C24 - Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models; Threshold Regression ModelsReturn

This paper addresses Czech international exports from 2000 to 2017. The goal of the paper is to determine whether the economic sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation by most of the Western countries, and especially the countermeasures adopted by the Kremlin, have exercised any significant effect on the Czech exports to Russia. The approach adopted is a gravity model and the results lead to the conclusion that the economic sanctions do not have any significant effect on the global Czech exports to Russia. Nevertheless, the sanctions affect the type of future economic cooperation between the Czech Republic and the Russian Federation.

Unemployment belongs to the most serious economic and social problems of developed countries. The problem can be described by the unemployment rate or number of the unemployed, in this text a duration of unemployment is of interest. The unemployment duration in the Czech Republic in 2008, 2010 and 2014 is analysed with the use of survival analysis methods and a finite mixture of lognormal distributions is used to describe an overall distribution of unemployment spell as well as the component distributions given by gender and education of the unemployed. Data from the Labour Force Sample Survey (performed by the Czech Statistical Office) are used for the statistical analysis. The unemployment duration is given in the questionnaire of the survey in intervals, we supposed the data to be right or interval censored, exact values of the unemployment duration are not included in the data. The strong positive effect of education on the duration of unemployment is quantified, as well as a less distinctive gender gap. An increase in unemployment duration is quantified for the period of economic crisis with respect to periods before (2008) and after (2014) the crisis.

The aim of our paper is to identify factors that influence the territorial selection and allocation of development aid of the Czech Republic. We applied random-effects probit and tobit models in our regression analysis which revealed that flows of Czech aid to individual developing countries are determined by variety of factors. Czech interests and mutual relations were mostly identified as statistically significant determinants, namely export volumes, closer historical relations and geographical proximity. The presence of Czech embassy in a country was not confirmed as a significant factor. The reflection of recipients' needs in Czech aid selection and allocation is rather ambiguous. While Czech aid flows depend positively on total population and negatively on per capita income of recipient countries, they are positively influenced by the recipients' level of social development. Similarly, the Czech Republic tends to give (more) aid to more democratic and freer countries with lower institutional quality.