During the process of the Croatian accession to the EU, an insufficiently fast integration of Croatia into those areas within the EU concerning commodity and service markets, labor and capital markets has been noticed. Slower integration within these areas has been explained by means of inadequate institutional development and insufficient competitiveness of our economy when compared to other developed countries of EU-15 and the advanced countries within EU-13 (the so-called Visegrád Group countries).
Insufficient institutional development has been described by means of: 1) absence of legislation in specific socio-economic areas; 2) insufficiently precise legislation; as well as by means of 3) inconsistent legislation within the specific areas.
Today, the omnipresence of technologies creates new challenges for institutions since it opens up new areas for analysis. These areas include data privacy protection, the security of data users, as well as regulation concerning the use of such technologies since regulation also means maintaining the level of trust citizens place in modern technologies. The question of the quality of public administration within the context of institutions represents the main area of research for our scientists. Primarily, this refers to the perception of corruption in different socio-economic areas. Within this context, specifically analyzed are the obstacles to business activities connected with corruption. Papers are focused toward finding the most efficient anticorruption politics and toward the analysis of the citizens' trust when it comes to institutions.
Equally important questions for the researchers at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb are questions concerning the functioning of public administration, the ways of efficient state property management, and the question of optimal financial management within larger companies located on the Croatian stock exchange.