C01 - EconometricsReturn

The main purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of GDP, trade openness, the freedom index and the internet on FDI in 54 countries, including developing, transition and developed countries, over the period 1995-2021. First, the variables affecting FDI are determined. Then, first- and second-generation unit root tests are conducted for panel data to investigate stationarity. Finally, long- and short-run relationships between variables that have an effect on FDI are exhibited with panel cointegration tests and panel ARDL analysis. Among 17 candidate variables, internet, GDP, the freedom index and trade openness are determined to affect FDI. GDP, the internet and the freedom index have a significant positive and trade openness has a significant negative relationship with FDI in the short run. Finally, there is a long-term equilibrium between FDI and all the variables. Trade openness also has negative coefficient in developing countries such as China, Brazil and Turkey. This is a unique study in which empirical findings are given for each country with the PMG model, which would aid the policy implications identified for the 54 countries, including developing, transition and developed countries.

The core of this paper is an econometric estimation of the relation between financial stress and a number of macroeconomic variables (consumption, real GDP, investment, unemployment). This estimation is done on Turkish quarterly data for the period 2002-2021 using threshold vector autoregression (i.e., TVAR). The paper observes the non-linear trade-off between financial stress and macroeconomic indicators. The effect of financial stress appears to be adverse when the stress level is already at a higher level. During high stress episodes, any further increase in financial stress drags economic growth down and the effect appears to be prolonged in nature. Consumption and investment growth also moderate due to a higher stress level. Furthermore, the forecast error decomposition indicates sustained contribution of financial stress impeding growth prospects over the forecast horizon. The findings corroborate with the financial friction mechanism. As borrowing constraint tightens during a high stress regime, the effect of financial stress moderates economic activities. Lastly, the paper extends a local projection approach for estimating a threshold VAR model as a robustness check.

The aim of the paper is to verify the sensitivity of national labour markets to economic growth while respecting its sources and different growth trends. We monitored the change in employment caused by economic growth in the set of EU27 member states in the period 2000-2019. The sensitivity of the labour market was quantified by finding the values of the elasticity coefficient. To obtain it, we used a relation to calculate the point elasticity as well as a logarithmic linear regression model compiled for each member state. The differences in the response of the labour market were identified by comparing the values of the indicator. To determine the factors of employment changes, partial analyses were performed by dividing the evaluated period into sections, especially into periods of growth and decline. As a result, it was possible to identify the impact of economic development trends on the elasticity of the labour market. At the same time, subsets (groups of countries) were created based on similarity of labour productivity levels and employment rates. The results of the analyses indicated that the labour market in all cases responded to changes in economic performance in a short period of time, while the strength of the influence is also affected by the stability of economic development.

This article examines the impact of demographic, economic and institutional determinants on life insurance demand in the Czech Republic between 1993 and 2015. Theoretical part discusses general characteristics of the insurance market, life insurance, its importance in the Czech Republic. It also includes detailed research of historical studies and articles. In empirical part is surveyed an influence of determinants on life insurance demand, using econometric models based on time series and principal component analysis. We used autoregressive distributed lag model, which defines short-term relationships between principal components and an error correction model, which examines long-term relationships between time series. It was found that an increase in average wage and banking sector size had a positive impact on life insurance demand and an increase in young dependency ratio, old dependency ratio, interest rate and net national savings had a negative impact on life insurance demand. Number of tertiary educated people, public sector size, and consumer spending were classified as insignificant variables.

We show that the cusp catastrophe model explains the crash of stock exchanges much better than other models. On the data of U.S. stock markets we demonstrate that the crash of 1987 may be better explained by cusp catastrophe theory, which is not true for the crash of 2001. With the help of sentiment measures, such as index put/call options ratio and volume (the former models the proportion of the chartists, while the latter the fundamentalists), we have found that the 1987 returns are clearly bimodal and contain bifurcation flags. The cusp catastrophe model fits these data better then alternative models. Therefore we may say that the crash may have been led by internal forces. However, the causes for the crash of Sept. 11, 2001 are external, which is also evident in much weaker presence of bifurcations in the data. Thus alterantive models may be used for its explanation.