Adnan Efendic participated at one day international conference at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, 19 April 2018. “Political Economy of Post-Civil War Transitions: Long-run Lessons from Eastern Europe” is the conference organized to foster knowledge and set benchmarks for optimal post-conflict transition processes in order to help these countries reaching their goals faster. The presenters were coming from number of universities as Princeton University, Oxford University, Boston University, University of Innsbruck, University of Dubrovnik, University of Tirana, and Ministry of Science and Education of Croatia. Presentations included scientific outputs across several fields and sub-fields in politics, economics and social sciences in general, covering the set of post-conflict and transition countries from the Western Balkans region.

Prof. Efendic presented a research produced within INFORM project, titled “Costly informality! Empirical evidence from a post-conflict environment”. The interplay between formal and informal institutions gives rise to both formal and informal institutional costs, the both use economic resources and need to be considered. While there is research on the costs of formal institutional environments, the informal dimension has been rather neglected. Thus, this research uncovers the costs of informal networking of entrepreneurs and individuals in the Western Balkans (WB), as informal networking is identified to be the key vehicle of informality. However, both individuals and entrepreneurs involved in informal networking face non-trivial costs, which are highest in WB countries with the least efficient formal institutions. These costs are affected by both network size and the economic status of respondents. The research finds that individuals in the WB region who invest into informal networking do so at a high cost, but more to gain economic benefits than to follow cultural or traditional preferences.