The purpose of the paper is to provide the ranking of Central

The aim of this paper is to investigate, on the basis of comparative analysis of social capital development in Western Balkan countries, the availability of different forms of social capital and to identify segments of social

This paper presents an empirical contribution to the literature that tends to explain variations in corruption perceptions. Drawing on theoretical assumptions about the impact of corruption on the quality of the business environment, we explore possible determinants of perceived corruption. We argue that explaining the determinants of corruption perceptions could be a valuable input for creating effective anti-corruption policies. In the paper, we perform a detailed analysis on the case of Serbia, a transition country with relatively widespread corruption in the business environment. Using the non-parametric analysis of variance test, we examine the signifi cance of differences in the perceived spread of corruption across a number of independent variables (regions, size of locality, industry, size, and years of operation). Specifying an ordered logistic regression model, we estimate the relation between corruption perceptions and a number of potential causes: frequencies of unoffi cial payments or gifts for different purposes, the impact that unoffi cial payments to public offi cials have on the business operations of the respondents, as well as attitudes of the respondents about the quality of the judicial system and political stability. We fi nd that perceptions of corruption as an obstacle to business operations can be linked to the frequency of unoffi cial payments to deal with customs and taxes, as well as the impact of unoffi cial payments to local or regional government offi cials on business performance of the respondents. The results provide useful insights into what policy measures are necessary to reduce the level of corruption, as well as how the effects of such measures can be assessed.

The paper explores the potential impact of social enterprises on social exclusion. In particular, the role of social enterprises in labour market integration of socially excluded individuals is analysed within the existing theoretical and policy discourses of exclusion. Taking into account the difficulties in measuring the social impact of social enterprises, our study contributes to the quantitative literature on the performance of social enterprises, taking the number of integrated people as a measure of the impact on social exclusion. The research is based on data on the employment of marginalized groups, derived from a unique dataset collected by a recently conducted survey of social enterprises in Serbia. The original methodological framework combines statistical methods and multi-criteria decision making model, in order to evaluate the contribution of different types of enterprises to the employment of excluded individuals. Weights determination for the MCDM model is performed using entropy while TOPSIS method is applied for the ranking of the types of social enterprises according to the employment of socially excluded categories. The results indicate that enterprises for employment of persons with disabilities, citizens’ associations and cooperatives in Serbia contribute the most in integrating the socially excluded.

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