engleski

The competitiveness of market access and trade operations in Croatia from smart specialization perspective

The paper deals with business legislation as a country-level determinant of productivity which regulates distributive trade industry and in turn affects competitiveness of production and other sectors of national economy. Smart-specialisation based competitiveness and growth in productivity within the economic sector should be connected with the increase in the quality of products and services, as well as with the increase in production efficiency. In the process of creating the appropriate competitive environment, i.e. suitable business and social environment in the national economy, which would strengthen and motivate the entrepreneurs to achieve global competitiveness, it has been shown that the trade, i.e. retail, plays an important role. Market access and the operation of the distributive trade are affected by regulations i.e. restrictions to the location of commercial premises, regulations on the establishment, regulations on specific operations and products etc. The hypothesis is that, compared to some European countries, the present regulatory framework governing the market, in which retail in Croatia functions, should undergo changes with the aim of additional liberalisation of the market access and trade operations, all for the purpose of opening more possibilities for the success of regional specialisation and, ultimately, the success of the “smart specialisation”. Current regulations do not provide attractive environment for the entry of new global players in the domestic market while enabling slow diffusion of technological innovations, quality products and services into economy. The goal of the paper is to examine a segment of the national economic policy in order to identify the market appropriateness to become a part of Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation project. The methodology used will be based on the author's empirical research of the comparative study of the regulatory framework in Croatia and EU countries. The purpose of the paper is to provide the contribution to further development of recommendations for the competitiveness of the business legislation considering the fact that position of Croatia is at the bottom of the scale in this area of competitiveness landscape according to the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2012 and relatively low ranking on the ETI – Enabling Trade Index

country competitiveness; retail distribution; regulation; market access

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