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The article aims to describe the historical sequence, interrelatedness, and development of dominant and emerging research areas within the concentrated ownership literature. Moreover, it aims to determine the most influential articles, authors, journals, and countries in the field by applying a bibliometric analysis. The latter reveals that the future research concerning concentrated ownership should be more country-based and use consistent and more extended data sets. It should also apply different theoretical frameworks, profound institutional analysis, and look for cross-fertilization of ideas, which could be spread worldwide.

The paper deals with the performance of former Yugoslav countries during the Great Recession. It compares the performance of peripheral countries (Slovenia and Croatia) with those of superperipheral countries (Bosnia, the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia). The focus of the analysis is the four channels of crisis transmission and amplification: the capital surge as the external channel on the one hand, and the financial accelerator, the banking credit extension, and liquidity as internal channels on the other. While the external channel drove the dynamics of the crisis, the internal channels amplified, broadened, and prolonged its drastic economic consequences. The paper depicts the trajectory of the consequences of the Great Recession for both peripheral and super-peripheral countries. It shows that, regarding financial stability, peripheral countries outperformed superperipheral countries in the boom phase, but not in the bust and recovery phases. The crucial factor influencing such a deterioration of peripheral countries’ financial stability was the policy measures enforced by the European Commission and ECB, calibrated to the needs of the largest and strongest economies of the euro area, while neglecting the asymmetric dynamics of European economies in the bust and recovery phases. The paper concludes with a warning that something similar could happen in the present crisis triggered by the Covid-19 virus.

The paper discusses innovative performance of firms and underlying competencies, namely technological, marketing and complementary. Competencies are regarded as networks of various capabilities and other firm assets and can be used for cross-industry comparisons. The study is based on a survey carried out among 50 established Slovenian manufacturing companies addressing competencies which they employ in their 65 distinct product lines. Three distinct segments of firms are established based on innovative performance indicators. Used are techniques of multivariate statistics, including cluster analysis and analysis of variance. The results imply that the most innovative firms simultaneously develop technological, marketing and complementary competencies. The implications of our findings are valuable to the firms aligning their competencies with their strategy, as well as to policy makers in technology following countries. Članek obravnava inovacijsko uspešnost podjetij in njihove ključne kompetence, med njimi tehnološke, trženjske in komplementarne. Kompetence predstavljajo mreže različnih sposobnosti in drugih sredstev podjetja. To omogoča njihove primerjave tudi med panogami. Študija temelji na anketi, v kateri je sodelovalo 50 uveljavljenih slovenskih proizvodnih podjetij. Vzorec predstavlja njihovih 65 različnih proizvodnih linij. Na osnovi kazalcev inovacijske uspešnosti so opredeljeni trije segmenti podjetij. Uporabljena so orodja multivariatne analize, in sicer razvrščanje v skupine in analiza variance. Iz rezultatov je razvidno, da najbolj inovativna podjetja istočasno razvijajo tehnološke, trženjske in komplementarne kompetence. Ugotovitve so pomembne tako za podjetja, ki želijo uskladiti kompetence s svojo strategijo, kakor tudi z vidika ukrepov inovacijske politike v državah tehnoloških sledilkah.

The paper discusses the innovative performance of firms and underlying competencies, namely technological, marketing and complementary. Competencies as a broader concept are regarded as networks of capabilities and other firm assets, and can be used for cross-industry comparisons. The study is based on a survey carried out among 86 established Slovenian and Croatian manufacturing companies addressing competencies which they employ in their 105 distinct product lines. Three distinct segments of firms are established based on innovative performance indicators. We used the techniques of multivariate statistics, including cluster analysis and the analysis of variance. The results imply that the most innovative firms simultaneously develop technological, marketing and complementary competencies. They operate in industries in which new technologies offer considerable new opportunities. Weaker technological competencies can be to some extent compensated by strong marketing and complementary competencies. The findings also support the notion of Slovenia and Croatia being technology follower economies, primarily relying on imitation as a source of innovation.

In this paper different business and competitive strategies in the Slovenian banking sector are investigated. As opposed to other transition economies in CEE the Slovenian banking sector’ s ownership structure has been characterised by the prevalent domestic ownership and significant involvement of the government in the two largest banks in the country. Contrary to our expectations, the great majority of banks in the Slovenian banking market pursue the same competitive strategy. They operate as universal banks implementing high growth strategies focused almost exclusively on expanding their market share in the domestic market. We model differences in the quality of services between banks and show that only those banks which invest in competitiveness-promoting activities can develop strategies that are viable in the long run. By using the most recent survey data we analyse the currently implemented bank strategies and suggest possible readjustments of these strategies.

This paper adds a new dimension to the recent literature on relationship beween firm's heterogeneity in tfirms of productivity and its decision to exports and/or invest in foreign affiliate, namely the heterogeneity of foreign markets. Exploiting a rich and complete dataset for Slovenian exporting firms in the period 1994 - 2002, we gain several interesting insights. First, we demonstrate the importance of fixed entry costs in foreign markets causing that the number of foreign markets served by individual firm increases with firm's productivity level. We show that firms enter additional export markets only gradually - on average one market in two years. Second, we demonstrate that, on average, exporting firms are not always more productive than firms supplying only domestic market. Also, we confirm a conjecture that higher productivity level is required for firms starting to export to advanced countries as opposed to starting to export to developing countries. Finally, we observe that firms can gain significant productivity improvements when serving foreign markets. Significant productivity improvements occur only when serving advanced, high-wage foreign markets. In a small open country, exporting per se does not warranty such effects.

This paper adds a new dimension to the recent literature on relationship beween firm's heterogeneity in tfirms of total factor productivity and its dynamic exports vs. FDI decision, namely the heterogeneity of export markets. We show that higher productivity of investing firms relative to just exporters is not inevitably unifirm. Exploiting a complete set of Slovenian exporting firms in the period 1994 - 2002, we confirm the tendency of higher productivity firms to engage in FDI only for FDI conducted in high wage countries. In addition, we find no evidence in favor of either market-seeking (horizontal) or factor-seeking (vertical) motive for FDI. While survey results suggest trade-promotion motive to be just as important, we find little evidence in favor of efficiency of this strategy.