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In the art of photography, the phenomenon of vignetting means blurring of an image at its periphery compared to its centre. Vignettes are a form of road pricing independent of travel distance. Their usage in Croatia was recently rejected while in Europe, the number of countries using them, is increasing. The economic question of using vignettes as a primary source of revenue for the financing of Croatian highways was blurred by economically peripheral but politically sensitive welfare transfer issues. There has been no visible attempt to push the discussion back into the field of economics by using purely economic criteria such as: opportunity cost of usage, "sunk costs", marginal costs, and total costs recovery. The paper aims at un-vignetting (un-blurring) the issue and re-focusing it towards economic arguments. The approach taken is a deductive-nomological argument based on opportunity costs of usage. The conclusion is straightforward: the vignettes are Pareto efficient since they make the society in general and the consumers in particular ultimately better off even after taking into account compensations. The opportunity costs of usage of congestion-free roads are zero. The optimal quantity-dependent price is then also zero. Since zero price does not recover costs, a differential pricing scheme needs to be put in place: one that does not depend on distance travelled.

In the art of photography, the phenomenon of vignetting means blurring of an image at its periphery compared to its centre. Vignettes are a form of road pricing independent of travel distance. Their usage in Croatia was recently rejected while in Europe, the number of countries using them, is increasing. The economic question of using vignettes as a primary source of revenue for the financing of Croatian highways was blurred by economically peripheral but politically sensitive welfare transfer issues. There has been no visible attempt to push the discussion back into the field of economics by using purely economic criteria such as: opportunity cost of usage, "sunk costs", marginal costs, and total costs recovery. The paper aims at un-vignetting (un-blurring) the issue and re-focusing it towards economic arguments. The approach taken is a deductive-nomological argument based on opportunity costs of usage. The conclusion is straightforward: the vignettes are Pareto efficient since they make the society in general and the consumers in particular ultimately better off even after taking into account compensations. The opportunity costs of usage of congestion-free roads are zero. The optimal quantity-dependent price is then also zero. Since zero price does not recover costs, a differential pricing scheme needs to be put in place: one that does not depend on distance travelled.

Warehousing and transportation support activities are an important part of the overall transportation sector. COVID-19 outbreak requires a prediction of future risks contingent in the overall economic predicament. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the analysis of possible adverse effects of this crisis on the Warehousing activity. We analysed a 10-year panel from 2008 to 2017 of 13 latest European Union member countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia, and their data representing the "Warehousing and support activities for transportation" of the overall "Transportation and storage sector". We differenced the data to achieve stationarity and to lose the idiosyncratic effects present in the coefficients. We regressed the variables representing the overall economy on warehousing and transportation support activities. The null hypothesis of no-causation may be rejected for most causal conjectures with three successive test methods: Panel Pairwise Granger Causality test, Panel Estimated Generalized Least Squares with Fixed Effects, and Panel Generalized Method of Moments with First Differences. We conclude the changes in the overall economy have an impact on warehousing and transportation support activities in terms of its value added.Key words: warehousing, transportation support activities, panel analysis.

Sixty years ago, Samuelson's "Pure Theory of Public Expenditure" expounded the classification of goods, and Bain's "Economies of Scale, Concentration and the Condition of Entry in Twenty Manufacturing Industries" expounded the structure-conduct-performance paradigm. To the present day, rivalry in- and excludability from consumption classify goods, and subadditivity and irreversibility in production classify market structure. Opportunity costs of production in the form of prospective sunk costs incentivise investment and production, and the sunk costs themselves induce subadditivities, specialization and convexity of the marginal rate of technical substitution. Opportunity costs in consumption are determined by the marginal costs of replacement. In light of the recent Nobel price award to Jean Tirole, we revisit some of the forgotten discussions and clarify some of the terminology under a more economic framework of opportunity costs.

