We examine the extent of inefficiency in a sample of 143 Serbian local self-governments for the year 2012. The input side is described by current expenditures of the local self-governments, and the outputs are describing provision of key public services. We use stochastic frontier approach. Our results reveal that the 'average' local self-government in the Republic of Serbia produces public services i.e. output at costs that are approximately 23 percent higher than the 'best practice' peers; once we control for the exogenous constraints on public service provision. We provide a brief discussion of our results and guidance for future research.

A shadow economy does not happen by accident. It is a recognised consequence of imperfections in the economic system and inadequacies in economic policy. While the factors that generate and foster the growth of a shadow economy are many and complex, literature considers the following to be the most important: excessive tax burden, government over-regulation of business, and poor performance by government bodies (tax, judiciary, police, and other authorities). Identifying the fundamental causes of a shadow economy is a precondition for designing efficient instruments and policy measures to tackle it. The aim of this chapter is to review the main causes of the shadow economy in Serbia. For this purpose we divided the causes of the shadow economy into: causes rooted in the tax system; causes linked to labour market institutions; other institutional and economic causes; and causes present in the financial sector. We analysed these causes using, wherever possible and appropriate, elementary theoretical analysis, comparative data, views held by social partners on how institutions operate, and the results of the Survey on Conditions for Doing Business in Serbia.

Gender inequality represents a substantial and persistent public problem. Public policies may have a major impact on gender equality and attaining equal access to opportunities, resources, and rights for women, men, and other gender identities. This chapter provides key insights, directions, good practices, and methodologies from existing literature on gender implications of public policies. It also briefly reviews key gender-sensitive policy initiatives and frameworks, gender mainstreaming and tools such as gender impact assessment, gender sensitive budgeting or policy evaluation. This chapter further considers key gender sensitive policies including family and work-life balance policies, equality policies in the labour and political sphere, diversity, anti-discrimination and anti-violence policies, and education and science policies for gender equality.

This paper 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. We also present the results for the period from 2014 to 2017. To show the relative contribution of creative industries, we used the narrow DCMS approach that focuses only on core creative industries. We also provide additional results for what we refer to as the "broad approach". In 2017, narrowly defined CIS contributed 3.9 percent to the total GVA and 3.7 percent to the total GDP, while the broadly defined CIS contributed 7.8 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively. Other indicators provide additional support regarding the importance of CIS in Serbia. The average annual growth rate of the number of narrowly defined CI entities amounts to 5.6 percent (8.4 percent for broadly defined CIS which is 6 percentage points higher than the average growth rate in the national economy - 2.01 percent). Employees engaged in narrowly defined CIS represent 3.3 percent of the total number of employees in Serbia (5.6 percent in the broadly defined CIs). IT, software and computer services subsector contributes the most of all CIS to the economy. In 2017, this subsector contributed more than 60 percent to the total narrowly defined CI GVA, (more than 55 percent to broadly defined CI GVA).

Research to date on the shadow economy in South Eastern Europe and beyond has mainly focused on macro assessments of this phenomenon or on the socio-economic characteristics of individuals involved in these activities. There have been far fewer studies analysing the characteristics of businesses engaged in the shadow economy and the factors that drive them to operating informally. This chapter provides an analysis of the shadow economy in the business and entrepreneurial sectors using data from the Survey on Conditions for Doing Business in Serbia. This analysis is based on three indicators: (1) the share of business entities engaged in the shadow economy in the total number of business entities; (2) the share of informal workers in the total number of workers, both overall and by type; and (3) the share of cash payments in the total volume of payments. In addition to descriptive statistics that show how the shadow economy varies by key factors, the chapter provides econometric analysis identifying specific factors that are statistically significant in a company’s decision to take part in the shadow economy.