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: 22494950In this paper we show the development of Minsky’s cycle, through boom-bust-recovery regimes (2006–2010) in the regions of the Balkan, Mediterranean, and Central European countries. We present micro evidence on preconditions for such developments: “catching up” of the emerging economies of Balkan, booming economic environment (Europe) and the resulting capital surge on the onset of the crisis, and capital reversal afterwards. Evidence on the intertwined development of the “catching-up” economies and Euro Area/EU in the boom-bust-recovery episode, shows that without simultaneous measures of economic policy in both regions, Balkan (“catching up”) economies could permanently face the threat of disastrous consequences. After the credit bubble peak, as shown by our empirical analysis of firms’ liquidity, over-indebtedness of firms in the Balkans had much more disastrous effects than in the Mediterranean and Central European countries. Accelerated deleveraging caused a large increase in nonfinancial debt, which amplified illiquidity and spread throughout the whole economy.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 22480614In this article we document the labour adjustment processes of Slovenian firms during the period of business cycle. Large time series and ongoing economic crisis provide a source of variation to investigate the adjustment processes during economic expansion and contraction for a sample of 1,374 firms and 16,159 observations that virtually represents a complete set of Slovene big and medium sized companies. By using balance sheets and financial statement firm level data matched with total allocation of government subsidies we test the hypothesis of how adjustment process is affected by employment subsidies along the business cycle. We start from the dynamic labour demand model, derive long-term equilibrium level of labour and estimate long and short run elasticities of labour demand with respect to real wage and output for the whole sample of firms and separately for firms that received subsidies in general and employment and training subsidies in particular. We find that Slovene firms react very poorly to short term changes in wages and output. Substantially higher long term elasticity with respect to sales indicates that hard budget constraint works in the longer run. When introducing subsidies in our estimating framework we find that subsidies on the short run slightly decrease the pace of the labour adjustment in general with no effect being evidenced in the longer run. During the crisis the elasticities of labour demand with respect to wages increased significantly– twice in the short run and four times in the long run, while elasticities with respect to output remained relatively low in the short run and high in the long run. Finally, firms that were entitled to subsidies exhibited higher elasticities before the crisis if compared with firms that didn’t receive any subsidies.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 22247910