European Union's Integrated Maritime Policy is an attempt to coordinate complex and interdependent policies related to maritime affairs, and to tackle the issues concerning the allocation of ecological economic resources in a holistic, integrated manner. Since it is better in organisational terms to deal with local information locally, this new approach aims at reducing organisational centralisation, devolution in decision-making from hierarchies into networks of EU member states in accordance with the fundamental EU principle of subsidiarity, with the coordinating role of the EU Commission. The new policy approach also aims at increasing horizontal and vertical coordination of maritime policies at the EU level. Since the repelled Common Fishery Policies were not coordinated between member states, and were not coordinated with complementary industries, the spill-over effects affecting other complementary and competing industries were great. The paper provides an analytical overview of the Integrated Maritime Policy of the European Union, the manoeuvring space given to Croatia to unfold its own maritime policies within the EU IMP, its prospects, and the expected consequences of its implementation for Croatia.

The Croatian long-lasting fisheries problem still vivid one year after the Croatian admission to the EU is overfishing in a "common pool resource". After the questionable success of previous policies, the new EU Integrated Maritime Policy devolves some of the mechanisms of the Common Fisheries Policy to the member states. This gives Croatia the opportunity to set policies that reflect its own interests: to rebuild its fish stocks, its fishing fleet and the supporting fish processing, services, and shipbuilding industries. This may be achieved without direct command and control governmental intervention used in the past. The institutionalisation of fishing rights in the general form of Transferable Fishing Concessions and in particular as it is known in the EU: Individual Transferable Quotas, creates a new asset, with benefits to entrepreneurs and entire industries. They may be used as a collateral for fishers during the investment cycle, a source of information, an incentive for monitoring of competitors, and a source of windfall profits. Therefore, we argue that Transferable Fishing Concessions could enable the internalisation of negative externalities across Croatian Adriatic fisheries.

Svrha ovog rada je analizirati reakcije CROBEX indeksa Zagrebačke burze na odabrane makroekonomske najave u vrlo kratkim vremenskim intervalima. U radu se koriste varijable stopa prinosa od 5 minuta od rujna 2017. do ožujka 2018. kao i 25 makroekonomskih najava. Nakon pažljive provedbe faze pripreme podataka, utvrđena je regresija za koju se koriste dummy varijable koje predstavljaju točno vrijeme objavljivanja. U obzir je uzeta heteroskedastičnost i autokorelacijske konzistentne (HAC) procjene zbog specifičnosti unutardnevnih podataka i robusnosti rezultata. Naši rezultati upućuju na to da su za unutardnevna kratka razdoblja reakcije tržišta statistički značajne. Stoga se zaključuje da se makroekonomska politika (monetarna ili fiskalna) odražava na stope prinosa hrvatskih dioničkih indeksa. Navedeno potvrđuje hipotezu učinkovitog tržišta i u skladu su sa zaključcima sličnih studija razvijenih gospodarstava. ; The purpose of this study is to analyse Zagreb Stock Exchange CROBEX Index reactions to selected macroeconomic announcements within ultra-short time intervals. We utilize 5-minute rates of returns from September 2017 to March 2018 and 25 macroeconomic announcements. After carefully arranging the data, we ran the regression with dummy variables capturing the exact announcement times. We used heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent (HAC) estimations in order to account for specific characteristics of intraday data and to retain the robustness of the results. Our results indicate that, for short intraday periods, some reactions are statistically significant, but the majority stays insignificant. These conclusions support the semi-strong form of the efficient-market hypothesis and are in line with inferences of similar studies of advanced economies.

