Surging electricity demand, its limited supply, and the pandemic crisis are just some of the key factors that resulted in changes in electricity prices on the power exchanges. This topic brings about a notable economic influence on both producers and consumers. The main purpose of this paper is to explore power price volatility during the four-year period from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2021, in 28 power exchanges in Europe, measured using daily velocity data. In addition, based on the fixed and chain base index numbers, as well as their relative merits, this paper was designed to measure the gap and convergence in trends. Considering that the price volatility varies depending on the observation period, this paper performs a comparative analysis of electricity price volatility on a daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual level for all examined countries. The obtained results indicate that electricity price volatility is higher on a daily basis. Related to this, convergent trends are demonstrated on all 28 observed markets, and there is a growing trend of hourly spot prices in the analyzed four-year period. The results of this paper also confirm a higher power price volatility during the pandemic period in 2020 and 2021 compared to the prepandemic period during 2018 and 2019.

With the rapid rise of instability in the global economy and more intensive depletion of resources, there is a need to adopt a new economic model that is becoming a business imperative. In order to improve resource performance, many companies have taken action to find ways to reuse products or their components and restore inputs of production, materials, energy and labour. Many companies today have begun to use the principles of the circular economy to create products that are more durable, easy to reuse or recycle, and more profitable. Having in mind that the textile industry is one of the most environmentally harmful industries, the purpose of this paper is to point out the advantages that the transformation of the traditional (linear) production model into a circular model of industrial activities has for increasing the environmental sustainability of this industry.

Agreed upon by the United Nations, the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out a framework to tackle the world's most pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges in the lead-up to 2030. They provide a network to support business in managing risks and identifying market opportunities. The Sustainable Development Goals have the potential to accelerate innovation and economic growth. However, the ambitious goals will require new models of collaboration between companies, sectors, countries, and regions. The special attention in this paper is given to the analysis of the achieved results in the Western Balkan countries in 2018 measured by the composite indicator such as Sustainable Development Goals Index. The basic research question in the research is: Are all the Western Balkans countries lagging behind the average of the region Eastern Europe and Central Asia in achieving the sustainable development goals?

The subject of research in this paper is the analysis of openness of companies operating in Serbia to creativity, recognition of new ideas and innovations regardless of size, time period of their operation and the level at which they operate. In conditions of strong competition innovating new categories of products/services is an imperative for the survival of the company, as the number of customers in the world who seek innovation in consumption is growing. The research was conducted based on a specially designed questionnaire on a sample of one hundred and thirty-six companies. The initial assumption is that the inadequate commitment of companies to create innovation causes poor competitiveness in both the national and international markets. The purpose of the research is to evaluate the selected characteristics-the level of openness of the company to entrepreneurship and innovation; identification of the importance of employees in the company as indicators of inventiveness and new ideas; and identifying opportunities and additional initiatives that come from outside the company and are important for the lasting survival of their business in the market. The results of the research show the openness of the company to creativity and new ideas that use the function of permanent survival of the company in the market significantly. In this research, the method of comparative statistics, the hypothetical-deductive method, the analytical-deductive and comparative method, and the historical and statistical-descriptive method were used.

The Leader approach, as a national measure of rural development is still in the initial development phase in the Republic of Serbia. In the coming period, more intense support for the implementation of this measure is expected, from the national/regional/local budget and through the IPARD III 2021-2027 pre-accession support program. How effectively the available support funds will be used largely will depend on local stakeholders in rural communities, primarily citizens and civil society representatives, and the capacity of their development initiatives. Based on the perceptions of 118 agricultural advisors involved in the study and using descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance and Pearson’s coefficient, the authors found a moderately capacity of local development initiatives in rural communities in the Republic of Serbia that does not differ by the regions, as well as the moderate positive correlation between the quality of life and capacity of local development initiatives.

The importance of environmental sustainability is becoming greater due to its contribution to greater value for customers and convergence of the circular economy and Industry 4.0, which can improve the efficiency of limited resource use. Based on the information from environmental accounting, managers can more effectively assess the economic impacts that corporate environmental performance generates on the company's operations. Environmental performance can be improved by developing new products and production processes in order to minimize the potential negative environmental impact. Many companies have introduced the practice of corporate self-regulation, which includes environmental management systems and reporting on the company's non-financial performance. The obtained results of the conducted empirical research could help managers make optimal decisions at the right time, and perform effective monitoring and rank of environmental and economic business indicators during the time.