Книжка 4, 2014

The present research will introduce a new methodology of analyzing advertising’s impact on GDP. By juxtaposing the discrepancies in the GDP measurement with the advertising expenditures in the US, the paper will show that there is a significant relationship between GDP’s growth and adspend. Granger test of causality will establish the causality running from advertising to GDP. Based on that, it will be argued that advertising should be treated as an investment in both accounting and calculation of GDP by expenditure method.
JEL: E22; E21; M37; M41; C18

Изследвани са дългосрочните и краткосрочните зависимости между динамиката на производителността на труда, от една страна, и привличането на преки чуждестранни инвестиции и тенденциите при износа, от друга, на секторно и макроикономическо ниво за новите страни – членки на ЕС. Проведеният емпиричен анализ потвърждава хипотезите за положителния ефект на износа и на привличането на ПЧИ за растежа на производителността. Резултатите обосновават провеждането на целенасочени политики за насърчаване на конкурентоспособността и експортната ориентация на местните компании, както и за подобряване на бизнес средата и поддържането на привлекателността на вътрешния стопански климат за чуждестранните инвеститори.
JEL: C32; Е10; F43; О47

Since the end of World War II, after the Marshall Plan, after the Treaty of Rome, accounting has been living at the time of standardization; as a late consequence, the European Union (formerly European Economic Community with 6 countries, now Union with 28 countries) was submitted to several accounting guidelines such as the 3^rd and the 4^th 1978 directives, the 6^th 1982 directive or the 8^th 1984 directive. This European standardization coexists with the international standardization coming from the United Nations Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Accounting Standards Board, the European Federation of Accountants, the IFAC and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), as well as foreign standardizations with strong negotiating power, especially Anglo-Saxon, such as the American FASB – entirely exotic, or the ambiguous British ASC – at the same time exotic and integrated to the European Union. All of these standardization systems continuously evolve and it is impossible to maintain a single one without any modification or with absolute stability for more than a few years. Thus, the three evolutions of the conceptual framework of the IASC – changed to IASB – have rendered the evolution of the main European accounting directives almost inevitable and  a single directive has been developed and was published on June 26, 2013. Its key characteristics are presented below.
JEL: F23; M41; M48

В сравнителен план са разгледани основните фактори за ръста на неравенството при разпределението на доходите и богатствата след 1980 г. – глобализацията, технологичните промени и политическите решения (особено в данъчната сфера), които са повлияни от неолибералните идеи за доминация на пазара над държавата. Посочени са някои възможни мерки за понижаване на големите неравенства: по-високи данъчни ставки за доходите на заможните, за луксозните недвижими имоти, за големите наследства и капиталовите доходи. Тъй като неравенството в България е сред най-високите в ЕС, а личните доходи и печалбите на фирмите могат да бъдат укрити, то подходящ данъчен обект у нас биха могли да бъдат по-скъпите жилища и необитаваните имоти в градовете. Обоснован е конкретен размер на данъчната ставка за специфичния, по-висок имуществен данък за тези категории имоти. Посочено е, че ограничаването на диспропорциите в областта на доходите и богатствата би могло да допринесе за по-голямо съвкупно търсене на стоки и услуги в икономиката, за по-бърз растеж, за намаляване на вероятността от финансови кризи и рецесии, както и за по-голяма стабилност в политиката и обществото.
JEL: D31; D63; H22; Z13

The system efficiency of the company functioning depends on the quality potential, level of functional organization and operativeness of management decisions. All these aspects need to be shown results indicators of enterprises. Under effectiveness is to be understood the degree of achieve of the strategic goals of the enterprises. The most well-known base of the company functioning evaluating is model of balanced scorecard (BSC) of R. Kaplan and D. Norton. This system includes four aspects: financial, customer, internal business processes, training and development of staff. The purpose of this paper is the statistical testing of possibility to separate key effectiveness indicators for these groups and determination of their composition.
With the use of multivariate factor analysis was identified the most significant indicators of the effectiveness of engineering companies. The hypothesis of R. Kaplan and D. Norton about the allocation of the four groups of key effectiveness indicators has been confirmed.
JEL: C4; D2; O25

Providing companies with competitive advantages requires the implementation of innovative solutions, which is particularly topical in the context of the world market globalization. Using the innovative resources, which allow to enhance productivity while reducing costs, in the production process as well as increasing their share in the total value of the company is a difficult and complex task. According to the authors, currently the most important issue is the development of the unified system, which allows to choose the way of innovative development for companies of any branch without any additional costs to create of specific strategies. Complex target program is the hierarchical structure based on expert opinions, which enables to determine the impact of easy-to-realize projects on main target and so to choose the most effective way of further development under limited financial resources. Authors believe that the most intelligent way of solving this problem is through using latter day computer-assisted decision support systems (DSS). Comprehensive Target Program (CTP) can help to choose the most effective innovation strategy development direction and achieve business success.
CTP development includes implementation of three main steps: decomposition of the main goal, determination of the partial coefficients of influence, and evaluation of the CTP projects’ efficiency. Those projects that have the highest value, considering the abovementioned parameters, determine the priority directions of CTP implementation. Thus, the promising directions of implementation of the "Improving of the company’s innovation attractiveness" comprehensive target program and the method of efficient allocation of limited resources between them are provided in this article.
JEL: C61

Cooperation between incubators and clusters can be used as an instrument of institutional support aimed at enhancing SMEs competitiveness and establishment of innovative entrepreneurial ventures. Creating conditions for such cooperation serve as a strategy platform for incubators and clusters and helps fostering technological development. A basic requirement for this development is creating appropriate concentration of professional and competent people and organizations. Emergence of highly concentrated research and development activities is dependent on the support of stakeholders, including obtaining necessary funding. The objective of this paper is: to examine the role of strategy development as a platform for facilitating cooperation networks, including business incubators and outside institutional support as drivers of regional economic development and SMEs competitiveness on the example of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Serbia.
Practical results that can be achieved through the establishment and development of cooperation networks are diverse. At first place, they contribute to strengthening the cooperation on the level of the urban areas to the level of the region. Second, they facilitate cooperation between industries, universities, institutions and companies in and outside Serbia. And third, they serve as a mean to work together with: experts from different fields; development centres and agencies; organizations for support economic development, development funds; support institutions.
JEL: M13; L14; L26; L52; L53; O2; O32; O33; O38; D85

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in the national economy of any country. In their business activities these companies are confronted with number of business risks. Aim of this article is to define and compare current trends within business risks of SMEs in selected regions of the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the context of entrepreneurial optimism. In 2013, in the research on entrepreneurs’ opinions in Zlin region (Czech Republic) and Trencin region (Slovakia) have been investigated. These regions have similar economic parameters and are separated by just a few miles away. According to our research, it can be stated that during the period of financial crisis, situation in the SME business deteriorated significantly with declining performance and profitability of Czech and Slovak SMEs. The most important business risk is still market risk than financial and at last the personnel risk. Our research showed that the profitability and performance of SMEs decreased. Results of our research confirmed the deterioration of business environment where commercial banks responded by tighter credit conditions. Despite these facts, the level of entrepreneurial optimism of SME in the selected regions of Czech Republic and Slovakia is very high. On the basis of our research, it can be argued that entrepreneurs in Zlin region declared better conditions for their business compared to Trencin region. These entrepreneurs slightly less intensively were perceiving market and financial risk compared to entrepreneurs from Trencin region, and less intensively perceived impacts of the crisis on their financial performance, declared higher level of business optimism.
JEL: L26; O16; G21