E20 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy: General (includes Measurement and Data)Návrat zpět

The aim of this paper is to specify the determinants from the real economy causing long-term disequilibrium in the trade balance. The analysis is carried out for all countries of the world for the period 1980-2016 (according to data availability) using panel and cross-sectional regression. We employ the absorption approach as the basic theoretical model. From the supply side of the economy, the main determinants are: export of primary resources, e.g. oil and gas, geographical factors and institutional quality of the economy. From the demand side of the economy, the trade balance is influenced mainly by the demographic structure of the population and its consumption, saving and investment habits in the context of life cycle hypothesis, marginal propensity to consume and the participation of the government sector in the economy (e.g. health care provision, social security, etc.).

The EU labour markets show a number of long-term imbalances and asymmetries, which are refl ected in a persisting high unemployment rate. A group that is particularly affected by the high unemployment rate are young people. The aim of the paper is to analyse causes and consequences of the youth unemployment in the EU and compare them with the measures. We test 894 POLITICKÁ EKONOMIE, 7, 2015 following hypothesis: "The high rigidity of the labour markets in the EU increases the rate of youth unemployment." Further, we analyse the correlation between the rigidity of the EU labour markets and youth unemployment rate. There is some evidence that Employment Protection Legislation index (EPL) is one of the key factors infl uencing youth unemployment. However, the results have differed significantly the according to the various regions (socio-economics models) of the EU. In the end of the paper the research leads to the conclusion that if the education systém allows a smooth transition between school and work, a higher rate of EPL doesn't increase youth unemployment. In order to reflect high complexity of the problem is the examination of the systems approach.

The first objective of this paper is to identify the differences between microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts of competitiveness. The second objective is to explain why the concept of national competitiveness is controversial and why the obsession with competitiveness has adverse impacts on the allocation of resources and the choice of economic policies. The third goal is to describe and evaluate the methodology of the best known international rankings of competitiveness (World Competitiveness Yearbook and The Global Competitiveness Report). In the fourth section of this paper we use data published in this rankings to analyse changes in competitiveness of the Visegrad Group economies in 2007 - 2012.

The growing complexity of problems solved in today's European labor market forces us to change our views of the system; and requires the application of modern approaches, including systems theories. The main purpose of the paper is to analyze the flexicurity in a systematic manner. With a focus on systems approach to solving these problems (e.g. unemployment and long-term unemployment), we try to form a new framework for thinking about the European labor market. The further purpose of the paper is to confirm, or refuse, the hypothesis related to the intersection of an employment protection and a long-term unemployment. With the aid of causal loops it is possible to analyze the European labor market as a complex feed-back system. The outputs of the paper should be a contribution to the concept of the flexicurity which had been implemented into the more complex Lisbon Strategy, and for the support of systems thinking about the European labor market.

The paper focuses on accrual taxes, investment and depreciation in government sector from statistical point of view. The paper is a feedback on paper published in Politická ekonomie 2/2010 by authors Hrdlička, Ištvánfyová and Vítek. Original paper dealt with similar issue but from accountants' point of view. The statistical view of this matter is slightly different and it is influenced by current national accounts' standard ESA 1995. The most of the paper is devoted to the investment and depreciation, in national accounts terms capital formation and capital consumption. The sector of government is a very important investor and property owner in the Czech Republic. Therefore a good record of investment and depreciation is important not only for government sector itself but also for total economy.

The article analyses a development of the external balance in five Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. The main idea of the article is to apply, expand, and empirically verify the ideas of life cycle theory in the area of the impacts of foreign direct investment on the balance of payments in the transition countries. The article defines and explores the basic general stages in the external balance of a transition country. The definition of the stages draws from a model consumer behaviour within the life cycle theory once the external balance stages have been defined as follows: young transition economy, mature transition economy, post-transition economy, and expanding economy. The authors have developed a model that provides criteria which not only classify the current stage of each transition country, but also evaluate the success in the catching-up process of the country examined.

This paper aims at constructing a model of a small open economy of the Slovak Republic. In essence, the model represents a synthesis of already published modifications of the Mundell - Fleming type of models, describing the market of goods and services in interaction with the money market and paying special attention to foreign trade. As the model construction is aimed at providing a tool for qualitative analyses, the model equations are specified in linear functional form - in order to obtain analytic solutions. Theoretical analyses are confronted with the empirical verification of the constructed model. Not surprisingly, historical experience represented by data on Slovak economy in transition reveals that complex structure of the model degenerates to a much simpler form in early years of transition. It is understood and verified that several economic principles guiding market economies do not apply in transition (e.g. investments evolve independently of interest rates).