Pavle SICHERL * and Marjan SVETLIČIČ ** 1 SLOVENIAN CATCHING UP WITH THE DEVELOPED COUNTRIES: WHEN AND HOW? 8 th Bi-Annual European Association for Comparative Economic Systems Conference “EU Enlargement – What Comes After 2004?” Belgrade (Serbia and Montenegro) September 23 rd -25 th , 2004 Summary: The process of catching up in development depends on the accurate assessment of the current status of economic development, internal government efforts and external conditions. The article first analyses the possible world development scenarios. It concentrates on three scenarios of which in the short term the most probable is the growth leader scenario, the best scenario being the scenario of growth shift. The time lag is larger when Slovenia is compared to the successful small EU member states, rather than with the EU 15 average. The original time distance calculations show that, as regards the exports of goods per capita, we are lagging behind some small member state for up to 33 years, that figure being a little lower as regards exports of technologically intensive products. The optimistic scenario of catching up in 16 years does not seem very probable as it would not be easy that the Slovenian economy’s growth rate would be 2 percentage points higher than that of the EU 15 average. This time would be shorter if the necessary changes were made to the government policy towards promoting the knowledge-based economy (a precondition for productivity growth), and thus more effective responsiveness and flexibility, as well as internationalisation (also with the aim of restructuring and greater specialisation), innovative capabilities and, last but not least, overcoming the present mentality and coordination and implementation deficits. Keywords: world development scenarios, Slovenia’s time lags (exports, productivity, GDP, technology, foreign investment…), catching up, small states, developmental role of the state. * Dr. Pavle Sicherl, SICENTER, Ljubljana, and professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana. ** Dr. Marjan Svetličič, professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. 1 The authors wish to thank Anže Burger for the help in processing certain data. Financial support of The Ministry of Education, Science and Sports for research programmes P5-0117 is gratefully acknowledged. 1