Causal Link between Exporting and Innovation Activity. Evidence from Slovenian Firms

In this paper we investigate the causal relationship between firm's innovation and exporting activity by using detailed firm-level data on innovation activity, financial variables and information on trade for Slovenian firms in 1996-2002. We employ the bivariate probit regression on a system of innovation and exporting equations as well as matching procedures to tease out the direction of causality between exporting status and innovation activity. Our results suggest a strong positive relationship between exporting and innovation activity in both directions, while results on the impacts of lagged export (or innovation) status on the probability to start innovating (or exporting) are less conclusive. In other words, whereby innovating status increases the probability of exporting it does not increase the probability of becoming a first time exporter, and vice versa. The results remain unaltered also after allowing for discrimination between product and process innovation.DYNREG, firm heterogeneity, innovation, exporting, matching

The impact of European integration on adjustment pattern of regional wages in transition countries: testing competitive economic geography models

In the present paper, we augment the Fujita-Krugman-Venables (FKV) economic geography model by breaking the implied regional symmetry and by introducing a second factor of production, capital, in order to study the within-country regional effects of trade liberalization. In contrast to the Krugman (1991) model, the FKV and our model do not predict typical core ?periphery regional polarization as labor is assumed to be either imperfectly mobile and/or capital is perfectly mobile between regions. Both models result in a non-monotonic, U-shaped response of relative regional wages to trade liberalization. Major difference between the two approaches is that our model allows for FDI flows between countries. FDI inflows are shown to accelerate the regional adjustment process in the home country, as they are initially attracted to poor, border regions characterized by lower wages and higher returns to capital. Our model therefore results in a faster convergence of relative regional wages, i.e. in a more upward and to the right shifted U-shaped response of relative wages. In addition, we then examine the exact adjustment pattern of relative regional wages in five transition countries after they have liberalized their trade with the EU. We study which of the three competitive EG models is a more appropriate approximation of the actual regional adjustment pattern in selected transition countries

Time Dependent Efficiency of Free Trade Agreements - The Case of Slovenia and the CEFTA Agreement

In international trade literature there is a common feature that the abolishment of barriers to trade leads to direct expansion of trade flows. Many empirical studies that simulate welfare effects of trade liberalisation explicitly make use of this direct tariff reduction – trade expansion mechanism. On the contrary, this paper explores panel data to analyse the timedependent efficiency of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). It is shown that trade liberalisation per se needs time to become effective, and that immediately after the enforcement of the FTA the autonomous factors (such as domestic demand for particular import goods) are of great importance. Using an illustrative case of rapid expansion of Slovenian imports from other CEECs in the period 1993–1998, the paper demonstrates that the tariff reductions become effective in the second to third year after enforcement of the FTA. In addition, the relation between tariff reductions and trade expansions is non-linear, which reflects the time needed for new business connections to be established.

Knowledge Transfer, Innovation and Growth

Recent empirical work has examined the extent to which national and international spillovers affect the functioning of a firm. Foreign direct investment and trade have been shown to serve as channels for the mediation of knowledge spillovers. The aim of this paper is to analyse whether, and to what extent, firm ability to innovate is induced by firm’s own R&D activity and what is the effect of factors external to firm. We first estimate the impact of firms' internal R&D capital and external R&D spillovers on innovation activity within an integrated dynamic model. In the second step, we proceed to estimate the impact of firms' innovations on productivity growth. Using firm-level innovation and accounting data for a large sample of Slovenian firms from 1996-2002, the paper produces some interesting findings. First, firm R&D expenditures as well as external knowledge spillovers, such as national and international public R&D subsidies, foreign ownership and intra-sector innovation spillovers foster the ability of firms to innovate. Second, innovations resulting from firm’s R&D may contribute substantially to its total factor productivity growth. Here, foreign ownership is shown to have a dual impact on firm’s TFP growth - while it enhances firm ability to innovate it also contributes to TFP growth via superior organization techniques and other channels of knowledge diffusion. These results, however, are not robust to different econometric techniques. By using matching techniques and firm propensity to innovate in order to match innovating firms with otherwise similar non-innovating firms we find no support for the importance of innovation on productivity growth.DYNREG, innovation, external knowledge spillovers, FDI, trade

La comunità linguistica slovena in Italia e la sua percezione dell'ordinamento giuridico italiano

Damijan Terpin "La comunità slovena in Italia e la sua percezione dell'ordinamento giuridico italiano", in: Tigor: rivista di scienze della comunicazione. A.I (2009) n.1 (gennaio-giugno), pp. 47-50Relazione presentata in occasione del convegno internazionale di studi su La comunicazione giuridica fra enti pubblici e soggetti privati. Analisi del discorso giuridico fra normazione e retorica forense nelle aree di confine fra Friuli Venezia Giulia, Slovenia e Croazia

Nekateri pristopi za izboljšanje delovanja finančne funkcije

Značilnost postsocialističnih držav je, da v času socialistične ureditve niso imele financ oz. so bile finance zelo slabo razvite. Podjetje, ki se spremembam in zahtevam poslovnega okolja prilagaja tudi tako, da razvije in posodobi oz. prenovi funkcije, ki so bile do nedavnega nepomembne (v konkretnem primeru, da obvladuje finančno funkcijo kot poslovno funkcijo), pridobiva na konkurenčni prednosti. Prenova (reorganizacija, reinženiring, preoblikovanje, inoviranje) poslovne funkcije zahteva temeljit razmislek in bistveno preoblikovanje procesa, s čimer je mogoče doseči izjemne izboljšave: zmanjšanje stroškov, povečanje kakovosti in skrajšanje časa. Pogoj za uspešno delovanje finančne funkcije je tesna povezava z drugimi poslovnimi funkcijami in podrejenost računovodskemu nadzoru v smislu računovodskih standardov

The Growing Export Performance of Transition Economies: EU Market Access versus Supply Capacity Factors

The paper examines the reasons for the remarkable growth of transition economies’ export performance. We distinguish between foreign/EU market access and internal supply capacity factors. EU market access has been of great importance, while among supply capacity factors, stable institutional setup, structural reforms, and targeted FDI are in the forefront.Export performance, Transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe, (EU) market access, Supply capacity, Institutional setup, FDI.

Performance after mass privatisation : the case of Slovenia

Initial ownership structures resulting from the mass privatisation programme were intended as transitional, whereas optimal would be set up gradually and would result from secondary transactions. Therefore, mass privatisation is typically considered successful if secondary transactions lead to improved ownership, in particular, with emergence of strategic investors. If this approach is correct, positive effects of mass privatisation are thus not shown only by companies remaining in control of initial owners but mostly by the companies that have already gone through secondary privatisation. Accordingly, the success of secondary sales is to be evaluated by how successfully companies perform after the sale to new owners. This paper attempts to verify empirically those assumptions. The econometric analysis of panel data, after correcting for a selection bias, shows that TFP (total factor productivity) growth is highest in public companies. In addition we found that the secondary privatisation has had practically no positive effect on economic efficiency in the period 1995-99. We interpret these results as supporting evidence for the theoretical approach, which argues that the impact of strategic investors on performance may be ambiguous and that the quality of the capital market institutions is more important than ownership effects. The former creates incentives for performance by increasing the cost of expropriation of minority shareholders