Apstrakt

The traditional doctrine of classical economic theory considers economic growth and competitiveness, mostly, at the level of national economy. The problem has been analysed through the response to the questions “Why some countries develop faster and become richer than others?” or “How an economy gains the ability of sustainable growth, which makes it more competitive than others?”. In contrast to this point of view, the neoclassical economic theory shifts the focus of the research of growth and competitiveness from national economy on the field of resource allocation and enterprise efficiency. This brings Theory of enterprises based on advantages in resources into focus of competitiveness analysis. The logic is simple - competitive enterprises make an economy competitive and vice versa competitive economy is an environment that develops competitive ability of the enterprises. The research concept of this paper is based on synthesis of the two approaches.
The first part of paper discusses the comparative analysis results of the competitiveness of Serbian economy and the South-Eastern European countries. For the purpose of this analysis method of testing the statistical significance of the differences between the parameters, as well as correlation analysis, have been applied. The second part of the paper refers to the analysis of the results of empirical research on innovation activities of 240 enterprises in Serbia. In this part of paper have been applied methods of dependency analysis as well as methods of classification, i.e. cluster analysis. In this way, scientific basis for connection of the conclusions of the two analyses has been created. This enables complete answer about the reasons of competitiveness, or more precisely, the lack of competitiveness of the Serbian economy. The idea for such concept of research relies on widespread and generally accepted analysis of competitiveness at the national level on the one hand, and on increased attention in contemporary economic literature that is devoted to issues of competition at the industry level, regional level or at the enterprise level, on the other hand.