Inovacioni kapacitet privrede kao ograničavajući faktor unapređenja konkurentnosti zemalja Jugoistočne Evrope

Abstract

The innovative capacity of an economy represents a country’s potential to manufacture goods and provide services based on the development of new ideas and skills. Competitiveness stands for the country’s ability to focus national resources on the increase of real net national income per capita and to improve the standard of living of the population. There are a number of methods to quantify the competitiveness of a country, and every one of those methods has certain flaws. The most frequently encountered problems when measuring the country’s competitiveness are related to comparison of international business activities and evaluation of national characteristics of each country. Generally speaking, what we have here are still insufficiently explored phenomena of economy and different approaches in quantifying them. The lack of data in theoretical and empirical research is especially noticeable if we take into consideration that these two factors are correlated. The most important questions are whether and to what extent are these two macroeconomic phenomena correlated, and what is the nature of their presumed cause-and-effect relationship. Finding definite answers to these questions, apart from having a certain theoretical value, will most definitely have a significant practical use in defining the development policy for each country. The study of the content of a country’s innovative capacity’s factors and the phenomenon of country’s competitiveness in this thesis, as well as a research specifically focused on their correlation, will be carried out through examples of Southeastern European countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Greece, FYR of Macedonia, Moldavia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey). These countries are among the worst in Europe, when economic development and competitiveness are being assessed. This is the reason why the policy of increasing the innovative capacity of economy and improving competitiveness must be at the heart of these countries’ future development strategies. Thus, taking into account the obstacles these countries face on their way to create and exploit new ideas for manufacturing new products, services, and processes, is an important requirement for devising and leading an efficient policy of economic development in future.