Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the theory of economic thought is considered to be an important factor for country's growth and development. By encouraging multinational corporations to invest, host countries hope to generate spillovers because FDI transfer intangible assets to the affiliate, which may then diffuse to local firms. Serbia is integrating into European economic space with a significant delay. Despite a thunderous decade of wars and ethnic tussle, late transition and financial crisis, Serbia has experienced significant FDI inflows in the last decade, mainly because of the improved policies attracting foreign investors. The aim of this paper is to analyze the correlation and significant degree to which the examined variables are associated with each other. The economic variables cover 12 years (2007-2018). The main focus is on those variables that are considerably influencing changes and impact on FDI in Serbia. The study uses SPSS to analyse the correlations among the selected eight socioeconomic variables. The examined variables are: industrial growth, unemployment rate, employment from age 15 to 65, foreign trade balance, FDI inflows, FDI outflows, GDP growth, and the share of value added products in the exports. For this analysis the data from the Statistical Office or the Republic of Serbia, the National Bank of Serbia and the Ministry of Finance has been used. There is a very weak correlation between FDI inflows and the unemployment rate. Also, our results suggest there is a very weak correlation between FDI inflows and increased GDP growth. The GDP growth has strong correlations with the industry growth, FDI inflow and FDI outflow.

The purpose of this work is to identify the functional links between key indicators of scientific activity and socio-economic development and to check whether the quality of scientific activity and the dynamics of innovative development are the key determinants of socio-economic progress. Following the chosen methodology, the paper forms an array of input data that characterizes the level of scientific and innovative activity, economic and social development. The principal component method is used to identify the most relevant indicators from each group and to introduce three latent variables that denote each group separately. A system of simultaneous structural equations is obtained as a result of establishing functional relationships between manifest and latent variables and building a structural model. In addition, the paper determines two clusters of the studied countries to confirm the obtained results through structural modelling. The study is conducted for 35 European countries based on 33 indicators, which characterize the quality of scientific activity, economic and social development during 2014-2020. The obtained system of structural equations confirms the hypothesis regarding the importance of scientific activity quality in terms of ensuring the socio-economic development of the country.

The article examines the relationship between the size of the shadow economy and indicators of the investment market development. Net inflow of foreign direct investments, volume of net investments in non-financial assets, volumes of portfolio investments, and net outflow of foreign direct investment were used as parameters characterizing the development of the investment market. The dependence between the indicators was analyzed using the regression equation, Shapiro-Wilk test. Research results demonstrate that the increase in the inflow and outflow of foreign direct investments leads to an increase in the size of the shadow economy without a time lag in Ukraine, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and with a time lag of 1 year in Slovakia and Hungary. The largest impact on the size of the shadow economy is made by the volume of inflow and outflow of direct foreign investments, while the volume of portfolio investments has a less significant effect. Consequently, it was concluded that the processes of inflow and outflow of direct foreign investments require enhanced control by specialized state executive bodies given the scale of their potential destabilizing impact on the macroeconomic stability of the country.