The paper discusses market trends and analyzes the regularities that appear on the Serbian national housing market and regional submarkets. It is assumed that, apart from the common market driving forces, the market for newly constructed houses and the market for the existing housing stock behave like two separate segments of the housing market with the imperfect adjustment of prices. The prime focus of the analysis is on the divergence between the prices in those two segments, with a special interest in the process of mutual adjustments. Granger causality tests are employed in order to reveal whether there is a causal relationship between the price indices in those two segments and it has been found that there is a causality relation between the existing housing market and the newly constructed house market prevailing among the regional submarkets. The same methodology is applied to test if there is any such causality between the regional markets. The results have confirmed a likely influence of the Belgrade new construction market on the other regional markets. The findings will help understand the process of price adjustments between the two market segments and will lead to policy recommendations.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of financial technology (Fintech) on the inflation rate. The contribution reflects in the creation of a new index for Fintech, involving several indicators using principal component analysis. The data utilized belong to a panel dataset pertaining to the 10 provinces of the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, spanning from January 2020 to June 2023. The pooled mean group (PMG) estimation method is employed in order to test the relationship between Fintech and the inflation rate. The research findings of the study indicate that Fintech is capable of reducing inflation in the long run. Therefore, this research study implies the necessity to intensify the use of Fintech for the purpose of creating an efficient economic environment and promoting economic stability.
The Eastern Bloc had been dissolved by the end of the Cold War period, and the New World Order was established. The rapid liberalization process accelerated transition to the free market economy. In this transition period, however, numerous political tensions occurring between some countries also transformed into conflicts and wars. Therefore, countries allocate their scarce resources to their national security rather than their development objectives, simultaneously gradually increasing their defense expenditures. Accordingly, the present study aims to examine the existence of the dynamic relationship between defense burden and unemployment for the selected nine post-Soviet countries that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By incorporating the annual data set of the nine post-Soviet countries over the period between 1996 and 2021, the results revealed that defense burden had no influence on unemployment in the short run, but did have a positive effect in the long run.
This paper investigates the impact of various factors on the level of foreign direct investments in a country, with a special emphasis on the noneconomic, mostly institutional determinants. Using a broad sample of 124 countries and data for the period from 1996 to 2019, a dynamic panel GMM regression is applied. The regression results indicate that the relative share of FDI in the GDP depends positively on the development of the institutions in the country. To attract foreign investors, host countries should make considerable progress in the functioning of their legal system, the effectiveness of the government and fight against corruption, as well as creating an overall favorable investment climate. The same regression model applied to a subsample of European countries reinforced these findings, sending an important message to policymakers, who need to make decisive steps towards fixing systematic deficiencies rather than subsidizing foreign investors, which is a practice with suspicious cost-effectiveness at the macro level.
Vladimir Dženopoljac1, Amer Rastić2 and Aleksandra Dženopoljac3
The paper examines how intangible assets, measured as the Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC), impact the margin and return ratios of the most profitable companies in Serbia. Previous research has demonstrated that intangible assets have a positive effect on the company’s profitability across various contexts, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Serbia as well. This research study aims to determine whether intangible assets have a positive effect on the four ratios, namely the Net Profit Margin (NPM), the Earnings Before Interests, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization margin (EBITDAm), Return on Assets (ROA), and Return on Equity (ROE) or not. In the study, a sample consisting of the data collected from the official publication of the Serbian Business Registers Agency (SBRA) covering the period from 2017 to 2020 is used. The sample includes the 72 most profitable firms after excluding those not meeting the VAIC requirements. The findings of the study are indicative of the fact that intangible assets do have a positive impact on all the four ratios (NPM, EBITDAm, ROA, and ROE), which implies that companies in Serbia should prioritize investing in intangible assets so as to enhance their profitability and competitiveness.
