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.
Mirjana Gligorić Matić and Biljana Jovanović Gavrilović
In this paper, the quantitative aspect of economic growth, i.e. its dynamics, is dealt with. Although it is common to observe the growth rate (intensity) when analyzing the growth dynamics of countries while neglecting growth variability, the fact that covering fluctuations in growth rates has clear motivation and practical significance is presented. On a sample of European countries, including Serbia, growth intensity and stability are analyzed in the paper in order to construct a growth dynamics indicator and an adjusted growth rate based upon these two components. Based upon the two constructed indicators, the position of each country in the sample and in the region (Western and Eastern Europe) which they belong to is analyzed. The detailed analysis and results indicate the importance of this approach when analyzing and comparing the economic growth of individual countries in the medium term and in the long term and when assessing effects on future economic growth and wellbeing.
Vera Gligorijević, Petar Vasić
The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about the impact human resources have on the process of economic development, especially the importance that the educational structure and individual business skills have in the informal economy modernization process and its integrations towards a formal economy. The educational structure of the employed in the informal sector was defined by classifying the workforce according to their education levels, and their individual business skills were determined by analyzing the techniques individuals used in the process of improving competitiveness. The analysis was based on the results of a survey research of the structural characteristics and spatial distribution of the informal economy in the Republic of Serbia conducted on a sample of 310 home-based businesses in 2011. The results have shown that the informally employed are as competitive as the formally employed, the educational structure of the informally employed depends on the type of community and the distance from the center; individual business skills depend on the gender structure of the business owner, apart from the type of community and its distance from the center (metropolitan areas).