o:30023 Can „winner-takes-most“ dynamics of regional economic integration be avoided in the Western Balkans? Lessons on resourcefulness from smaller economic agents en Abstract: Empirical evidence on free trade agreements indicates that CEFTA’s Common Regional Market could trigger a „winner-takes-most“ dynamics. Such an outcome would be in conflict with CEFTA’s goal of inclusive regional economic integration. This article offers a roadmap to avoid that pitfall while remaining within the framework of free regional trade. Theoretical insights on the network economy in the digital era and the political economy of trust and cooperation are brought into a conversation with bottom-up empirical insights from smaller economic agents in the region. Empirical data are collected from in-depth interviews with 58 exporting-oriented small and medium enterprises in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia. They indicate that smaller firms are immensely interdependent with the environments within which they operate, and that their competitiveness stems from their ability to successfully leverage on these communal resources. Finding ways to preserve and enhance this collective infrastructure is a priority for most of them. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 895519 Keywords: economic governance, SMEs, resourcefulness, resilience, institutional development 2023-06-05T12:28:57.005Z 44 no 46 Sonja Avlijaš Univerzitet u Beogradu Ekonomski fakultet 790887 0000-0003-3270-0039 application/pdf 651744 https://phaidrabg.bg.ac.rs/o:30023 no yes 1 70 1557090 11A03 LSEE-CEFTA Research Papers on International Trade Research Paper No.5 2022