Prof. Prašnikar is a president of PKP programme board, which serves as a communication platform for academic and business community members and deals with important economic and social issues. Research group gives special attention to selected research topic and its relevance for Slovenian enterprises. Papers published in established international journals were presented at the conference in their initial phase. Round tables host established practitioners from domestic and foreign firms, academics, and politicians. 600-800 participants come to the conference mainly from CEE.
B.02 Presiding over the programming board of a conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 21393382The lecture focused on the investment activity in Slovenian firms after transition. After a decade analysts realize that the performance of most transition economies has fallen short of expectations and many of them have serious problems when financial crisis broke out. Nowadays a major debate about the actual post-privatisation performance of transition firms has been launched and some preliminary conclusions show that tangible and intangible investment capacity represent the most important fundament for long term survival of privatized firms. The lecture presented restructuring activities in Slovene firms in the nineties. Domadenik, Prašnikar and Svejnar’s study (2008) and a recent study by Domadenik and Prašnikar (2010) show that Slovenia was catching up successfully with the developed economies. Tangible and intangible investments represented an important source of the growth of Slovenian firms. However, recent crisis has shown substantial downturn of Slovenian economy that is bigger than in some comparable developed and even some transitional economies. In Slovenia of the reasons for this turmoil originates in the mass management buy-outs in large Slovenian firms which prevent firms to continue investing in tangible and intangible capital with the same magnitude as they did in the earlier period.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 20052710The period before the current crisis was one of the most prosperous in the history of the capitalist era. The success gave rise also to the liberal ideas that promoted the Anglo-Saxon model as the model suitable for the most developing countries. Alongside also the power of the US and GB strengthened. But a comparative analysis of the performance of different capitalist model revealed that before the crisis also the Indian and Chinese model were successful, alongside with the already mentioned Anglo-Saxon model. In addition also Scandinavian, Japanese, Korean and continental model performed well. Those, lagging behind were the models of the former socialist countries. The current crisis gives little hope for swift recovery. Loss of confidence, coupled with a decline in trade, GDP, investment also rose suspicion that relying on export led growth (to predominantly one market) was no longer successful, especially for the South-Eastern Europe. Competition from the East is too strong. The region should restructure its productive capacities towards more knowledge intense products, focus on innovation and investment in intangible capital. Also, the countries should enhance efficiency of their non-tradable sector, which would strengthen also the comparative advantages of the tradable sector.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 19118054One of the major assumptions in the process of economic transition was the change in corporate behavior towards profit maximization. The results of our study show many complexities of the changing nature of the social ownership in three analyzed countries (Slovenia, Montenegro and Macedonia). However, some basic characteristics of the transition of the social ownership into private ownership are evident. When the privatisation of the social ownership still didn’t take place and firms only made plans for the way how they would be privatized, the bargaining between managers and workers is more possible (Slovenian firms before privatisation in the period 1990-1995, Montenegrin firms in 1998-2000, before MVP). In the early privatisation period, firms are making their moves towards the execution of the selected models of privatisation. In Slovenia and Macedonia, the majority insider models of privatisation leads firms to Ward-Vanek-Domar income per worker maximization hypothesis. When it comes to concentration of the ownership, private owned firms exhibit more profit maximization behaviour (privatised firms by managers in Macedonia, de-novo firms in Montenegro). However, in firms in majority state ownership the bargaining prevails (Macedonia and Montenegro). Finally, companies with majority foreign ownership (Macedonia) are more inclined towards the bargaining model, giving the attention to both, to the employment and wages of workers.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 18873830Prašnikar Janez is a member of editorial board of The Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics – Journal of Economics and Business, which is the only SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index) journal from the field of Economics in the region. It is primarily oriented to scientific papers. The Journal has been abstracted and indexed also in Jel (Journal of Economic Literature)/ EconLit (American Economic Association’s Electronic Database), IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences), DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), CAB Abstracts, JCR (Journal Citation Reports /Social Sciences Edition), ProQuest - ABI/INFORM, SCOPUS and EBSCO.
C.01 Editorial board of a foreign/international collection of papers/book
COBISS.SI-ID: 1301937