Predicting the outcome of various phenomena has always been an attractive research topic in a large number of scientific disciplines, especially in economics. As a scientific discipline, econometrics provides various models for predicting indicators such as GDP, inflation rate, interest rate, price of various goods and services, as well as many others at both micro and macro levels. The development of information technologies has made computational operations much faster and more precisely. However, a special contribution is reflected in the application of data mining for the purpose of extracting relevant information from a large data set. Models developed using data mining provide good results in predicting economic indicators, often more successfully than certain econometric models. This paper aims to forecast the growth of GDP through the application of time series mining on the example of the Republic of Serbia. The analysis was performed in two cases: in the first one models include independent attributes that additionally describe the dependent variable, while in the other case they do not contain these attributes. Three different mining methods were used in both cases (linear regression, multilayer perceptron and random forest) and the obtained results of model validation were presented and interpreted.

In modern business, achieving a high level of efficiency and optimal company performance becomes crucial for maintaining a competitive advantage. Accordingly, financial benchmarking is an indispensable tool in business evaluation, enabling organizations to systematically and continuously measure and compare their own organizational business processes in relation to the business processes of leaders around the world. Therefore, this paper is dedicated to a deeper analysis of the efficiency and performance of hotels in the Republic of Srpska through the application of financial benchmarking. The goal of the research is to understand the factors that influence the efficiency and performance of hotels in the Republic of Srpska through financial benchmarking, with a focus on identifying value drivers, all for the purpose of improving the company's performance. Through a detailed analysis of financial reports and relevant indicators, the research will provide insight into the current situation in the sector, identify potential areas of improvement and contribute to the overall improvement of the hotel industry's competitiveness in the region. For the purpose of analysis, two hotels in Republic of Srpska were selected that meet the conditions to be the subject of this analysis through financial benchmarking. Accordingly, annual financial reports were used, as well as other data from the stock market related to the shares and dividends of the observed hotels for a period of three years, from 2020 to 2022.