Svrha ovog rada je analizirati reakcije CROBEX indeksa Zagrebačke burze na odabrane makroekonomske najave u vrlo kratkim vremenskim intervalima. U radu se koriste varijable stopa prinosa od 5 minuta od rujna 2017. do ožujka 2018. kao i 25 makroekonomskih najava. Nakon pažljive provedbe faze pripreme podataka, utvrđena je regresija za koju se koriste dummy varijable koje predstavljaju točno vrijeme objavljivanja. U obzir je uzeta heteroskedastičnost i autokorelacijske konzistentne (HAC) procjene zbog specifičnosti unutardnevnih podataka i robusnosti rezultata. Naši rezultati upućuju na to da su za unutardnevna kratka razdoblja reakcije tržišta statistički značajne. Stoga se zaključuje da se makroekonomska politika (monetarna ili fiskalna) odražava na stope prinosa hrvatskih dioničkih indeksa. Navedeno potvrđuje hipotezu učinkovitog tržišta i u skladu su sa zaključcima sličnih studija razvijenih gospodarstava. ; The purpose of this study is to analyse Zagreb Stock Exchange CROBEX Index reactions to selected macroeconomic announcements within ultra-short time intervals. We utilize 5-minute rates of returns from September 2017 to March 2018 and 25 macroeconomic announcements. After carefully arranging the data, we ran the regression with dummy variables capturing the exact announcement times. We used heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent (HAC) estimations in order to account for specific characteristics of intraday data and to retain the robustness of the results. Our results indicate that, for short intraday periods, some reactions are statistically significant, but the majority stays insignificant. These conclusions support the semi-strong form of the efficient-market hypothesis and are in line with inferences of similar studies of advanced economies.

The paper tests for statistical association between employment and value added of freight transport industry and its component activities against overall economy in a ten-year panel ranging from 2008 to 2017 of the thirteen newest European Union member countries. In this paper, the nature of correlation between economic growth as the independent variable and freight transport industry as a dependent variable is examined. To achieve stationarity, and to lose autocorrelation and the idiosyncratic effects, the variables are first differenced. The results of the "Granger causality" tests show the null hypothesis of no-causation may be rejected for most conjectures with high F-Statistics as well as high statistical significance. The results of the Panel EGLS cross-section fixed effects do not reject the results gained by the Granger test, and the same may be said for the Panel Generalised Method of Moments First Differences test. The result of the Arellano-Bond test shows no serial correlation in the residuals. It has been concluded that changes in overall economy (value added and employment) have a significant and measurably strong impact on freight transportation and warehousing sector. This conclusion is useful in assessing future impacts on freight transport industry, especially as a consequence of contingent events.

The paper tests for statistical association between employment and value added of freight transport industry and its component activities against overall economy in a ten-year panel ranging from 2008 to 2017 of the thirteen newest European Union member countries. In this paper, the nature of correlation between economic growth as the independent variable and freight transport industry as a dependent variable is examined. To achieve stationarity, and to lose autocorrelation and the idiosyncratic effects, the variables are first differenced. The results of the "Granger causality" tests show the null hypothesis of no-causation may be rejected for most conjectures with high F-Statistics as well as high statistical significance. The results of the Panel EGLS cross-section fixed effects do not reject the results gained by the Granger test, and the same may be said for the Panel Generalised Method of Moments First Differences test. The result of the Arellano-Bond test shows no serial correlation in the residuals. It has been concluded that changes in overall economy (value added and employment) have a significant and measurably strong impact on freight transportation and warehousing sector. This conclusion is useful in assessing future impacts on freight transport industry, especially as a consequence of contingent events.

The paper tests for statistical association between employment and value added of freight transport industry and its component activities against overall economy in a ten-year panel ranging from 2008 to 2017 of the thirteen newest European Union member countries. In this paper, the nature of correlation between economic growth as the independent variable and freight transport industry as a dependent variable is examined. To achieve stationarity, and to lose autocorrelation and the idiosyncratic effects, the variables are first differenced. The results of the "Granger causality" tests show the null hypothesis of no-causation may be rejected for most conjectures with high F-Statistics as well as high statistical significance. The results of the Panel EGLS cross-section fixed effects do not reject the results gained by the Granger test, and the same may be said for the Panel Generalised Method of Moments First Differences test. The result of the Arellano-Bond test shows no serial correlation in the residuals. It has been concluded that changes in overall economy (value added and employment) have a significant and measurably strong impact on freight transportation and warehousing sector. This conclusion is useful in assessing future impacts on freight transport industry, especially as a consequence of contingent events.