The book presents the results of research on the role of companies’ investments in tangible and intangible capital. We studied 200 largest manufacturing and 150 largest service enterprises using available public data. The book addresses the question of how individual industries responded to the crises. The special emphasis is put on nontradable sectors of the economy, such as hotel and tourism, trade, transport, information technology, telecommunications, energy, construction and banking. The study reveals the reasons why the crisis in Slovenian economy is taking longer than one might expect and highlights the measures to overcome the crises faster.
COBISS.SI-ID: 258789120
The book entitled The secret of state property in Slovenia first examines different models of privatization in the countries of Central Europe and then in particular focuses on the pre-crisis privatization stampedo in Slovenia. The book summarizes the concentration of state ownership in privatized companies and banks and analyses companies, which have been and are potentially subject to privatization (such as Telekom, Luka Koper, Zavarovalnica Triglav and others). In the light of the further privatization in Slovenia we focus on investments of Slovenian companies before the crisis and the impact of external shocks through the credit crunch in times of the crisis. The failure of the "transparent state withdrawal from the ownership" from 2005, resulting from inadequate makroprudencial regulation in both phases of Minsky cycle lack of transparent privatisation. We find that privatisation of the companies with network connections and strong "spillover" effects and the privatisation of companies that have the characteristics of natural monopolies, should not be left to the decisions of private agents. In addition, we note that without transparent privatization processes the development can not be successful and should therefore be subject to specific control.
COBISS.SI-ID: 278092800
This paper evaluates post-crisis effects of deleveraging policy in Slovenia. Increased collateralization, credit rationing, and a neglect of cash flow performance of banking clients drove reductions in banks’ credits to nonfinancial sectors. These jeopardized the normal deleveraging of companies with positive cash flows, and rolling over credits, which stifled economic growth. Erroneous sequencing, timing, and calibration of measures steering the deleveraging process generated these processes. Optimal deleveraging process demands that the Central Bank also focus on the stability of the financial system. This task should be a constitutional part of the third macro policy pillar, namely macroprudential policy.
COBISS.SI-ID: 21936614
This paper contributes to the debate on the importance of education for sustainable economic growth. Following a recent contribution by Aghion (2009), we focus on the role of tertiary education in innovation at the company level using patent applications as a proxy. Rather than examining tertiary education spending or the share of the population with tertiary education, we make use of the Aghion Index, which measures the quality of tertiary education. Moreover, as innovation is only the first step in the value chain at the company level, we complement data on the quality of tertiary education with company-level data on human capital spending in large and medium-sized Slovenian firms. We report that not only a sound education system, but also on-the-job training is important for increased company-level invention and innovation. Firms with more on-the-job training reported a significantly higher number of patents in the period of 2007-2009.
COBISS.SI-ID: 20811238
We investigate the role of customer focus competencies of project teams in achieving a strategic intent of marketing in a company. In an exceptional reach study of more than 1500 teams in a construction company over the period 2006 – 2012, we found that the construction project teams with higher customer focus competencies assessments perform better. In addition, the research, due to the rich longitudinal database, provides new results on mechanisms and interactions among team members. We show that the entire team contributes evenly to the achievement of quality goals (conjunctive tasks), while team members with higher customer competencies contribute significantly more to the achievement of the budget and deadline goals (disjunctive tasks). We also provide support that the achievement of the budget and quality goals does not diverge during the crisis period compared to the pre-crisis period. However, the reduction of funds for investment projects during the crisis profoundly affected the deadline goal and the completion of projects. Finally, our research shows that when one or several team member perform more team roles, team performance is likely to improve, while the effects of team size on team performance are not conclusive.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22295270