D23 - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property RightsReturn

In this paper, I empirically examine the relationship between telecommunications and economic growth. I use data for developing and developed countries for 2000–2016. My conclusion is that mobile penetration has a positive and significant impact on economic growth, where a onepercent increase in mobile penetration results in an increase in economic growth of 1.0–2.6 percent. Regulatory institutions have a positive and significant impact on penetration in developing countries; in developed countries, the impact of regulatory institutions is positive but not significant.

Three methodological errors in the economics of authors' rights and their consequences.Using a realistic and holistic approach, this theoretic contribution corrects three main assumptions of the economic theory of copyright and explains why they hinder the proper understanding of its role. First, authors' pieces of work are like a public good that needs the protection of copyright to overcome the free rider problem. However, a piece of work can be spread only with a medium good or service. Such a pair might not possess the properties of a public good like nonexcludability and nonrivalry. The second assumption that copyright enables authors to charge the price above marginal costs was rejected as too simplistic because the copyright affects different markets with pairs work + medium variably and moreover, it ensures for authors a non-market revenue. The complexity of copyright also explains why the third assumption that copyright can be modelled as a single index is meaningless. A new framework for optimisation behaviour of authors is offered.

Liberal ownership rights are the essential basis of proper functioning of market economy, therefore the theory of ownership rights can also be considered the basis of theories governing all the areas of market economy functioning. The currentness of the presented issues in the Czech Republic has been rapidly increasing lately, with regard to the expanding erosion of ownership rights set democratically after 1989. The aim of this paper is to present the results of long-term research in renowned economic magazines, to draw attention to the extraordinarily current nature of the discussed issues determined by increasing instability of ownership rights in the Czech Republic in recent years and to promote an expert discussion of this topic in various economic and legal circles.

Public procurement is subject to very strict and detailed legal regulation, which generates significant transaction costs on the part of both the public and private sectors. This paper aims are to quantify the size of private transaction costs associated with participation in tenders and to identify the main factors that affect their value. The presented results are based on a survey containing 804 observations. The total value of the private transaction costs in 2012 is estimated at CZK 9 billion, which represents 1.8% of contracts value. Using regression model, we have identified factors that influence the size of transaction costs at the level of individual firms. These are relatively lower for larger contracts, supply contracts and also for more experienced companies. In contrast, higher values are found in smaller contracts, larger companies and companies that are more successful in tenders.

With respect to the occurrence of economic crises it may be observed that economic performance of countries is determined by the quality of its institutions. It is the corporate governance failure that is said, in line with the new institutional economic theory, to be among reasons for the recent international financial and economic crisis. This study has the goal of confirming, by empirical analysis, the existence of correlation between, on one hand, the quality of the institutional environment expressed by index of economic freedom and by its selected subindexes, and, on the other hand, the macroeconomic environment for corporates - as characterised by selected macroeconomic indicators. In result, countries with higher foreign direct investments influx and higher per capita GDP show higher levels of index of economic freedom. Countries with higher level of property rights protection and lower corruption level achieve higher GDP per capita. Countries with higher ratio of government expenditure on GDP reach lower levels of index of economic freedom, this being interpreted as a substitution of private business entities and entrepreneurial initiative by a government.

The fundamental premise for the regular performance of economic policy, fulfilment of the revenues of the state budget and thus creating optimal conditions for efficient fiscal policy realization, is to minimize state receivables after maturity, as the theoretical planning of the revenue side of the state budget is irrelevant considering that tax payers and other entities fail to fulfil their liabilities towards the state, more precisely state budget, and conversely the state is not able to provide the approved income in the state budget. The objective of this paper is to: analyse the development of state receivables in years 2001-2014; identify the causes of the state receivables origin; test econometrically the dependence of formation of the state receivables after maturity on the economic cycle, the tax rate change and entry of the Czech Republic to the European Union; evaluate the results of the long-term research of implementation of an experimental model, during which the possibility of reaching incomparably higher efficiency was verified and proven in the management process of state receivables recovery; highlight this important negative determinant of the state fiscal policy. With regard to aforesaid, this text is structured in the following way. First, the author took into consideration the theories which are connected with surveyed matters, following by the characteristic and causes of state receivables development for the period of 1991 to 2014. The economic testing of dependence comes after. Next chapter characterizes the development of two experimental models for management process of recovery of state receivables after maturity, research results included. The last chapter provides all the research results, evaluates the economic policy significance of this destructive factor of fiscal policy and suggests some solutions.

In this article we analyze medium- and long-term effects of firm break-up (and subsequent change in ownership) on its profitability and productivity. We use an extensive data-set of the Czech firms for the period 1996-2005. We employ the propensity score based matching methodology to account for potential endogeneity. Our results show that initial effects of the firm break-up are positive but they vanish in five to seven years after the break-up. Hence, the break-up of large and less efficient companies delivers a positive effect on corporate performance for a period of time. The effect is not permanent, though. Subsequent development in profitability and productivity is likely affected by ownership structure, corporate governance and other micro-level factors.

We analyze the extent of the integrated state control over the privatized companies in the Czech Republic during the decade of 1995-2005. During this period, the integrated potential of the state to control companies had a pyramid-like form. Even though the pyramid control was not fully utilized, the state owned the golden shares that significantly improved state ability to control companies. Our findings suggest that state control in the period under research is correlated with decreasing, or even negative performance of companies. The efficiency of the state-owned companies was much lower than that of the privately owned. The inability of state agencies to cooperate and inefficient state administration are the most probable explanations behind our findings.

This paper uses new firm-level data to examine the effects of breakups of the Czech firms and their subsequent privatization on corporate performance. Unlike the existing literature, which analyzes breakups almost exclusively in advanced economies, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the fact that spinoffs and ownership are endogenous variables. We find that breakups increase the firm's profitability but do not alter its scale of operations, while the effect of privatization depends on the resulting ownership structure - sometime improving performance and sometime bringing about decline. The effects of privatization are hence less clear-cut than suggested in earlier studies. Methodologically, our study provides evidence that it is important to control for changes in ownership when analyzing divestitures and control for endogeneity, selection and data attrition when analyzing the effects of breakups and privatization.

The article is based on the thesis that institutional quality influences the economic performance. From this point of view under certain circumstance the government policy is able to increase efficiency and performance of economies through creation, maintenance and cultivation of appropriate political and economic institutions ("political and economic design"). This way is not about state engineering indeed, but about possibility to accept and/or cancel measures which in principle influence both current production capability of economies and its long-term potential too. Authors do not refuse to analyse an influence of informal institutions, which undoubtedly create "the spawn, out of all grown up". If the state were to be understood in its minimal role, i. e. as the guarantee and co-creator of basic "well-established" rules and/or institutions, the rational economic policy could be able to influence the process both to reduce transaction costs and to rise economic efficiency.

The core aim of this paper is to suggest comprehensive definition of the information economy and delineate the range of economic problems it deals with, paying particular attention to its connections to the economics of information. The text, in the extent provided, can not investigate thoroughly all the subjects associated with the information economy; it rather presents overview of the most important issues and illustrates them with examples from real and virtual markets. The major subjects concerned include: information asymmetries, revelation principle, network effects and externalities, economies of scale, standard wars, switching costs and lock-ins, multiple competitive equilibria, characteristics of online markets, impact of information technology on productivity, implications for governmental policies.