O52 - Economywide Country Studies: EuropeNávrat zpět

In the lens of European integration, national competitiveness no longer depends just on national inheritance, but also on the new member states' capacity of exploiting existing advantages of EU membership. In this paper, we closely follow the effects of European Union (EU) admission on national competitiveness for eleven Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that joined the EU after 2004. The analysis includes new specific variables that we consider potential boosters of competitiveness in this particular sample of countries, besides the proxies generally used in the literature. The results indicate that, for most of the CEE countries, EU accession bought both domestic and international advantages, with a more visible positive change in the international position. Although we were able to classify the analysed economies into three distinct groups, there are still notable differences across the CEE countries that require differentiated strategies for enhancing competitiveness.

The paper employs a form of the panel ARDL-based error correction model (ECM) to explore the short-run and long-run relationship between public debt (and certain macroeconomic variables) and economic growth in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. It covers the period 2006Q1−2018Q4. The results indicate both short-term and long-term causality (except for financial development), though the marginal effects are variable-specific. There is a negative effect of public debt, interest rate and exchange rate on growth, whereas the saving rate, trade openness, financial development, fixed capital formation and population growth contribute to economic development. Thus, a responsible and saving-oriented fiscal policy, coupled with higher private sector investment, an export-oriented private sector and undervalued real exchange rate, and population growth would contribute to economic development in CEE countries.

Monitoring of inflation rate dynamics is one of the most important tasks in order to identify the current economic conditions of the observed countries. The aim of this study is to examine the unit root properties of inflation in the Western Balkan countries. It also investigates the existence of structural breaks and nonlinearity. The time horizon encompasses the period 2006Q1-2020Q2. The results suggest that the inflation in Albania and Montenegro manifests a nonstationary process and structural breaks. The macroeconomic shocks will have more persistent effects on the inflation rate if it is characterized by nonstationarity. The inflation rates of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are characterized by nonlinear mean reverting behaviour. This implies less costly implementation of the proclaimed monetary strategy.

This paper examines the relationship between insurance market development and economic growth in EU member states in the period 1998-2018. Our results indicate that there is no causality between premium per capita and GDP per capita growth in the case of 11 out of the 23 analysed countries, including four countries classified as emerging markets. However, in the case of panel data covering all the countries, we determined a two-way causality between insurance market development and economic growth. In the short run, premium per capita has a positive and significant impact on the economic growth as proven in the data panel and in the case of individual countries, except in the case of Ireland and Luxembourg, where the applied model shows only error-correction coefficient values. Besides, our results indicate that premium per capita has a significant positive effect on economic growth in the long run in the case of Belgium, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia, i.e., insurance premium is a key determinant of long-term economic growth. The results show a statistically significant long-term positive relationship between premium per capita and GDP growth per capita in the case of a panel analysis of all the observed countries and countries classified as emerging markets. On the other hand, the panel data analysis of the countries classified in the category of developed markets showed a long-term positive relationship, but not a statistically significant one. Since that results indicate that the insurance market development could contribute to ensuring long-term economic stability and growth of observed countries, special attention needs to be paid to the strategy of insurance market development in a changing business environment.

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.

In the present study we analyze diversification of food consumption in Slovakia. Dietary diversity is a proxy for the quality of diet and it measures one aspect of household food and nutritional security. Using data from the Slovak Household Budget Survey, we estimate determinants of demand for food diversity by means of linear and quantile regressions. We measure food diversity by count measure of food items consumed during a specific time period and by Berry index. While demand for food diversity has been steadily increasing since 2004, economic crisis in 2009 slightly reduced the diversity of foodstuffs consumed by Slovak households. Estimated income elasticities are consistent with the applied theoretical framework and previous studies conducted in other countries. Furthermore, results from the quantile regression reveal that the estimated coefficients significantly differ across quantiles of the dependent variables' distribution. Results further indicate that Slovak households diversify their food consumption less during the first quarter of the year and in rural areas. Individual characteristics of the household head, such as education, age or gender significantly influence diverse food consumption too. Overall, an increasing demand for food diversity was observed between 2004 and 2010 which can imply an improved quality of diet and food security of Slovak households.

