engleski

Driving Forces of Entrepreneurial Decline of Main Urban Areas in Eastern Croatia: Historical Perspective

The paper investigates conditions, causes and consequences of economic and social development of major urban areas in Eastern Croatia for the period between 1900-2020. The aim of the paper is to describe and analyze the economic and social changes in observed period as well as to address the impact of these changes on the levels of entrepreneurial development. At the moment Eastern Croatia is significantly lagging behind rest of Croatia who is also well below the EU GDP average, with the negative trend in last few years. By examining antecedents and consequences of economic and social circumstances that define environment for fostering entrepreneurial activity the paper gives insight into ways of enhancing economic development of Eastern Croatia. Productive entrepreneurship needs suitable business environment and lack of such environment creates barriers to the functioning of SMEs in one hand, and leads to problems with corruption, at the other hand. In this paper we tackle the issue by chronologically examining four major influences that led to today’s aggravating features of the economic development of urban areas in East Croatia: corruption, depopulation, lack of vibrant and dynamic urban areas and finally a high relative discrepancy in educational levels in respect to more developed areas which leads to the lack of knowledge necessary for a more significant economic development.

East Croatia ; entrepreneurship ; economic development ; social development ; economic history

Indeksiranost: EBSCO HOST, Econ Papers