Volume 60 (2022): Edition 2 (June 2022)

The first systematic definition of economics in Western culture takes place in Aristotle’s Politics. In the first chapter of this writing, Aristotle analyzes in detail the skill of household management (economics). When he tries to see the same skill not only within the household, but also in the context of the political community (polis), Aristotle notices problems that arise with the development of the skill of acquiring property (κτητικὴ) and the skill of acquiring wealth (χρηματιστικήν). The application of the principle of household management to the political community leads to fundamental problems, fundamentally unsolvable, due to which the economy and politics in the political community (polis) remain in permanent tension.

The paper analyzes the convergence of inflation rates in the group of more developed members of the Eurozone (core countries). What are the characteristics and is the inflation process in these countries sufficiently homogeneous? Are the analysed inflation rates converging, so that there is an indication that these countries tend to form the optimal currency area. We used a unit root test to check the stationarity of a series of average inflationary differentials. They are calculated as the difference between inflation rate in a given country and the inflation rate in EMU. If the convergence process took place, the inflationary differentials will decrease and tend to zero. The variance of differentials will also decrease, so the series of average inflationary differentials will be stationary. The analysis showed that there is a unit root in the series, thus it is not stationary, and we cannot conclude that the process of convergence of inflation rates in the core countries happened. The paper also analyzes the autocorrelation functions of inflation rates, to determine the persistence of inflation, i.e. how long it takes for the shock that caused the inflation growth of 1%, to die off. The values of the first autocorrelation coefficients are high, while the next ones fall slowly, so it takes a long time for the impact of the inflation shock to disappear. In addition, the correlograms of inflation rates are quite heterogeneous, which indicates that inflationary processes differ.

The balance of payments deficit is the problem faced by numerous countries. To solve the problem of the balance of payment deficit, the creators of economic policy try to stimulate the sectors that secure the largest inflow of foreign currencies and have a beneficial impact on the reduction of deficit. The international trade in informational, computer and telecommunication services records enormously high growth rates in the 21st century. The specificity of ICT sector opens a perspective even to less developed economies to take part more significantly in the exports, which hold a large percentage of a value-added. The goal of this paper is to determine the significance of ICT services for the balance of trade and the current account adjustment, as well as the contribution to generating the surplus of the total balance of services. In the case of the Republic of Serbia, the surplus of ICT sector covers almost one-fifth of the balance of trade deficit, almost one-third of the current account deficit, while every fourth dollar achieved by the services’ exports is achieved by the exports of ICT services. If the same trend of ICT sector’s growth continues, the predictions say that the surplus of this sector will be enlarged by almost 60% till the year of 2024, when compared to the level in 2020. Finally, potentially the most significant advantage, which ICT sector brings with itself, is the reduced brain drain, which is the most destructive consequence brought to the less developed countries by the liberalization of workforce’s movement.

Covid-19 has hit the world intensely. From the medical point of view it seems that we have found the way to fight it, and the new task is to recover the economies. First of all, we need to assess the impact and specify the industries that suffered the most in order to create support packages. It is, as well, crutial to define the engines that are still able to drive the economies towards the recovery. The main aim for economic policy makers should be to flatten the curve of the recession that will occur, no doubts. During this process, it is of highest importance to balance the extent of the support government will provide for the economy. Namely, what we want is to lower the intensity of the impact by prolonging the effects of the crisis, however without increasing the debt too high. Specific action plans have to be created individually, with regards to particular economies and their determinants. For that reason, there is no pattern that policy makers could follow.

Having in mind that Serbian public debt is already high, it is essential to carefully design the support packages, without jeopardizing future income.

One of the most commonly used measures of insurance market development is insurance penetration rate, as ratio of gross written premiums to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Its important shortcoming is that it neglects the level of economic development of the country. The S-curve is a theoretical model describing the relationship between insurance penetration rate and GDP per capita and allowing a comparison of insurance development between countries at different stages of economic development. The paper analyzes the development level of insurance markets in the Western Balkan countries, in relation to the world average using the S-curve. The world S-curve is derived by estimating a non-linear regression model using data on insurance penetration and GDP per capita for 90 countries from 2006 to 2020. The insurance markets of the Western Balkan countries are below the world S-curve. In order to quantify insurance development gap, we calculated Benchmark Ratio of Insurance Penetration (BRIP) for each country using the world S-curve penetration level as a reference. The results show that the insurance development gap is growing in all countries of the region, except in Albania, where it is the largest. Insurance industry policy for the Western Balkans should focus on improving institutional factors in order to enable sustainable insurance growth in the long run.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a process that focuses on initiating, maintaining, and retention of long-term customer relationships with the help of information technology, to achieve better economic performance. Therefore, the paper examines the effects of CRM dimensions on financial and marketing performance, and moderates the role of an image on these relationships. The analysis included 106 organizations on the territory of the Republic of Serbia. The paper uses descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, and moderation regression analysis. The obtained results show that there is a negative statistically significant impact of CRM technology on financial and marketing performance. On the other hand, the existence of a positive statistically significant impact of consumer knowledge management on financial and marketing performance was found, as well as the fact that the image has negative moderating effects on these two relationships. The contribution of this paper is reflected in the unique structure of the research model, in the multidimensional observation of CRM, and measuring the impact of CRM dimensions on financial and marketing performance. Given that previous research has focused more on testing the main effects, rather than the interaction effects, the originality of the work is also contributed by testing the moderator role of the image on the relationship between CRM dimensions and organizational performance.

The perception of satisfaction with the quality of life by an individual in urban and rural areas includes a number of objective and subjective indicators, based on the analysis that could be performed. Measuring the preferences of individuals living in different environments, in terms of life goals, needs, moods, expectations, as well as personal satisfaction with the quality of life, requires more criteria to be included for its evaluation. The research was conducted on the basis of twenty indicators for measuring the quality of life in local governments depending on the preferences of individuals, and of different age, gender, education, social status, and satisfaction motives. The subject of this paper is the selection of criteria in a multi-criteria model for assessing the quality of life in local governments, using adequate statistical tools. In addition to descriptive statistics and testing the significance of differences, the authors of the paper used a modified PROMETHEE multi-criteria method for ranking local governments.