The paper provides an exploratory analysis of regional dynamics among 264 NUTS2 EU-27 regions over the period 1992-2006. Seven different regional indicators are analyzed including wages, household expenditures, retail sales, investments, productivity, GDP, and GDP adjusted for international purchasing power differences. Several aspects of regional dynamics are studied such as convergence, polarization, role of international component, overall mobility, and individual mobility of Czech regions. Different methods are employed including some traditional techniques such as Gini coefficient, Theil decomposition, or kernel density estimates but also more innovative measures based on the pair-wise comparisons of regions. The results suggest strong regional convergence in relative ratios hand in hand with increasing absolute gaps among European regions. The analysis also indicates a significant bipolarity in the investigated distributions and a major role of international component in the process of European regional development. From the Czech regions, only Praha and Střední Čechy recorded some upward mobility in the European regional rank distributions, while the relative positions of all other units deteriorated.

The paper analyzes the process of real convergence of the Czech Republic and the other new EU member countries towards the old EU. The new member countries were beta converging towards the EU in the period 1992 - 2004. The speed of convergence was 1.77% which is a number comparable to the speed of convergence among the states of the USA. The Czech Republic has been growing more slowly than what would correspond to its level of real GDP per capita. This trend seems to have been overcome by faster growth in the last two years. Still, even in the optimistic scenario, it will take more than 30 years for the Czech Republic to reach the EU-15 average, which is more than for most of the other new member countries, in particular the dynamically growing Baltic countries.

2004, which was also the year of EU entry, was quite successful for the Czech economy. Economic growth accelerated, driven in particular by the investment demand and exports. After 10 years of permanent deficits, the trade balance deficit diminished significantly. The effects of EU entry, which opened new chances to the exporters, accompanied the positive impact of FDI inflows from the past. Due to acceleration of exports, industrial output registered a record high growth within the last decade. Accelerating economic growth did not provoke inflationary pressures. Two waves of VAT increase (in January and May) were absorbed until the end of the year. A strong increase in PPI resulting from high world prices of oil and gas had no spillover effect to consumer prices due to strong competition between both the producers and traders. At the beginning of 2005, economic growth continued with the same pace as in 2004, driven by investment demand and exports. Consumer demand kept on weakening, consumption of households registered the weakest growth since the end of 1998. Both the industrial production and exports reported a slowdown due to sluggish economic activity in the euro area, especially in Germany.

The paper is concerned with the Czech privatization. According to the author, there was no economic theory of privatization in 1989. Therefore, decision makers in transition economies had to improvise and solve a dilemma: a fast, or slow privatization? The Czech literature on privatization as well as the strengths and weaknesses of privatization methods in the Czech Republic, including of the voucher one, are discussed. The paper argues against the pessimistic view on the Czech privatization, which predominated in the literature in the second half of the nineties.

Gradual narrowing of the gap between consumer and investment demand was one of major achievements of 2003, supporting the long-term sustainability of Czech economic growth. In the first half of 2004, industry and construction witnessed strong growth, retail trade showing a considerable slowdown. Growth in industry has continued to be more rapid in the sector of foreign controlled companies. After a slight weakening of deflation tendencies in the third quarter of 2003, last quarter of 2003 and first half of 2004 confirmed a resurgence of inflation. Growth of industrial prices was more rapid than the growth of consumer ones, predominantly due to increasing world prices of oil and metals. The labour market and public finance continue to be the main macroeconomic problems of the Czech Republic. The improvement may come only after adoption of fundamental reforms in both these areas.

Slowdown of economic growth occurred as a consequence of overall European slowdown in 2002. The most reliable factor of Czech GDP growth has become private demand of households. The acceleration of Czech economic growth will be strongly determined by the timing and intensity of economic recovery in Western Europe which has been postponing ever since. Strong disinflation processes pressed the inflation rate to record low levels in the history of transition. At the same time, strengthening of CZK continued in the first half of the year with an upturn in mid-2002. Later on, Czech monetary policy succeeded to stop the appreciation, CZK returning back to the level from the beginning of the year.