In this paper we analysed liquidity of the Croatian stock market. Low level of liquidity is one of the key problem areas facing this small market. As the measures of liquidity we used the Zero Rates return by Lesmond et al. (1999), Price Pressure of non-trading as in Bekaert et al. (2007), and Turnover. For calculating the Zero Rates return, and Price Pressure measures we used prices of all stocks listed at the the Zagreb Stock Exchange in the period: 2005 -2009. Results showed that the level of liquidity for the Croatian market is very low. For this market the least illiquid year was 2007 (the pre-crises year), and most illiquid year for Croatia was 2009. We showed that illiquidity is persistent in this market. The …rst measures of correlation between all illiquidity measure are given. Particularly, we demonstrated that the Croatian market is less illiquid than the Serbian market.Researcher, +381112624358, jelena.minovic@ien.bg.ac.rs,

The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of an overall market factor, the factor related to the firm size, the factor related to the ratio of book to market value of companies, and the factor of liquidity risk on expected asset returns in the Serbian market. For this market we estimated different factor models: Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM by Sharpe, 1964), Fama-French (FF) model (1992, 1993), Liquidity-augmented CAPM (LCAPM) by Liu (2006), and combination LCAPM with FF factors. We used daily data for the period from 2005 to 2009. Using a demanding methodology and complex dataset, we found that liquidity and firm size had a significant impact on equity price formation in Serbia. On the other hand, our results suggest that the factor related to the ratio of book to market value of companies does not have an important role in asset pricing in Serbia. We found that Liu’s two factor LCAPM model performs better in explaining stock returns than the standard CAPM and the Fama-French three factor model. Additionally, Liu’s LCAPM may indeed be a good tool for realistic assessment of the expected asset returns. The combination of the Fama-French model and the LCAPM could improve the understanding of equilibrium in the Serbian equity market. Even though previous papers have mostly dealt with examining different factor models of developed or emerging markets worldwide, none of them has tested factor models on the countries of former Yugoslavia. This paper is the first to test the FF model and LCAPM with FF factors in the case of Serbia and the area of ex-Yugoslavia. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179015: Challenges and Prospects of Structural Changes in Serbia: Strategic Directions for Economic Development and Harmonization With EU Requirements

This article examines the following models: Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) (Sharpe, 1964), and Liquidity CAPM (Hearn, Piesse and Strange, 2009) in the Croatian stock market. We used daily data for the period [2005][2006][2007][2008][2009]. The goal of this article is to examine the impact of an overall market factor, factor related to the firm size, and factor of liquidity risk on expected asset returns in the Croatian stock market. We found that Liquidity Capital Asset Pricing Model (LCAPM) model performs better in explaining stock returns than the standard CAPM. Additionally, LCAPM may indeed be a good tool for realistic assessment of the expected asset returns. The combination of company size and illiquidity in asset pricing in the context of the Fama and French cross-sectional framework can improve the description of equilibrium in the Croatian stock market.

Since the 1970s, the issue of environmental degradation has received considerable attention. Environmental Kuznets curve is one of the most well-known hypotheses that explains the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution. It represents an important model that enables policymakers to deliver quality information-based decisions. In this paper we provide the theoretical framework of the Environmental Kuznets curve and examine existing literature on the EKC hypothesis. The systematic literary survey includes studies conducted for single countries as well as for group of countries. The most of the studies were testing empirically existence of inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions. Due to the chosen time period, set of independent variables and methodological framework, the results are inconclusive in nature, which is consistent with previous literature surveys on the same topic.

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