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The aim of the research is to identify the macroeconomic and specific banking factors affecting the rate of nonperforming loans in the banking sector of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The authors assume that the three macroeconomic and five specific banking factors influence the quality of the loan portfolio. Aggregate data were used, which are taken from the Central Bank of BiH, Agency for Statistics of BiH and Labour and Employment Agency of BiH, and analyzed by descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis in the period from the first quarter of 2006 to the end of the fourth quarter of 2016. The empirical results show that there is a correlation between nonperforming loans and unemployment rate, inflation rates measured by the growth rate of consumer prices, return on assets and credit growth rates, while the impact of the growth rate of real gross domestic product, capital adequacy ratio, return on equity and active interest rates is not statistically significant.

Agricultural export in Serbia is dominated by primary agricultural products with highly processed products having only 20% share in total exports. Low share of the processed agricultural products in total exports provides an opportunity to increase export and change its structure towards higher value-added products. In order for it to happen, the food-processing industry focused on processing domestic agricultural products needs further development. In this paper, we have analyzed business performance of 15 largest exporters in the food-processing industry with the aim to get insight into their export competitiveness. The paper concludes that these companies are large net exporters that provide high added value to the country's economy. However, business performance of the exporters under analysis are not satisfactory and their export competitiveness needs the improving. According to projections, the upcoming period will bring the most difficult challenges for the sugar-producing companies while the fruit-processing sector has the best long-term potential for export growth.

The global financial crisis pointed at the significant weaknesses of the existing models for measuring risk in financial markets. In particular, there is a need for improvement and further development of the financial risk models in the capital markets in transition countries. Within this paper we deal with the possibility of predicting and behavior of various classes of VaR models focusing on the capital market in Serbia from 2005 to the end of 2015.We implemented various VaR models in assessing market risk and used a two-stage backtesting process for VaR models validation. The results indicate that VaR based on symmetric GARCH model with generalized error distribution of innovations behaves reasonably well in the post-of-sample testing period. Filtered historical simulation at 99% confidence level gives the best results. Standard VaR models mostly used by financial institutions underestimate the risk forecast in the Serbian capital market in all market circumstances. Thus, the authors suggest to the regulators and investors to introduce more robust and complex risk measures in the Serbian capital market.

