“Serbia makes for an excellent Business, Government, and the International Economy case study,” he says, citing the region’s unique macroeconomic experiment under Tito, former president of Yugoslavia; the nature and impact of NATO’s 1999 intervention; the country’s transition to capitalism; and China’s recent investments.

After delivering a presentation on the state of global capitalism at HBS’s Europe Research Center (ERC) in June 2017, Reinert met Sava Marinkovich (MBA 2003), a native of Serbia, who offered to make introductions to Serbia’s government and business community. Reinert drew on the resources and local expertise of ERC members in conducting his research and worked with Federica Gabrieli, an ERC research associate, and Jyotika Banga (MBA 2019) to write the case “Serbia at a Crossroads.”

When first exploring the region, the research team envisioned a case focused simply on economic activity in the landlocked country. Upon talking to leaders in the government, business, social, and academic sectors, it became clear, however, that key to understanding the region was getting a sense of the political, social, and cultural history that has deeply influenced the country’s current situation.

Gabrieli organized almost 40 interviews in Belgrade that she and Reinert completed over a three-day period in August 2018 with the assistance of Aleksandra Drecun (MPA 2010). “The people we met with were glad we came with an open mind and sought to understand the country better,” says Reinert. “The region has had a tumultuous history with many painful moments that continue to ignite strong passions.”

“Serbia at a Crossroads” opens with Prime Minister Ana Brnabić’s 2018 visit to the New York Stock Exchange to drum up economic activity. It includes a country overview and lengthy summary of four centuries of history, including Serbia’s many decades as a dominant member of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

With a complicated pattern of shifting alliances, by 2018, Serbia found itself “in a world of politically independent yet economically interdependent states,” the case explains. The country was on track to join the European Union (EU), but it also had ties with Russia and China. “Brnabić maintained, ‘the EU is where we are going,’ but she also emphasized that ‘it is unfair to ask Serbia to pick and choose’ between allies because, ultimately, her government was ‘pro-Serbia.’”

Reinert taught the case in his fall 2019 Globalization and Emerging Markets elective, where it prompted a very thought-provoking classroom discussion, recalls Muneeb Ahmed (MBA 2020). “To the casual observer, it may seem that the people of the former Yugoslavia had a lot in common—they all were ethnic Slavs, they spoke a single language, and they all had, at least on paper, the same rights. But under the surface, there were a lot of inequalities,” he says. “The crucial lesson was that even though differences may not seem like much, what matters most is how people themselves perceive those differences.”

For his part, Reinert hopes that the case, which he plans to teach in the Business, Government, and the International Economy course in the spring, “will lead students to think seriously about the nature, costs, and benefits of international interventions. Serbia offers us a striking perspective on the ongoing upheavals in the world economy,” he offers, adding that “Mark Twain may never have said that ‘history doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes,’ but the general sentiment seems eerily fitting for our case.”