The business environment, its quality, and its development are important indicators of the global competitiveness of individual economies. The situation is enhanced in the European area, where the open community brings specific opportunities t...

Although a relatively large number of studies have been focused on evaluating the efficiency of insurance companies from different aspects, analysis of factors that determine the achieved level of insurers’ efficiency is still in their inception. Whi...

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to analyze overall technical efficiency (OTE), pure technical efficiency (PTE) and scale efficiency (SE) of both life and non-life insurance sectors in three Central and Eastern European countries (CEE), i.e. Croatia, Hungary and Poland, in 2018. Methodology: The efficiency of insurance sectors is estimated by applying data envelopment analysis (DEA), while a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) is performed to find out whether there exists any statistically significant difference between the estimated levels of the efficiency of non-life and life insurance sectors in the observed CEE countries. Results: Out of 34 non-life Polish insurers, only two (6%) were overall technically efficient, while the remaining 32 were inefficient. Croatia and Hungary achieved better results with three (20%) and seven (43.7%) efficient insurers, respectively. However, when observing the life insurance segment, half of the Croatian life insurers were efficient according to the CCR model, while six (23%) Polish and three (23%) Hungarian efficient insurers were recorded. Conclusion: Research reveals that the Hungarian non-life insurers are the most efficient ones in terms of OTE, PTE and SE. They are followed by the Croatian insurers, leaving the Polish insurers behind. Regarding the life insurance sector, the domination of the Croatian insurers is recorded, while the Hungarian ones were found to be the least efficient. Moreover, inefficiency in both life and non-life sectors (except for the Hungarian life sector) is more related to scale than to managerial inefficiency. Finally, ANOVAs and Tukey post hoc tests revealed a statistically significant difference among considered groups of insurers.

The aim of this research is to analyse whether the board gender diversity plays vital part in explaining firm performance. The research is performed using static panel analysis using the sample of Croatian largest manufacturers that operated in the 2015 - 2019 period. In order to conduct such analysis several variables relating to board characteristics are employed in the research including proportion of women in the boardroom, dummy variable whether a female is presenton the board, Blau index and size of the board. Furthermore, a set of firm-specific, industry oriented and macroeconomic variables are encompassed by the analysis as well comprising of size, liquidity, leverage, inventory management, capital intensity, market structure expressed with concentration ratio and GDP real growth rate. In order to obtain more robust results, three performance measures are introduced ROA, ROS and NAM. The findings reveal that size, liquidity, leverage, inventory management, capital intensity and concentration of the industry play an important role in determining firm profitability whereas we have not found support for greater gender diversity in the boardroom in terms of superior performance. Similar results are also provided with robustness check. The paper contributes to the scientific thought in a way that it adds to the scarce empirical evidence on gender diversity in manufacturing industry in general and particularly in Croatian context.

Motivated by the importance of determinants of firm performance, especially in terms of risk-adjusted performance that considers underlying risks, this paper explores the effects of firm-specific determinants on risk-adjusted returns such as the Treynor ratio. Specifically, the authors explore whether firm size, capital expenditures, capital intensity, equity ratio, leverage, profitability, listing age, and liquidity affect the performance of Croatian non-financial listed companies that form the CROBEXplus equity index in the period 2014 – 2021. Utilizing dynamic panel analysis, several key deterministic factors of risk-adjusted performance are identified including firm size, capital intensity, equity ratio, leverage, profitability, and listing age. In other words, larger firms tend to experience greater risk adjusted returns than their smaller counterparts as well as firms with higher equity ratios, i.e. those not overly indebted. Results also show that capital intensity, which is viewed as a source of entry barrier, is positively related to risk adjusted-performance which is also true for profitability. Furthermore, companies that have a longer presence in the market in terms of being listed on the stock exchange document enhanced risk-adjusted returns. These findings have significant policy and practical implications.