The aim of the article is to discuss the development of prospects of mutual insurers in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries and outline a possible research agenda for understanding their development direction in these countries. This has been achieved by exploring and identifying reasons behind community‐owned mutual insurers' underdevelopment and potential for future development through analysis of 24 interviews that included representatives from three stakeholder groups: supervisory authorities, insurance industry associations, and academics. Respondents were located in eight CEE countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania. Results of the study explaining mutual insurers' current underdevelopment and the potential for future development form four categories: citizens as consumers; mutual insurer's organizational characteristics and management; the impact of regulation; and society at large. Based on the results, in the article, we envision and point out several research approaches, perspectives of development, and directions that should be considered further by the scholars in the future.

No abstract

No abstract

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to estimate the overall performance of mutual funds in Croatia in terms of their relative efficiency based on several performance indicators using data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA is a non-parametric method that can provide an overall relative efficiency score of a certain fund given a number of risk, cost or reward or profitability measures. Since traditional mutual fund performance indicators are mostly based on the CAPM paradigm that demands using rigid assumptions and questionable benchmarks, we endeavor to overcome the limitations of such an approach by considering more appropriate risk and reward measures, such as Expected Shortfall, stochastic dominance and higher order moments. In this way, we developed an adjusted DEA-based mutual fund performance index. The efficiency scores obtained from the DEA model help in identifying efficient funds and ranking the funds based on certain criteria. DEA also identifies mutual fund(s) that can be benchmarks for other mutual funds that have similar investment strategies. These results were compared to various traditional indicators of absolute and relative risk-adjusted performance of mutual funds. The analysis was divided into three periods: the pre-crisis period, crisis period and post-crisis period with different conclusions for mutual fund performances in Croatia. The analysis includes altogether 60 UCITS funds in Croatia, in the period from the beginning of 2005 until the end of 2015, and was conducted on daily data of share prices, available from the Bloomberg terminal.

Institutional investors are seen as key investors on the financial market, crucial market makers, supporting market liquidity and activity, as well as important pillars of pension systems and for maintaining financial stability. Institutional investors, mostly pension funds and insurance companies, were considered to have a positive effect on financial stability because of their long-term investment strategy and funding. The recent financial crisis and its impact on financial market stability revealed serious systemic risk and interconnections between movements on financial markets and institutional investors' investment behaviour. Their investment policy, outflows and fire sales on the financial market had a great impact on market stability and deepening of the financial crisis. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of institutional investors on financial market stability in the aftermath of financial crisis. The research will point out lessons learned from the financial crisis and point at key initiatives and necessary improvements in the field of institutional investors.