Vladislav Radak1, Aleksandar Damjanović1, Vladimir Ranković2 and Mikica Drenovak2
Capital requirements for the market risk exposure of banks is a nonlinear function of the expected shortfall (ES), which is calculated based on a bank’s actual portfolio, i.e. the portfolio represented by the bank’s current holdings. To tackle portfolio optimization with respect to the ES, a genetic algorithm (GA) is used in this paper. The paper examines the effectiveness of a specific GA technique, namely the Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2) for portfolio optimization when the expected return (the mean) and percentage ES are set as the optimization goals. In addition, the differences between the mean-ES optimal portfolios and the mean-VaR optimal portfolios obtained by using the same optimization algorithm is analyzed in the study. The results document that the SPEA2 method provides well-distributed portfolios along the efficient frontier covering different risk levels. Compared to the mean-VaR optimal portfolios, the mean-ES optimal portfolios document superiority over the entire efficient frontier in the mean-ES plane. Concurrently, the converted mean-ES portfolios seem to converge towards the mean-VaR portfolios in the mean-VaR plane and nearly coincide for the high levels of the expected return.
Milan Čupić and Stefan Vržina
Despite exports having been the subject of academic attention for decades, associating exports with firm performance is unclear. Previous studies have produced two opposite theories. The learning-by-exporting hypothesis states that exports improve firm performance due to knowledge transfers from foreign markets to exporters, on the one hand, whereas on the other, those advocating the self-selection hypothesis argue that firms with better financial performance are more likely to export. This paper aims to examine the relationship between exports and the performance of firms in Serbia. The results of this research study show that exports are statistically significantly associated with productivity, this finding being robust to changes in the productivity measure and the sample size. Associating exports with firm profitability, however, is sensitive to changes in profitability measures. In addition, the research results are more typical of the manufacturing sector. Several reasons for the poor performance of Serbian exports and several recommendations with respect to that are offered in this paper.
Marsellisa Nindito1, Ilya Afianti2, Poppy Sofia Koeswayo2 and Nanny Dewi Tanzil2
This study investigates the impact of related-party transactions on financial statement fraud in the Indonesian publicly listed firms grounded in agency theory. The research study is aimed at examining the need for good corporate governance in order to uphold reporting integrity. This research applies a quantitative approach and a sample of 500-unit data from the companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange in the period from 2017 to 2019 is analyzed using logistic regression models. This study also utilizes moderating regression analysis so as to investigate the moderating roles of institutional ownership and independent commissioners in the research model. The study results have revealed that related-party transactions and institutional ownership significantly affect the likelihood of the financial statement fraud occurrence in Indonesia and that institutional ownership can moderate the impact of related-party transactions on the likelihood of the financial statement fraud occurrence. This study provides the empirical evidence on the role of related-party transactions and corporate governance in shaping the quality of financial statements in emerging economies.
Nenad Tomić and Marija Mirić
Business models in the video game industry have shifted from physical to digital. With microtransactions, game producers have been provided with the ability to charge for extra in-game content. Loot boxes are one of the most controversial forms of microtransactions in video games. These are the prize packages that consist of one or multiple virtual items, whose specific content remains unknown to the player prior to opening. This study is aimed at identifying the combination of the factors that act as motivators for players in Serbia to engage themselves in monetary transactions for the purchase of loot boxes. To address the requirements of the study, modifications were made to the fundamental Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) so as to encompass the additional variables that had been perceived as significant for players’ decision-making processes. The findings of the study indicate the fact that the “perceived enjoyment, customization”, and “perceived ease of use” variables are the important factors that can predict the “perceived usefulness of loot boxes” variable. Additionally, the “perceived usefulness of loot boxes” and “propensity for gambling” variables are significant predictors of players’ intention to purchase. Furthermore, the “intention to purchase loot boxes” variable has a statistically significant impact on the “actual use of loot boxes” variable.
Jelena Erić Nielsen1, Ana Todorović Spasenić2 and Aleksandra Stevanović1
In the contemporary business environment characterized by risk and uncertainty, manufacturing companies need to focus on improving quality in every single aspect of their business model, with a focus on reaching the level of business excellence. As the central dimension of organizational design, organizational structure has the status of important support for achieving business excellence in the following areas: the success of the quality management system, process management, orientation towards employees (their satisfaction and motivation), the development of partnership relations with suppliers and customers, supply chain management, innovation, and social responsibility. The goal of the research is to identify the parameters of the organizational structure which have the highest influence on the success of manufacturing companies in terms of achieving business excellence. The results of the research conducted on a sample of 94 manufacturing companies in the territory of the Republic of Serbia showed the statistically significant influence of the organizational structure on each of the business excellence determinants, whereby the following parameters have the most important role: specialization, coordination (based on a combination of mechanisms) and formalization (based on compliance with QMS requirements – Quality Management System and the ISO 9001 standards).