The need for companies' interconnection and advantages of mutual business cooperation led to the development of supply chain management in the 1980s. Along with the intensified market globalization process, companies have become aware of the need to develop efficient supply chains. A supply chain includes a series of activities from planning and organizing to controlling the flow of material and services from suppliers to the final customer. The supply chain effectiveness depends to a large extent on relationships with suppliers. Thus, relationships with suppliers and supply chain performance management are important topics in academic research due to their impact on supply chain profitability. It is particularly evident in the trade industry. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between supplier relationships and supply chain performance in the trade industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The empirical research is based on the primary data, collected by using a questionnaire. The respondents are 200 trade companies from the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Various statistical analysis methods have been applied to answer the research questions addressing the issues of a potential relationship between supplier relationships and supply chain performance. The results have shown that supplier relationships positively impact flexibility, costs, and supply chain quality. There is a statistically significant interdependence between partnership and information exchange, as supplier relationships dimensions, and flexibility, costs, and supply chain quality, as supply chain performance dimensions. There is, also, a statistically significant impact of some companies' characteristics on the information exchange, supplier partnership, flexibility, costs, and quality.

Since banks and insurance companies are financial institutions dealing with risks in vari - ous aspects of their business, it is important to make a general approach to the issue of risk and risk management from the perspective of these institutions. In that regard, we made a short overview of the risks these institutions are faced to as well as the methods they use for risk assessments. In order to limit our research to specific financial markets, we provided the basic characteristics of bank and insurance markets of Southeastern Europe (SEE), presenting the core indicators of development level of these markets and their legal and institutional environment related to new regulation proposed in Europe. We analyzed the level of implementation of Basel and Solvency risk assessment stan - dards in these countries and tried to anticipate direction(s) where these markets are going to move in the coming period.

The insurers may achieve additional earnings by investing reserves assets, which implies additional stimulation effect for economic growth. The insurers have reserves assets available in several forms and they can use them for various purposes. These assets can be directed to different forms of investments, depending on the development level of the financial market and time periods in which they are available to the insurers. In this paper, the attention will be paid to specificity of reserves management of the insurers taking into consideration their structure and performance of various forms of investments. In this matter, it should not neglect the limitations stipulated by the laws and bylaws, which are describing the limitations in detail for certain forms of investments in respect of level of reserves which insurer needs to have in order not to jeopardize its solvency. Therefore, it is very important to take into consideration the time periods of availability for certain categories of assets, i.e. time periods in which it is expected to have the payments of claims for signed insurance contracts, and insurers have to adjust their policy of reserves investments to these periods. A significant factor for defining the investment policy is also represented by the level of financial market development, i.e. available forms of investments and their specificities. Financial markets of transition countries are characterized by low level of development of financial market in width as well as in depth, and, therefore, insurers have significantly lower number of possible alternatives for investments. That is especially noticeable on the insurance market in Bosnia and Herzegovina which, besides that it has unusual regulatory system, also has undeveloped financial market. For this purpose, the focus of this paper will be on the problem of investing the reserves of insurers on the market of Bosnia and Herzegovina, taking into consideration the present legal regulations from area of insurance.

The issue of risk management has in the last few decades become an increasingly important aspect of every company’s business activities. Such views are more and more present in the service sector whose GDP share has registered a continuous growth within both, national economies and on the global level. Intangibility and some other specific features of services when compared to physical products require a different approach to the activities in the field of risk management, particularly when it comes to capital intensive services such as telecommunications. This type of services is mainly provided within large companies that need to pay attention to the risk management process, from their identification, risk evaluation to selection and application of the appropriate risk management method. Risk management methods include a group of methods for the physical control of risk and a group of methods for risk financing by means of risk retention or insurance. All these methods can be applied on a wide set of personal, property and liability risks met by the companies and employees in the telecommunications sector. The paper attempts to present an overview of the specific features of risk management in the companies in the telecommunications sectors with the case study of the leading telecommunications service provider in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Keywords: Risk, risk management, insurance, accidents, telecommunications services, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract: Increased rise in costs of healthcare in the last five decades has rapidly increased interest in the functioning of healthcare systems within every country. The reasons for growth in healthcare costs are related to demographic changes, technology advancement, increased number of educated persons, emergence of new diseases, etc. Financing the risk of poor health is mainly organized through programs of social and private health insurance. Regarding the management of the risks of poor health in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the social health insurance system is the basic solution for the population. However, in BiH, as in other countries in the world, the system of social insurance has become unfeasible and it is necessary to search for new solutions, that is, to reform the system. The research subject in this paper is private/voluntary health insurance offered by insurance companies, which can be an efficient addition to social insurance in BiH. It has become present on the market of private insurance in BiH only recently, so its share in the total premium of private insurance is still minor. Therefore, a primary research was conducted on the possibilities for its development as well as on the need and acceptance by the users of healthcare services. Besides, there was a need for examining the performance of the existing system of social health insurance, based on the principles of Bismarck’s model of financing, and recognizing its disadvantages. By identifying and eliminating obstacles for development of voluntary health insurance, it is possible to improve performance of the existing system of health insurance in BiH.

Aimed at protection of the market and consumers, the control of solvency is very important for insurer’s business activities. Regarding the fact that insurer’s insolvency causes a chain of problems, the state regulation is needed that forces insurers to keep their solvency at the necessary level. Insurance companies in the European Union work on the implementation of a new regulatory framework defined by the Solvency II Directive, which demands a better risk management as well as a better connection of capital and risk profile, increased transparency, and higher flexibility of insurance companies’ business. In the period to come, this would present a huge challenge for the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as well, which would need to prepare their resources for the introduction of the Solvency II concept. For this purpose, the analysis of the current condition of the insurance market in BiH was made. By using the primary research and applying the survey as a questioning technique, the attitudes were gathered on the current conditions and possibilities for the implementation of the Solvency II Directive into the business activities of insurance companies in BiH.

Game theory can be useful for analysis of strategic interaction that we have at different types of market. A specific market structure is triopoly where we have three suppliers of the same product and they need to define their pricing strategy based on retaining, decreasing or increasing prices. Strategic interaction in this market structure can be analyzed by three-person noncooperative game theory. The paper develops a model for this type of strategic interaction. The model is applied on the specific market of Internet providers, showing very interesting conclusions that can be useful for all three market players in pricing decision making.

This article focuses on the insurance markets transition process in ten South-Eastern Europe (SEE) post-communist countries. These insurance markets, characterized by a large number of small insurance companies, have been analyzed from several aspects in order to underline the main obstacles to their development. The research aims at identifying the relations between insurance market development and the European Union (EU) integration process as well as the overall economic development. To this end, indicators of the success in implementing these relevant processes have been identified and countries have been consistently ranked.