Qualitative analysis of economic, innovation and scientific potential in North Macedonia

In 2018, the Republic of North Macedonia launched the process of designing its first Smart Specialisation strategy in accordance with the methodology and guidance provided by the Joint Research Centre. From its outset, the process was regarded to be of utmost importance to the future growth of the economy, strengthening competitiveness based on the country’s innovation potential and unleashing smart growth by defining high-priority domains in which new added value would be created. One of the key goals of this venture is to identify and apply smarter and more competitive solutions within the identified priority domains, taking into account new challenges for digital and green transition, as well as challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After the quantitative mapping of the country’s economic, innovation and scientific potential, 19 industries have been identified as having potential in terms of Smart Specialisation, and these were grouped into 6 preliminary priority domains. These domains were analysed in-depth in the qualitative mapping phase, which provided the rationale for the final selection of priority domains in North Macedonia and served as a preparatory stage for the stakeholder dialogue within the entrepreneurial discovery process. The findings in this report are based on the input from more than 100 interviews held with the key stakeholders, subsequent focus group meetings and information obtained from additional external analyses

The debt buildup process: Bosnia and Herzegovina – Republic of Srpska versus other European countries

Financial and economic crisis from 2008 created debt problems throughout the world, in developed and developing countries. Although the problems cause by the crisis were similar for all countries there were some specific differences between them. Here, effects of firm’s indebtedness in the Republic of Srpska are analysed in comparison with 15 European countries before and after the crisis, which serve as a benchmark. In the RS and also other considered countries in the collapse year (2009), the relative debt increases of under and over median firms differed drastically. In the main crisis year of 2009 the RS had 2 percentage points higher impact (relative to the Core European countries) of the financial accelerator or/and correspondingly different effect of the shape of firm investment distribution on the debt increase. In 2009, country specific effects on the debt build-up process disappeared for all other observed countries except the RS, while in the year after the collapse they disappeared in the RS and picked upped again in all other countries, showing lagging of the impact of the crisis as well as a milder effect in the RS