THE IMPACT OF BUSINESS, ADMINISTRATIVE AND MACROECONOMIC FACTORS ON GDP GROWTH IN THE WESTERN BALKAN COUNTRIES: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study examines the impact of business, administrative, and macroeconomic factors on GDP growth in Western Balkan economies that are not members of the European Union. The analysis covers the period 2010–2024 and uses labor productivity, industrial value added, domestic credit to the private sector, and foreign direct investment as explanatory variables, while inflation and unemployment are included as control variables.
The empirical analysis is based on a fixed-effects panel model that controls for unobserved country-specific heterogeneity. The results reported in Table 3 show that none of the explanatory or control variables reaches conventional levels of statistical significance in the estimated specification, although several coefficients display directions that are broadly comparable with selected theoretical expectations. These findings suggest that GDP growth in the observed countries may depend on a broader set of structural and institutional determinants beyond the variables included in the present model. Accordingly, the study points to the importance of cautious interpretation and of further model refinement in future research.