Article Abrstract:

It is presented an approach to decision theory based upon nonprobabilistic uncertainty. There is an axiomatization of the hybrid probabilisticpossibilistic mixtures based on a pair of triangular conorm and triangular norm satisfying restricted distributivity law, and the corresponding non-additive Smeasure. This is characterized by the families of operations involved in generalized mixtures, based upon a previous result on the characterization of the pair of continuous t-norm and t-conorm such that the former is restrictedly distributive over the latter. The obtained family of mixtures combines probabilistic and idempotent (possibilistic) mixtures via a threshold.

Article Abrstract:

We apply a three-tier hierarchical model of regulation, developed along the lines of Laffont and Tirole (1993), to an adverse selection problem in the corporate bond market. The bank brings the bonds to the market and informs the potential buyers about the bond risks; a unique benevolent public authority aims at maximising investors’ welfare. The main goal is to investigate whether this unique authority is able to fully inform the market on a firm’s true credit worthiness when banks, in order to recover doubtful credits, favour the placement of bonds issued by levered firms by concealing their true risk. By establishing the necessary conditions that allow optimal sanctions to produce the first best equilibrium, we show that the core problem of adverse selection in the corporate bond market does not lie so much in the benevolence of the delegated monitoring system, but rather in the possibility of affecting and sanctioning a firm’s behaviour.

Article Abrstract:

This paper aims at reviewing selected literature on (1) structural financial changes observed in a large sample of transition economies in the Central and/or Oriental Europe during the last two decades, (2) efficiency of this financial liberalization in relative terms (in macroeconomic sense), and (3) impact of liberalization on financial problems of small and medium-size enterprises, a specific “puzzle” concerning this very important economic sector as for its role in the employment and growth of these economies.

Article Abrstract:

This paper aims to illustrate the impact of financial variables on the process of convergence between selected European Union countries and the Balkan countries. Following a delay in the realization of structural changes resulting from the historical legacy and circumstances in which the transition process took place, Balkan countries began essential reforms in their financial systems at the end of 1990s. This included the adoption of concrete measures directed towards the growth and increase of the financial sector efficiency. Given this we use panel data over the period 1999-2007 for a sample of 21 countries, to test the convergence’s hypothesis by the Bayesian iterative estimation method. Here two financial variables are introduced to control the differences in steady-state. Our empirical results sustain the importance of the domestic credit and the market capitalization in the catching-up process by a significant increase in the speed of convergence.

Article Abrstract:

Throughout the current global financial crisis the market has continued to fall due to a lack of confidence of those banks that are not yet prepared to lend on the interbank money market. For instance, the negative repercussions of the crisis onto the Serbian financial sector have created a number of issues including a significant increase in lending rates, a difficulty, or impossibility, for the corporate sector to use cheap cross-border loans and a reduction in the supply of foreign exchange on that basis. The inability of the National Bank of Serbia to follow the aggressive reduction of the key interest rate that has been implemented by central banks in developed countries, partly explains the lack of a decline in short-term interest rates by the Serbian banking industry. The first section of the paper focuses on the effects of the financial crisis through the behaviour of short-term interest rates in the US and Europe, while the second section gives an estimation of the effects of the global financial crisis on interest rates in the banking industry in Serbia.

Article Abrstract:

Built upon education ideologies of the previous century, development of Serbian industry is not able to meet global demands of the modern, 21st century market. Innovative ongoing processes in technology and all industrial branches are global and ever more rapid, and they are circumventing the SEE region. The economic structure of Serbian industry at the beginning of transition was two decades old. At the beginning of 2009, after eight transition years, a short economic transition summary is as follows: the trailing caused by the events of the 1990s is very hard to cope with and we are only half through with this task; on the other hand, we are lagging behind EU-15 and EU-10 more and more. Apart from the analysis of structural non-adjustment of the industrial system and its impact on the macroeconomic balance, the paper underlines a significant role of the state in the formulation of industrial policy.

Article Abrstract:

Together with the collapse of what was once called the socialist system, was also the collapse of research on any other form of economic organisation of a society. Administrative methods for running an economy, with economic planning foremost among them, were inseparably linked to the collapse of the socialist system and, in essence, were held responsible for it. Thus, although the dominant economic paradigm has once again failed to deliver in recent years, the research for other methods fell into oblivion along with the system they were attached to. This work represents an attempt to reconsider the potential of economic planning as a means of organizing an economy at various levels, at various degrees and in various environments. I shall try to illustrate that the blame for the collapse of different socialist systems should not have fallen on the systemic deficiencies of economic planning but, instead, on the political institutions responsible for its application. In addition, I will stress that economic planning has been condemned by non-economic parameters and the application of wrong planning methods. In making this argument I hope to provide an angle through which the discussion of economic organisation can be opened to a broader scope of research.

Article Abrstract: