Influence of world crisis on Western Balkans countries: undertaken measures and expected effects

This paper has attempted to analyse certain influence aspects the global crisis has had on the Western Balkans countries, above all on Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Our analysis focuses on events on stock exchanges, for which we have applied comparative analysis method and noticed that indexes at Western Balkans countries stock exchanges have significantly more fallen (from -46,09% to -73,86%) for the same period of time from 1 January 2008 until 20 August 2009 than indexes at leading world stock exchanges, which have fallen in the ratio of -25,00% to -35,59%. In addition, we have discovered that reinforcement of the global crisis has led to a notable capital withdraw in Western Balkans countries; investors have lost trust in banking and financial system, as well as to a number of other negative occurrences. The world crisis has proven to have had a rather strong influence on countries in this part of Europe, which is an additional issue for governments of certain countries in finalising transition process and quicker accession to the European Union (EU). Different countries have reacted in different ways and this paper aims at underlining some of the most important undertaken measures, as well as at assessing their potential effects. The paper consists of five parts. The introduction reviews global crisis phenomenon, emphasizing a great number of issues open to debate and dilemmas it has brought about, trying to discover answers to some of them within this paper. The second part has been devoted to the crisis cause influence and its development phases, not only in developed countries, but in Western Balkans countries as well. The third part analyses empiric data on indexes fluctuation at stock exchanges of developed and Western Balkans countries. Following the review of negative effects of the global crisis, the forth part deals with a short analysis of measures that governments of the respective Western Balkans countries have undertaken in fighting the crisis, so that we are able to sum up in the fifth part and try to draw the most important conclusions.