Industry 4.0 has been a major force framing the societal, economic and technological environment after 2010. Exposed to ongoing digital transformation, companies are able to exploit opportunities offered by Industry 4.0, and are forced to manage immanent risks and barriers. However, studies on opportunities and challenges relevant for the implementation of Industry 4.0 for companies are scarce. In response to this literature gap, the aim of this exploratory research is to provide a deeper analysis of the level of digital transformation of companies in Serbia based on a digital maturity model, and examine their managers’ opinions on the most important driving forces and implementation barriers. The paper uses exploratory research design based on a survey responded to by 122 high-level managers within the Serbian manufacturing sector. Findings show that, contrary to expectations, digitally transforming enterprises do not see human resources as a driving force, but rather as an obstacle to Industry 4.0 implementation, when they lack necessary competences and skills. Resistance to change caused by Industry 4.0 implementation is not seen as an important barrier. On the other hand, efficiency factors represent the main driving force, while the lack of competences and financial resources represent the greatest barriers to Industry 4.0 implementation.

Organic food consumption has become a significant trend in consumer behaviour, determined by various motives, among which the price does not play a major role, thus reflecting the Lancaster approach to the microeconomic consumer theory. Additionally, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have proven to have significant potential in providing accurate and efficient models for predicting consumer behaviour. Considering these two trends, this study aims to deploy the Lancaster approach in the emerging area of artificial intelligence. The paper aims to develop the ANN-based predictive model to investigate the relationship between organic food consumption, demographic characteristics, and health awareness attitudes. Survey research has been conducted on a sample of Croatian inhabitants, and ANN models have been used to assess the importance of various determinants for organic food consumption. A Three-layer Multilayer Perceptron Neural Networks (MLPNN) structure has been constructed and validated to select the optimal number of neurons and transfer functions. One layer is used as the first input, while the other two are hidden layers (the first covers the radially symmetrical input, sigmoid function; the second covers the output, softmax function). Three versions of the testing, training, and holdout data structures were used to develop ANNs. The highest accuracy was achieved with a 7-2-1 partition. The best ANN model was determined as the model that was showing the smallest percent of incorrect predictions in the holdout stage, the second-lowest cross-entropy error, the correct classification rate, and the area under the ROC curve. The research results show that the availability of healthy food shops and consumer awareness of these shops strongly impacts organic food consumption. Using the ANN methodology, this analysis confirmed the validity of the Lancaster approach, stating that the characteristics or attributes of goods are defined by the consumer and not by the product itself.

The agricultural sector in Croatia has declined or stagnated since the 1980s. Despite the high subsidies and EU accession, it failed to improve its production level, but the underlying causes of the subsidy inefficiency remain unclear. Trade liberalization and bear prices of agricultural products in the EU are some of the frequently cited arguments. On the other hand, government interventions in the form of direct subsidies have always been significant. Following the prevailing theoretical body of literature, we assumed that these interventions were at least in part aimed at achieving sustainable competitive position of the agriculture sector vis-à-vis foreign markets. Therefore, this paper analyzes Croatian perennial agriculture in detail with the aim to reveal whether subsidies in this sector led to technological progress and productivity increase. A panel data set for all Croatian legal entities doing business in the field of perennial agriculture in the 2008-2014 period was used to construct a production function in order to extract the total factor productivity and determine whether the K/L ratio is properly set. It is shown that the K/L ratio is entirely inadequate, while also indicating the decreasing returns to scale which should have been overcome with technological progress (TFP). The TFP in perennial agriculture remained constant throughout the period despite the changes in subsidies. Moreover, the majority of perennial subsectors have displayed significant decrease in the TFP. Finally, a TFP model was built to determine the factors that affect the TFP growth. By employing a set of 301 variables which describe the companies’ internal and external properties, only two remained significant: export and subsidies, but with almost inexistent effect, revealing that exports and current subsidy distribution cannot be a drive for perennial or for non-perennial agriculture growth in Croatia.

This paper aims to identify the possible implications of quantity competition in markets with differentiated products on entry deterrence. If capacity commitments characterise this industry, quantities can be expected as the choice variable of rational players, even in the presence of product differentiation. Different equilibria of a static game occur depending on the degree of asymmetry of players, incumbent and entrant, which will crucially affect the shape of their best response functions. Asymmetry can stem from players’ advantage in demand and costs, their different objective functions, or the first-mover advantage. We will analyse entry where incumbent maximises the weighted average of profit and revenue while entrant is maximising profit. The reduction of asymmetry may intensify competition in the industry and, consequently, reduce entry barriers. Our findings provide an insight that could be used for practical recommendations for conducting competition policy and other sector-specific regulations, where the introduction and higher intensity of competition are desirable.