Proceedings of the IISES Annual Conference, Sevilla, Spain

ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFICIENCY OF INVESTMENT IN ENTREPRENEURIAL ZONESIN CROATIA USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS

TAMARA ŠMAGUC, KSENIJA VUKOVIĆ

Abstract:

The promise of entrepreneurial zones development in Northern Croatia has been huge. In the last decade 282,2 million kuna has been invested on the area of Varaždin and Međimurje county in the Republic of Croatia and the result has been activation of 52 zones financed from public sources and generation of 14,4 thousand working vacancies (Republic of Croatia, Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Crafts, 2015). Despite certain employment capacity there is still a large number of non-active or half-filled entrepreneurial zones that are a reason for suspicion in cost effectiveness of these investments. In this paper investment efficiency of local self-government units (municipalities and towns) on the area of Varaždin and Međimurje county in the Republic of Croatia has been assessed by using data envelopment analysis. The analysis has been conducted by using CCR and BCC model oriented on outputs. Concretely, the results of the conducted analysis are valuable due to the fact that political management of towns and municipalities – that has been non-efficient investor in entrepreneurial zones – is given information on necessary changes and their extent and also on good practice examples from neighbour towns and municipalities.

Keywords: entrepreneurial zones, relative efficiency assessment, data envelopment analysis, Varaždin county, Međimurje county

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2018.035.040

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