E61 - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy CoordinationNávrat zpět

This paper aims to shed some light on the real convergence process among EU economies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in comparison to the real convergence in 2008, when the last financial crisis erupted. According to entropy method results, the most pronounced difference between effects of the current pandemic and the global financial crisis are registered in the unemployment rate, while the difference in the current account balance and GDP per capita are much less noticeable. The results of the entropy method also suggest that the greatest difference among EU economies in 2020 is registered in the current account deficits; a slightly lower difference is registered in the unemployment rate, while the divergence in GDP is much less pronounced. To explain the results of the entropy method, a hierarchical cluster analysis is performed and three clusters are derived. Based on the identified characteristics of the derived clusters, some policy recommendations for overcoming the current crisis are defined.

The growing number of players in world trade increases competition among countries. It has also a significant implication for the EU member states that are differently dependant on international trade. The object of the paper was to evaluate the export competitiveness and productivity of the EU member states in 2000-2015 using the Factor Analysis and the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. The results of trade analyses confirmed that the level of the export competitiveness was different in the individual EU member states and that it had also been changed during the monitored period. However, the original hypothesis about the level of export productivity was not confirmed. The results of the DEA analysis pointed more to economic convergence in the trade area between the new and old EU member states than to export productivity. The development of the EU trade was influenced by globalisation processes accompanied by trade liberalisation, but also the EU integration process.

This paper studies the impact of inflation dynamics on a common economic policy in the monetary union using a small New Keynesian model of the monetary union. We are considering two open economy versions of the Phillips curve: a typical New Keynesian Phillips curve with only forward looking dynamics and a hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve with forward and backward looking dynamics. The main findings are as follows: (i) the backward looking dynamics (persistence) of inflation in the Phillips curve is an important determinant of the common economic policy in the monetary union; (ii) in the case of asymmetric dynamics of inflation in the monetary union countries, the country with more persistent inflation dynamics has a significant impact on the common economic policy.

Until now there is no scientific consensus about the concept of national competitiveness. Despite the ambiguity of its definition, it has become a goal of numerous political documents. Economic policies in many countries are devoted to raise their overall competitiveness. But an unclear definition of relations between different components of national competitiveness represents an obstacle to formulate effective political measures. The aim of this paper is to clarify the relation between the competitiveness of the Czech Republic and its export performance which is considered as one of ways to improve overall competitiveness. The contribution of external competitiveness to the export performance of the Czech Republic in European Union is quantified using an econometric version of Constant Market Shares analysis. The results suggest that the external competitiveness of the Czech Republic has significantly positive effects on its export performance. Moreover we conclude that the positive spillover effect from external to aggregate competitiveness could be reach via increasing productivity.

The article formulates the general political-economic possibilities for smoothing of business cycles under the realistic assumptions of the current credit-economy. Firstly it endeavours to explain the mechanism of the financial and real economy functioning with an emphasis on banking sector. The initial theoretical model is considered as unrealistic but proper for demonstration of the consequences of money endogeneity, mechanism of banking financing and dependency of economic growth on credit growth and savings. On the basis of this explanation the article identifies the real causes of credit cycles in the current credit-economy and performs some relevant empirical evidence. The causes include insufficient credit growth, significant concentration of monetary assets, disproportionate development between inflation and excess money growth, deregulation, transmission of credit risk, deleveraging of private sector and imperfect steering of interest rates. Subsequently, author constitutes the basic political-economic tools which could possibly eliminate (or at least mitigate) both the deep and shallow recessions in ex-ante and ex-post periods. The study concludes that possible political-economic tools are following: traditional and non-traditional monetary policy, fiscal expansion, redistribution through progressive taxation, microeconomic and macroeconomic regulation. The entire study is based on US data.

The aim of this article is to estimate the mutual interaction of monetary and fiscal policy in the Visegrad Group countries, i.e. in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. The relations between monetary and fiscal policy - its coordination, cooperation or mutual antagonism - are basic determinants of successful economic policy implementation of each country. Fiscal and monetary policies usually have different aims. Therefore, some conflict situations may arise in practical economic and political decision-making process. Methodical approaches of this article are based on the game theory, which deals with the analysis of a wide range of decision-making situations with more participants (players); it is primarily focused on the conflict situations. Our results confirm the stabilizing role of monetary policy in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, also the dominant role of monetary policy in the Czech Republic and the dominant role of fiscal policy in Hungary. In the case of Slovakia, inconsistent results concerning the monetary policy role are probably caused by its EMR II membership and Eurozone entry in 2009.

We analyze corruption and economic freedom links to public finance and investment in new EU members. In terms of the public investment our results show that improvement in economic freedom is linked to increases in public investment while lowering of corruption is linked with increase or decrease with respect to public investment. As a complementary finding we show that increases in public investment are also linked with the ambiguous effect. In case of public finance our estimates suggest that debt usually decreases as economic regulation goes down while the effect on budget deficit goes both ways. On other hand, as corruption declines both budget deficit and debt decrease. Based on our results we generalize that measures taken to lower corruption and economic regulation should lead to improvements in fiscal position in most of the new EU member states.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of current account adjustment on the tradable and nontradable sector in member countries of currency union - Euro zone. The current account adjustment associated with the adjustment of the net export's deficit caused by the drop in the domestic absorption evokes the increase in the relative price of the nontradable sector. The paper discusses this hypothesis within framework of the Portuguese current account adjustment, which is the result of European financial integration in catching-up countries. The common monetary policy and common currency cannot offset the negative impact of nontradable price increase within the internal expenditure switching effect and also can not support exporters within the external expenditure effect.. The Portuguese current account adjustment was not followed by the currency depreciation and the tradable price increase. The cost of the currency asymmetric response were born by the tradable mark-up decrease, the falling decrease in nontradable wages and employment and finally by the nontradable mark-up and employment decrease.

