This edition of Ekonomika preduzeća opens with an interesting paper in the Finance section written by B. Stojanović, S. Radukić, M. Kostić and Z. Kostić. The authors evaluate the static and dynamic relationship between a pension fund’s market share and value of the investment unit. The research was designed to monitor changes in the size of market share and changes of their investment units in the period from 2008 to 2017 in Serbia.
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The main findings suggest that the size of market share of an individual voluntary pension fund has no influence on growth of the investment unit value. Contrary to the static approach, the dynamic approach argues that changes of market share determine the performance of voluntary pension funds. The obtained results point out that performance of an individual pension fund does not depend on its size, but rather on its ability to spread in the market and increase its market share. This paper offers a systematic review of relevant empirical literature on internal and external determinants of pension funds’ performance.

The first paper in the Accounting and Auditing section, authored by S. Miletić and S. Vučković Milutinović analyzes the systematic differences in earnings management across 215 large companies operating in the real sector in Serbia in the period from 2009 to 2017. The authors constructed an aggregate measure which covers several aspects of accrual-based earnings management. The results indicate that the accrual-based earnings management, which is immanent in economies with underdeveloped capital markets, weak investor protection and frequent changes in the regulatory framework coupled with inefficient judiciary, is widespread among large Serbian companies. Having found significant differences in the levels of earnings management across companies, the authors examined the mean values of the aggregate earnings management measure for numerous categorical variables in order to identify whether individual company characteristics are related to incentives for aggressive exploitation of accounting discretion.

In the Economic Growth and Development section, V. Mihajlović investigates the relationship between real GDP growth and the unemployment rate in Serbia. The analysis is motivated by the fact that the unemployment rate in Serbia has decreased significantly over the last decade (especially after 2014) despite the relatively modest rates of economic growth. These tendencies indicate the possibility of a nonlinear (asymmetric) relationship between these variables, which has important implications for designing a more efficient economic and employment policy. Application of both linear and nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lags models to quarterly data in the 2008-2019 period reveals that the relationship between economic growth and the unemployment rate is negative, as suggested by Okun’s law, but also that there is a profound asymmetry in this EKONOMIKA PREDUZEĆA relationship. The second paper in this section, written by M. Babin, G. Radosavljević and I. Đokić, investigates the scope of criminal policy in the prevention of tax indiscipline. The analysis of the shortcomings of the existing legal solutions is accompanied with the assessment of prevailing case law and tax evasion criminalization in selected European countries. The holistic research approach enabled the development of a specific proposal for the enhancement of the legal framework and, consequently, an increase of legal certainty with positive effects on the economic growth of Serbia in the mid and long term.

In the International Economics section, N. Stanojević empirically tests an augmented gravity model of international trade in order to investigate the impact of various factors on the volume and direction of the export of the Serbian defense industry. The results show that military expenditure, military import and a dummy variable referring to historical ties in military trade have positive effects, while, on the other hand, the population, distance and degree of industrial development of partner countries have negative effects on Serbia’s military export. The result is reflected in three empirical models, each with a high coefficient of determination, but with different statistical significance of the variables.

In the Economics of Organizations and Industries section, a young team of authors, I. Kovačević, A. Anić, M. Ribić and A. Đorđević Zorić, tries to bring additional value to understanding the economic impact of creative industry and to show that this sector in Serbia has demonstrated clear growth in the analyzed period, with the average increment rate of the number of entities being at the level of 62% for narrow, and at 7.8% for the broader approach. In the observed period, GVA of the private sector in the creative industry has increased by 64.9% by narrow definition, with an average annual growth of 18.1%. The share of GVA in GDP of the creative industry by broad definition is higher than that of some traditional industries. In the second paper in this section, G. Radović analyzes the development of agricultural insurance from 2006 to 2018, focusing on family agricultural farms that can be observed as microenterprises important for the growth of the insurance industry in the observed countries. Based on the conducted research, the author concludes that both in Serbia and Croatia, agricultural insurance of family agricultural farms is underdeveloped and that there are ignificant opportunities for growth of the insurance industry in this market segment.

The last paper in this edition is included in the Management section. A trio of authors, J. Lukić, J. Jaganjac and S. Lazarević, explores the successfulness of crisis management teams’ response to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper indicates that even those organizations that do not have permanent crisis management teams can adequately respond to crisis if they timely decide to form a crisis management team and respond to the imposed challenges. Results of the research conducted during April and May 2020, which included 108 members of crisis management teams, showed that the teams responded to the pandemic in an adequate manner.

We shall introduce this edition’s Word from the Editor with a remark regarding the unintentional mistake that occurred in the issue (7-8)2019 during the preparation activities for printing the paper titled Development of Green Economy and Competitiveness of EU Countries: Macrolevel Empirical Analysis, pp. 415-425, written by O. Gavrić and Đ. Mitrović. Namely, there is a discrepancy between the data presented in Annex 1 at the end of the paper and the data found in Eurostat Database that were used for the Composite Index computation. A technical error occurred while copying the data from the Excel file and the software used for the Index computation to the Word textual file, causing a mismatch of data appearing in the rows and columns of the presented Table. At the end of this edition of Ekonomika preduzeća, we publish the corrected version of the respective Table.

The first paper in this edition by E. Jakopin deals with economic performance of the middle-class transition in Serbia. In the Management section, G. Petković, Z. Bogetić, D. Stojković and A. Dokić provide a comprehensive insight into contemporary theoretical approaches to sustainable supplier governance and explore the extent of theoretical uniformity and practical applicability of the existing knowledge. In the Economics of Organizations and Industries section, a trio of authors, H. Mikić, B. Radulović and M. Savić, examines the relative importance of creative industries (CI) in Serbia and provides a critical review of the existing methodological approaches that may be used in order to determine the economic contribution of these industries. The second paper in this section written by S. Šapić, M. Jakšić and D. Stojković analyzes the possibility of developing a commodity exchange in which raspberries produced in Serbia would be traded. In the last paper in the same section, E. Kahrović aims to prove the role of entrepreneurial universities and intermediary entities as a success factor for small and medium enterprises.

In the Labor Economics section, V. Babić and S. Zarić analyze the impact of knowledge management on the business variables of large and medium-sized companies in Serbia. In the Marketing section, the paper produced by A. Đorđević, Z. Kalinić and V. Marinković provides useful practical implications, particularly in the field of using social networks in order to create promotional and educational campaigns through which citizens can learn about the characteristics, benefits and the use of mobile commerce.

In the Finance section, B. Mekinjić, together with his colleagues M. Grujić and D. Vujičić Stefanović, analyzes the connection between the credit rating of a country and the development of its financial market on one hand, and the level of technology and innovation development across countries, on the other. In the Research and Innovations section, S. Adžić compares two small academic communities to test the time discrepancies in publishing an academic discovery between the world’s leading English language journals and those from peripheries. Finally, in the Accounting section, B. Savić, Z. Vasiljević and I. Milojević point to the importance of creating cost accounting information that goes beyond the traditionally understood operating costs in order to quantitatively encompass and offer a monetary presentation of environmental business aspects.