of securities in a portfolio should be increased as long as its marginal benefits, in the form of reduced investment risk, exceed its marginal costs – in terms of increased portfolio management costs, which also represents the main result of the research.
Siniša Milošević1, Dejan Trifunović2 and Jelena Popović Markopoulos1
In this paper, we will analyse the impact of the effective application of the competition policy to the economic development of developing countries. Many empirical papers suggest that the existence of the competition policy does not significantly affect the level of the GDP per capita, and that only its effective application is important. We will take the same approach and use the World Economic Forum index as a proxy for the effective application of the competition policy. We will demonstrate that a part of the variations in the GDP per capita between developing countries could be explained by an effective application of the competition policy.
Vladan Ivanović
Searching for an institutional structure which enables economic success is in the midst of the practical efforts of governments all around the world, as well as the academic studies endeavoring to understand the sources of success in the most prosperous national economies. The supremacy of the German economy in the European Union, as well as worldwide – from the level of the GDP per capita to high productivity, innovativeness and export performances – is the basic motivation this study rests on. Due to the fact that, unlike a failure, an economic success is always achieved in the long run, this study is aimed at revealing the (historical) institutional roots that have paved the way for the economic success of contemporary Germany. In that context, the model of the Social market economy, i.e. the competitive order (Wettbewerbsordnung), its meaning and importance in solving the allocative equation and reaching the high levels of economic efficiency are the subject matter of analysis in this paper. The key results refer to the identification of the diverse economic and social benefits that a competitive order brings into being, as well as the determination of and pointing to the essential institutional preconditions which such an order is feasible in.
Marko Slavković, Goran Pavlović and Marijana Simić
The transformation of a capital-intensive to knowledge-driven economy has marked the beginning of a new epoch in business doing. Carrying out business activities in an extremely dynamic environment has greatly reduced the importance of traditional concepts and techniques, which is the reason why the focus has shifted to human resources and their management. Accordingly, a company should attract, retain and motivate its employees in order to ensure a high level of their satisfaction by ensuring the achievement of strategic goals. A possible direction of achieving the desired position is based on the development of the employer brand. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to determine the impact of practice in conducting employee recruitment activities on their satisfaction, as well as the influence of the employer brand as a mediator on the identified relationship between the recruitment and satisfaction of employees in Serbia. The results of the conducted empirical research study have proven the existence of a statistically significant positive influence of employee recruitment on satisfaction, while the mediating influence of the employer brand has also been fully confirmed.
Joshua Solomon Adeyele
The inability of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to access funds from financial institutions has been identified as one of the major problems limiting their expansion horizons. This study assesses the criteria and mechanisms used by financial institutions when granting loans to SMEs. The data were sourced from the relevant financial institutions and analyzed by using different statistical tools. One of the findings revealed that the financial ratio and the internal control system accounted for 28.7% of the part of the conditions for granting loans to SMEs. Similarly, good working capital and the ease of asset conversion accounted for 94.5% of the criteria used by financial institutions to extend credits/loans to SMEs. Also, the educational background of SMEs’ operators significantly influenced the financial institutions’ choice of SMEs to finance. Based on these findings, the study recommends that there is a need for SMEs’ operators to align their business activities with financial institutions’ lending criteria.
Edvard Jakopin
Are the transitional countries of SEE trapped in institutional transition or not? The institutional transition that has been lasting for almost three decades, and almost two decades in the Republic of Serbia, initiated the rapid destruction of the institutions of the previous political and economic system, but the construction of new market institutions has been slow, inefficient and partial. The Republic of Serbia lost the three decades of economic growth and development, which, as evidenced by economic law, takes twice as much time to restore the system to the previous equilibrium of the length of the time which the system is located in off-balance. The average 3% growth in the seventeen transition years is insufficient to compensate for the enormous backlog of the 1990s. The contribution of the research study to the work focuses on the analysis of the interdependence of economic growth and institution building. A special viewpoint is aimed at the corruption factor destroying institutions in all transition countries, reducing their economic growth and productivity, and negatively affecting the attractiveness of FDIs.
Vlastimir Leković
In Issue 2 Volume 20 Year 2018, eight contributions are published: three original scientific papers, three review papers, a book review and the Acknowledgements to the reviewers of the manuscripts submitted to the Editorial Board of the Journal for publication in 2017.