The article deals with the evaluation of the foreign exchange market integration of the new EU Member States - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The main aim of this paper is to introduce and to test, if the Central-European sentiment on the foreign exchange market exists and how strong it is. We apply the analysis of harmonizing (by means of standard and rolling correlation analysis), the concept of beta-convergence (through the use of the standard and rolling correlation analysis, state-space model and panel regression analysis), which could identify the speed of financial integration and the concept of sigma-convergence, which could extrapolate the degree of financial integration. We find that from the entry to the EU in May 2004 the mutual relationship with Central-European currencies relative to euro significantly increase.

The goal of this article is to explain why central banks undershoot their inflation targets as we can observe also in the case of the Czech Republic. In other words, I am trying to find out if this undershooting is due to unpredictable desinflation shocks or due to asymmetric behaviour of central banks. Specifically, positive deviations from the target (i.e. overshooting) are weighted more in central bank"s loss function than the negative ones. It is shown that the Czech National Bank is asymmetric in its preferences but not so much as in the case of Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom. On the other hand, some part of undershooting attributes to desinflation shocks hitting the Czech economy.

The paper discusses the issue of impossible trinity and its potential threat for Central and Eastern European countries operating under an inflation-targeting regime during the convergence process before entering the euro area. The threat of monetary policy inconsistency (the impossible trinity) consists of a conflict of the two monetary aims - the criterion of internal price stability and external stability of exchange rates. Providing study on monetary development in Hungary in 2003, as the National Bank of Hungary fought against the speculative attack on a strong edge of the Hungarian forint's fluctuation band. However, Bank's lowering the interest rates significantly together with consequent impacts on internal stability can be considered as monetary policy inconsistency.

The article deals with political risk, its definition, assessment and measuring. In the theoretical part different approaches to the definition of political risk are discussed and methodical approaches to its measuring and assessment are explained. The practical part is focused on the analysis of political risk assessment in transition countries of Europe and in countries of former Soviet Union compared to political risks in EU countries. The conclusions indicate that transition economies lag behind substantially in the areas of corruption, law observance and bureaucracy quality. For economic policy it is urgent to improve the quality of the institutional environment.

The Council of Economic Experts and its influence on the German economic policy are discussed in this paper. The first section concentrates on the institutional background and historical genesis of this body. Consequently, the importance of the Council in preventing a competitive and efficient economic order in the ordoliberal point of view is considered. The second section offers a comparative analysis of economic policy consultancy. Some significant institutional aspects of the German Council of Economic Experts, the US Council of Economic Advisers and the French Conseil d'Analyse Économique are examined.

Freiburg school of ordoliberalism contributions to the modern economic thinking and some of its implications for post-war economic and social policy in West Germany are discussed in this paper. After explaining some elementary terms there is a short excursion in the economic history and external conditions. Part four discusses the importance of competition for both a dynamic and stabile economic growth performance and long-lasting balance in society, followed by a description of the basic premises of the competitive order - the constitutive principles and the regulatory principles preserving the competition and balance in long-run period. The role of state, science and the churches in creating and influencing both the order of economy and society is the theme of part five. Social market economy arising from the ordoliberal theoretical conception is discussed in part six.

Paper focuses on foreign direct investment (FDI) in manufacturing in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia (CECs), where FDI penetration jumped to remarkable high levels in recent years. Foreign investment enterprises are more profitable, export oriented and technologically superior compared to domestic companies. FDI is perceived as a main channel of technology transfer and potential source of spillovers in host economy, though, estimates of technology transfer show mixed picture in the CECs. FDI spurs restructuring and productivity growth in foreign investment enterprises but FDI rather crowds-out domestic companies as spillovers are confirmed only to domestic companies with sufficient technological absorptive capacity. Paper concludes with some policy implications regarding FDI promotion and innovation policy.

This article aims to argue with the wide-spread perception of discretionary fiscal policy as a poor macroeconomic stabilization tool, especially in comparison with the contemporary performance of monetary policy. European Monetary Union Member States are hit by the asymmetric shocks or respond dissimilarly to a common shock. This is the strongest reasoning for the rehabilitation of active fiscal macroeconomic stabilization. Prudent fiscal and debt management policies are powerful to mitigate the economic impacts of various shocks at a national level and thus to replace the loss of autonomous monetary and exchange rate policy. The resurrection of fiscal policy is contingent on the efective institutional framework for its implementation. The principle of proposed reforms in fiscal policy stems from political economics background and corresponds to recent reforms in monetary and public debt management institutions. The only way how to address the traditional incentive constraints of policy discretion is to set up an independent fiscal agency outside of Ministry of Finance.