Vladimir Žerjavić

According to Žerjavić's calculations, there were 215,000 victims in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Bosnian war of 1992–95, of which 160,000 were Bosniaks, 30,000 Croats and 25,000 Serbs. However, according to newer research done by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the number of people killed in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was around 102,000: 69.24% (70,625) Bosniaks, 25.35% (25,857) Serbs, and 5.33% (5,437) Croats.

In the 1980s Žerjavić conducted a research on demographic losses in Yugoslavia during World War II, at about the same time as Bogoljub Kočović, a Serb statistician. Žerjavić's calculations of total victims in Yugoslavia are based on looking at pre- and post-war censuses. Zerjavić asserted that Yugoslavia lost a total 1,027,000 people in World War II.

Following Tito's death in 1980, the 1948 census results became available for comparison with those of 1931. Allowances had to be made for the birth rates of the different communities and for emigration. Research was pioneered by Professor Kočović, a Serb living in the West, whose findings were published in January 1985. He assessed the number of dead as 1,014,000. Later that year a Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Conference heard that the figure was 1,100,000.

Some international agencies and experts have accepted Žerjavić's (and almost equal data achieved by Serbian statistician Bogoljub Kočović) calculations as the most reliable data on war losses in Yugoslavia during World War II. A U.S. Census report from 1954 states: "Details of the (Yugoslav) 1948 census were kept secret but, in negotiations with Germany, it became apparent that the real figure of the dead was about one million. An American study in 1954 calculated 1,067,000."

Critics point out that Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia lived in rural areas and therefore had a much higher growth rate than others. Žerjavić used growth rates for Serbs in Bosnia as 1.1% (as for all nations together), while actual growth rate was 2.4% (1921–31) and 3.5% (1949–53). They posit he intentionally underestimated growth rate of Serbs to decrease the Serb death count, according to critics. Some, like Đorđević, claimed that Serbian losses were in fact 1.6 million, a number which goes in other direction compared to the official estimates that Žerjavić denied. The higher numbers was opposed by Bogoljub Kočović's book, published in 1997, which tries to refute Đorđević's efforts to "reinstate" the "great numbers" victims figures dominant in Communist Yugoslavia.

Vladimir Žerjavić (2 August 1912 – 5 September 2001) was a Croatian economist and demographer who published a series of historical articles and books during the 1980s and 1990s on demographic losses in Yugoslavia during World War II and of Axis forces and civilians in the Bleiburg repatriations shortly after the capitulation of Germany. From 1964 to 1982, he worked as an adviser for industrial development in the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Žerjavić was born in Križ, Zagreb County and graduated at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Zagreb. He was one of four siblings, having two sisters, Viktorija (1908–1993) and Darinka (1921–2009) and a brother, Slavko. After 1934 he worked in the private sector, and after 1945 in various institutions of SFR Yugoslavia. Between 1958 and 1982 he worked abroad as an industrial consultant. In 1964 he joined the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and later consulted the governments of various nations.