Research Question: The launch and the beginning of trade on the South East Electric Power Exchange (SEEPEX) in Belgrade, early in 2016, opened the issue of forecasting volatility and price movements in the market. Motivation: The issue is of vital importance for all market actors for the purpose of maximising profits, reducing risks, planning production and making investment decisions. Forecasting volatility and price movements in electric power markets is important for traders with profit maximisation and yield-to-risk ratio optimisation in mind and, equally, for producers, large industrial consumers, investors and portfolio managers. Idea: Exploring models and techniques to forecast volatility in electricity markets and subsequently testing statistical methods based on time series data, the ARMA-GARCH being the preferred model, with a view to identifying optimal methods for this market. The volatility of the power market and price movements have been tested during a given period. The results can be used to gauge market parameters and opportunities to extrapolate future volatility and movements in electricity prices. Data: For the purposes of this analysis, a time series involving price movements and trade volumes were used, covering a period between the SEEPEX trade launch and the end of 2019. Tools: In the empirical part of the paper, "Stata 13" statistical and econometric software was used to explore stylised facts and model the volatility of SEEPEX electricity price returns. Findings: The authors offer an overview of different methods used in the research, having selected different specifications of the ARMA-GARCH model as the most reliable in predicting volatility in the given market. The exponential GARCH model with student-t error distribution is believed to have provided the best overall performance in modelling the SEEPEX return volatility, as well as the best volatility forecast. Contribution: This is one of the first empirical studies of the Serbian power market that deals with risk modelling. Forecasting time-varying electricity exchange volatility is important for all market participants interested in variance forecasts to be used to calculate risk and hedging measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Bankarstvo Magazine is the property of Association of Serbian Banks and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With the increased use of social media there is a growing interest in using social interaction and social presence in education. Despite this phenomenon, no appropriate methodology was found on effective integrating of both concepts into online learning. In this study, we propose integrating two different kinds of learning tools to provide social interaction and social presence in Personal Learning Environments. We have evaluated the proposed concept in a classroom setting, using a specific social interaction tool and a specific social presence tool. The findings revealed that although the use of the social interaction tool was positively associated with students' academic success, the perceived ease of using the social presence tool was negatively related to students' success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe theoretical and empirical linear VaR for the cases where the stock portfolio returns and the risk factor returns follow a normal distribution and Student t distribution. The main aim of this study is to show the effect that leptokurtosis has on VaR estimate. Using the daily Belex 15 data from January 2011 to January 2014 we estimate 1-day Normal and Student t VaR for different significance levels. The results show that for low significance levels, the normality assumption can overestimate VaR if the return distribution is leptokurtic. On the other hand, for higher significance levels, the normality assumption can seriously underestimate VaR. In the case of Serbian stock market the assumption of Student's t-distribution leads to VaR estimates that are more representative of historical behavior of Belex 15 than normal linear VaR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objectives of company management are making profit and strengthening the competitiveness on the market and the further development of business functions. The same hypotheses concern the management of golf courses as a business entity on the tourism market that must apply knowledge of modern scientific disciplines in order to succeed. Managerial decision making and organizational behavior are one of the most important among them. The former is the process of making decisions about the functioning and operation of golf courses, while the latter is a scientific discipline concerned with the systematic study of actions and attitudes that people show within the organization and within the team, including the team of people working on the golf course. Therefore, the knowledge of these two disciplines is of great importance to the management process, and need to be applied in the functioning and operation of the golf course as a subject on the tourism market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-regulated learning processes have a potential to enhance the motivation of knowledge workers to take part in learning and reflection about learning, and thus contribute to the resolution of an important research challenge in workplace learning. An equally important research challenge for the successful completion of each step of a self-regulatory process is to enable learners to be aware of the characteristics of their organizationally-embedded learning context. In this paper, we describe how a combination of pedagogy and Semantic Web-based technologies can be utilized to address the above two challenges. Specifically, we demonstrate the proposed solution through the Learn-B tool that leverages ontologies to support self-regulation in organizational learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social software tools have become an integral part of students' personal lives and their primary communication medium. Likewise, these tools are increasingly entering the enterprise world (within the recent trend known as Enterprise 2.0) and becoming a part of everyday work routines. Aiming to keep the pace with the job requirements and also to position learning as an integral part of students' life, the field of education is challenged to embrace social software. Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) emerged as a concept that makes use of social software to facilitate collaboration, knowledge sharing, group formation around common interests, active participation and reflective thinking in online learning settings. Furthermore, social software allows for establishing and maintaining one's presence in the online world. By being aware of a student's online presence, a PLE is better able to personalize the learning settings, e.g., through recommendation of content to use or people to collaborate with. Aiming to explore the potentials of online presence for the provision of recommendations in PLEs, in the scope of the OP4L project, we have develop a software solution that is based on a synergy of Semantic Web technologies, online presence and socially-oriented learning theories. In this paper we present the current results of this research work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the travelling motivated by sport and sports recreation has steadily been increasing, tourism and sport are considered complementary parts of the leisure industry. As regards guests staying in an area, sport and sports recreation have always been perceived as integral parts of the travel business. But in the last twenty years the role of sport and sports recreation in the destination selection has changed from being first a mere supporting facility and trip complementation to gradually becoming one of the key factors and motivations in the destination choice. Hence the role and the importance of sports tourism in the overall development of tourism are ever more pronounced, and there is a need for the study of tendencies and trends of this phenomenon. The role and importance of sport tourism in Istria as the Croatian most developing tourist region is more and more pronounced in the overall development of the tourism as well. Therefore, the aspects of the development of sport tourism in Istria should be taken into consideration. This article deals with all these facts and their impact on the tourism development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism represents one of the most important economy activities in the region of Istria. A long-term tourism development in Istria has to take a lot of facts into consideration and the global tendencies in the world tourism is one of the most important fact. As all other industries tourism was hardly affected due to global financial crisis and economic recession. But international tourism has recovered faster than expected and will have a good future in the next period. Also, there are some new tendencies in the tourist market request such as tourism of the "motivation", travelling with lowcost companies, make more short travels during the year etc. Th is article deals with all these facts and their impact on the tourism development in Istria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-term tourism development in Istria has to be based on comparative and other advantages which stem from available resources. The integration of golf in tourism development has to be considered according to the comparative advantages, since travels triggered off by golf encompass a large part of the emissive tourism markets and are growing constantly. It is especially the case with wealthier consumers because Istria can not compete on the world tourist market without offering them golf courses as the part of the tourist product. For better understanding of tourism development in Istria and emphasizing golf as an important element in the improvement of the Istrian tourist product, a further analysis of golf development in the surrounding will be necessary. This research is referring to the golf development in Slovenia and Italian provinces in the vicinity, in order to compare them and use them for developing golf as Istrian tourism product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) is an important though often neglected stage of ITS development. There are many evaluation methods available but literature does not provide clear guidelines for the selection of evaluation method(s) to be used in a particular context. This paper describes the evaluation study of DEPTHS, an intelligent tutoring system for learning software design patterns. The study which took place during the spring semester 2006 was aimed at assessing the system's effectiveness and the accuracy of the applied student model. It also targeted the evaluation of the students' subjective experiences with the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project Golf represents a series of activities and work with an irretrievable and unique goal - the ultimate goal being the launch of golf courts and accompanying facilities. Since the golf court project needs to be completed within a certain time period, certain costs and executive limitations in an unstable environment by effectively and efficiently using limited resource, it is clear that golf projects are specifically and demanding. Management and golf project realization is a complex dynamical process and it is necessary for its fulfilment to gather an adequate team of experts lead by a project manager. The scientific discipline of organizational conduct is dealing with actions and attitudes that people are showing in an organization and a project team. Operation management manages those business activities determining all the activities inside an organization tied to transforming input into output and in that way encompass all business functions. Since golf court management and realization is a very complex and demanding process it is clear that these two disciplines need to be applied in golf court realization. This paper deals with these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the derivation of the three dimensional scaling law for liquid insulators. The case of the parallel plate capacitor geometry was investigated, and it was assumed that the "breakdown voltage" random variable follows Weibull distribution. The deduced scaling law was experimentally verified for fresh and used mineral transformer oil. Good agreement of the obtained results with theoretical expectations confirms validity and applicability of the three dimensional scaling law in the investigated case. Results obtained in this paper indicate that application of the scaling law is more convenient in the case of oil insulators compared to other insulator types, due to mutual independence of discharge processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]