Governance and Growth in the Western Balkans: A SVAR Approach

The quality of economic governance is one of the prerequisites for sustainable and faster economic development of the Western Balkan countries, having in mind their historical background, dissolution of the ex-Yugoslavia, specific economic circumstances during the transition recession of the 1990s, slow economic recovery at the beginning of the twenty-first century, strong impact of the global financial and economic crisis, and long and complexed path towards the European Union (EU). The main research problem in this paper is examining the dynamic relationships among government effectiveness, inflation, and GDP across Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. We employ the Worldwide Governance Indicators of the World Bank, namely, the Governance Effectiveness Indicator, as one of the six broad dimensions of governance. Using a structural VAR approach, we examine the time-varying effects of economic governance shocks on inflation and economic growth dynamics for each of the Western Balkan (WB) countries in the period of January 2006 to December 2018. Our findings allow the WB policymakers to understand the impact of institutional strength involved in identifying the onset of sustainable development dynamics and the EU integration process in WB better and develop more effective government regulations that can be employed nationally.