The paper deals with the impact of low interest rate environment on the insurance companies' portfolio composition in EU countries. The aim of the research is to show that continuously low interest rates could influence insurance companies to become more exposed to risky asset classes, but there is also possibility that insurance companies remain mainly exposed to fixed income assets. The secondary data analysis is carried out to further examine the potential portfolio dynamics in Q4 2017-Q4 2021 period. The results of the analysis show that in most EU countries insurance companies remain invested in fixed-income assets. However, in eight countries (mostly Nordic countries) insurance companies have become significantly more exposed to equity and equity mutual funds, which suggests that portfolio reshaping has taken place in these countries.

Public debt control is one of the most important challenges which global economies face. The aim of this paper is to examine the long-term relationship between public debt and the selected economic variables in the Republic of Serbia by using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The empirical analysis conducted on the basis of the annual data in the period from 2000 to 2019 includes, apart from the debt-toGDP ratio as the dependent variable, 6 selected economic indicators, used in the model as independent variables. The obtained results indicate that economic growth and gross fixed capital formation have a statistically significant negative long-term effect on the public debt, while general government final consumption expenditure (% of GDP) and trade openness (% of GDP) show a statistically significant positive long-term effect on the public debt. The estimated long-run coefficients related to inflation and unemployment have the expected sign, but they are statistically insignificant. The results of the study can be important to policy makers when defining the activities aimed at establishing public debt stability and achieving long-term sustainable economic results.

This paper examines the relationship between insurance market development and economic growth in EU member states in the period 1998-2018. Our results indicate that there is no causality between premium per capita and GDP per capita growth in the case of 11 out of the 23 analysed countries, including four countries classified as emerging markets. However, in the case of panel data covering all the countries, we determined a two-way causality between insurance market development and economic growth. In the short run, premium per capita has a positive and significant impact on the economic growth as proven in the data panel and in the case of individual countries, except in the case of Ireland and Luxembourg, where the applied model shows only error-correction coefficient values. Besides, our results indicate that premium per capita has a significant positive effect on economic growth in the long run in the case of Belgium, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia, i.e., insurance premium is a key determinant of long-term economic growth. The results show a statistically significant long-term positive relationship between premium per capita and GDP growth per capita in the case of a panel analysis of all the observed countries and countries classified as emerging markets. On the other hand, the panel data analysis of the countries classified in the category of developed markets showed a long-term positive relationship, but not a statistically significant one. Since that results indicate that the insurance market development could contribute to ensuring longterm economic stability and growth of observed countries, special attention needs to be paid to the strategy of insurance market development in a changing business environment.

The research presented in this paper aims to examine the shortterm and long-term effects of international tourism on the economic growth of 17 Mediterranean countries in the period 2000 to 2019. The impact of tourism is not analysed separately. Actually, the indicators of the countries’ labour potential, annual investments, openness to total foreign trade and inflation are also included in the analysis. A panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) evaluation model along with pooled mean group (PMG) estimator was used which proved to be appropriate, based on the characteristics of the panel data series. Our research has shown that the share of international tourism receipts in total exports of a country does not have a statistically significant positive short-term effect on GDP per capita growth, but that it has a statistically significant positive effect in the first lag and a positive long-term effect. Therefore, the hypothesis stating that international tourism receipts have statistically significant short-term and long-term effects on economic growth can be rejected. Our research has shown that economic growth, as a dependent variable, returns to a long-term equilibrium after changing a selected set of independent variables in just over a year. It is vital to note that the size of long-term coefficients obtained by applying the selected model indicates that economic growth is more sensitive to the changes in the share of international tourism in total exports compared to other selected independent variables.

Background: Based on the results of research on the influence of certain internal and external factors on the profitability of insurance companies in the countries in Europe, America, Asia and Africa in the 21 st century which were published in a significant number of scientific and professional papers, the present study analyses insurance companies in Serbia in the period from 2015 to 2021. We chose this analysis bearing in mind the previous negative experiences and expressed distrust in the financial system, which greatly affected the readiness of policyholders to invest in life insurance products, as well as affecting significantly the development of life insurance in Serbia. Purpose: The aim of the paper is to present the business results of the insurance companies on the Serbian market in the analysed period and to determine which business performance the management of an insurance company should pay attention to in order to ensure positive business results. Study design/methodology/approach: We applied a fixed effects model on the nine selected variables. In the model, return on assets (ROA) is used as a dependent variable, while operating margin, expense ratio, investment ratio, growth rate of written premium of a company, company size, log (financial leverage), log (liquidity ratio), and market share are independent variables. Findings/conclusions: The results of the research indicate that there is a statistically significant and positive impact of operating margin and liquidity ratio on ROA, and statistically significant but negative impact of expense ratio and financial leverage on ROA. Limitations/future research: The limitation of our profitability analysis is that we were unable to analyse the impact of individual life insurance products on profitability. Bearing in mind numerous and significant social and economic changes over the last two years, the directions of our future research will be focused on their impact on the business operation of insurance companies.