The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the social environment on foreign investment inflows in Serbia. It surveyed the largest 300 foreign investors over the period 2001–2019 and achieved a response rate of 29.3%. The obtained results show that the crime rate, skilled labor, and attitude toward foreigners are the most important for foreign investors in Serbia. The main contribution of this paper is that it represents a rare attempt to provide an empirical research on the attitudes of foreign investors, in the context of the transition economy in the region of Southeast Europe.

Innovative capacity represents the ability of long-term production and commercialization of the flow of innovative technologies and is an essential factor influencing competitiveness in modern economies. When it comes to innovation, research and development, gross domestic product (GDP) is often used as an indicator of investment opportunities at the national level to gain insight into the country's ability to improve innovation and competitiveness. Accordingly, this paper aims to determine whether the export of high-tech products, as one of the results of innovation in the economy, measured by GDP growth, has a positive effect on overall economic growth. For the analysis process to have a comparative character, four countries were included in the empirical research: Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. The international Eurostat database was used as the main source of data, and the period covered by this survey is from 2008 to 2018. A simple linear regression model was applied in the analysis to determine the relationship between the share of hightech products in the country's total exports and GDP per capita. The research results in this paper show that it was not possible to confirm the positive relationship between exports of high-tech products and GDP growth in the case of Serbia, Hungary and Romania, while in the case of Bulgaria, the impact of growth in exports of high-tech products on GDP growth can be confirmed. According to the obtained results, it is most adequate that the issue of innovation, exports and economic growth is not observed exclusively through the development and application of innovations in high-tech industries. We need to look at the broader context in terms of how much innovation can improve exports and the overall business of medium and technologically inferior (less demanding) industries, what innovations these industries need, and how to develop and implement them.

In order to make Serbia the most attractive investment destination in relation to countries in the region, special attention should be paid to the current tax incentives granted to foreign investors. Hence, the aim of this paper is to find the opinion and attitudes of foreign investors in the relevant research and analysis regarding the importance of tax relief for their investment in Serbia. Tax incentives are one of the most important tax instruments that can play a decisive role on foreign investors when choosing an investment location, and therefore to increase the competitiveness of the Serbian economy. In this paper, special attention will be given to tax incentives in certain areas for the business of foreign investors, depending on the way foreign investors enter the Serbian market. The methodology of empirical research in this paper is based on a quantitative approach to the collection of primary data through the survey of relevant subjects, the comparison of collected data, and the analysis of the causality of the investigated phenomena. On the basis of the obtained results it can be concluded that the greatest influence on the investor when making a decision on investing in Serbia is tax incentives in corporate income tax.

Competitiveness of high-technology products (HTP) is more significant on the world market than products of medium and low quality. Increase in the innovation performance should lead to the growth of high technology application in production consequently rising exports of HTP as an important factor in increasing competitiveness. In this paper we wanted to analyze the correlations and conditionality of exports of HTP (share of exports in total country exports) and selected indicators that influence innovation: GDP, R&D costs (research and development cost in four sectors), degree of education of the population, number of researchers (in four sectors) and global innovation index (GII). The main aim was to identify which indicators contributed to the growth of exports of HTP in the analyzed countries (Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary) in the observed period of ten years (2009-2018), in order to give certain recommendations on the measures and procedures Serbia should take to increase the level of innovation index and exports of HTP. In this paper, the exports of HTP was analyzed in Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. The influence of the chosen indicators on export of high technology products was analyzed using the POLS model, the fixed effects model and the random effects model. The results indicate that if analyzed countries do not find resources to intensify investment in education and R&D, they will not reach the average EU innovation indicators for many years. Also, it will seriously harm the competitiveness of the economies of the observed countries in the conditions dictated by the modern business environment and the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0).

Background: One of the indicators of a country's innovation is the total number of registered patents. This paper analyzes the number of registered patents and the impact they can have on the country's economic growth and innovation.. Purpose: The paper aims to determine whether there is a positive impact of market verification of the results of research and development activities, measured by the number of patents per million inhabitants, on economic growth and the growth of innovation in the country. Study design/methodology/approach: Quantitative research design was applied in the analysis since the task was to investigate the influence of the number of patents on the economic growth of the country. The empirical research covered two countries-Serbia and Hungary. It used secondary data from the international databases of the World Bank and World Intellectual Property Organization, covering the period from 2008 to 2018. Finding/conclusions: The results of the empirical research showed that the increase in the number of patents per million inhabitants contributes only to the innovation index's growth in Hungary. On the other hand, in the case of Serbia, there is no statistically significant relationship between the number of patents per million inhabitants and the country's innovation index, or the number of patents per million inhabitants and GDP per capita. Limitations/future research: The limitations are: the small number of analyzed countries and the number of indicators analyzed. Therefore, in the framework of future research, it would be desirable to expand the analysis to more countries and establish the impact of patents on more indicators of innovation.