Politická ekonomie 2025, 73(1):88-124 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1445
The main purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of GDP, trade openness, the freedom index and the internet on FDI in 54 countries, including developing, transition and developed countries, over the period 1995-2021. First, the variables affecting FDI are determined. Then, first- and second-generation unit root tests are conducted for panel data to investigate stationarity. Finally, long- and short-run relationships between variables that have an effect on FDI are exhibited with panel cointegration tests and panel ARDL analysis. Among 17 candidate variables, internet, GDP, the freedom index and trade openness are determined to affect FDI. GDP,...
Politická ekonomie 2025, 73(1):58-87 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1449
The interaction between socioeconomic disparities and environmental degradation, which is highly pertinent to the issue of climate change, has garnered significant scholarly attention globally. Despite the critical importance of climate change in political economy, research into labour markets and environmental policies remains limited in the current literature. Therefore, the present study discusses the implementation of China's low-carbon city pilot policy (LCCPP) as an exogenous policy shock. Utilizing A-share data from listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges spanning the period 2007-2020, we employ a multiperiod difference-in-differences...
Politická ekonomie 2025, 73(1):31-57 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1450
This study investigates the effect of resource rent on infrastructural development in Africa and how governance institutions moderate this relationship. The pooled OLS and the dynamic system GMM estimation techniques are adopted with a panel of 52 African economies over the period 2005-2022. We find that resource rent significantly hampers infrastructural development in Africa, thereby reflecting the prevalence of the "natural resource curse" phenomenon. We also find that the unconditional effects of governance institutions are mainly negative and significant, which aptly reflects the presence of weak institutions in Africa. Interestingly, our results...
Politická ekonomie 2025, 73(1):1-30 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1451
The paper focuses on identifying the main factors affecting the motivation of labour market participation in connection to the system of assistance in material need and the subsistence minimum. The results of the analysis show that (i) assistance in material need itself lowers the motivation to work, but in Slovakia, the difference between net household income from work after finding a job and the net social income during unemployment is increasing in time; (ii) house-holds with incomes below the subsistence minimum react to these changes most sensitively; and (iii) increases in the assistance in material need negatively affect the motivation to work,...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(6):985-1013 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1446
This study investigates the relationship between economic complexity, globalization, energy consumption patterns and CO2 emissions in 12 energy-importing emerging economies from 1996 to 2020. Employing panel data analysis, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is utilized. The findings reveal a U-shaped relationship between economic complexity and air pollution, supporting the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory. Renewable energy demonstrates a significant ability to reduce CO2 emissions over the long term, while fossil fuel use exacerbates environmental degradation. Economic globalization is associated with increased...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(6):958-984 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1443
This study aims to examine whether the price exuberances in the prices of four main precious metals stem from their status as safe havens against economic uncertainty (proxied by the US EPU and Chinese CEPU indices). The findings reveal that the effects of both uncertainty measures on gold and silver prices, notably more pronounced in the case of the CEPU, persist for longer, particularly during the surge of uncertainty triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. This finding highlights the safe-haven status of these metals, with a notable dominance of the CEPU in influencing the price dynamics of the gold and silver markets. However, as the observed price...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(6):923-957 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1441
Burnout is a widely studied issue that can have negative consequences for individuals. In this paper, we examine whether organizational culture and other included factors contribute to the presence of burnout symptoms (burnout indicators) during the COVID-19 period among public sector (public university) employees. Using factor and regression analysis, we found that organizational culture together with other individual aspects such as work-life balance and respondents' age can significantly influence the burnout indicators. The results are significant and robust at a given significance level. Our main contribution consists in the following: Firstly,...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(6):896-922 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1444
This article addresses the emergence of double-digit inflation in the Baltic states during 2022 and 2023, following decades of price stability. Utilizing monthly data spanning from January 2010 to February 2023, our study aims to comprehensively analyse the inflation dynamics in the Baltic context, considering both domestic and global factors. Through the application of the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) methodologies, we identify significant influences such as exchange rate fluctuations, food and energy price movements and geopolitical events, notably the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Our findings...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(6):867-895
The effects of the shadow economy on the environment have been amply documented in the literature; however, the relevance of financial inclusion and the unpredictability of economic policy are still up for debate. Therefore, this study examines the diverse effects of financial inclusion, shadow economies and economic policy on carbon emissions in 21 Sub-Saharan African countries from 2002 to 2019. To determine whether this hypothesis is true, this study uses the panel spatial correlation consistent (PSCC), method of moments quantile regression (MM-QR) and Dumitrescu-Hurlin (D-H) (2012) methodologies. The findings of the PSCC show that financial inclusion...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(6):841-866 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1442
The paper is a thematic analysis of 44 empirical studies that applied frontier techniques in analysing efficiency of Czech and Slovak commercial banks. The 44 journal articles were extracted from the Web of Science database and classified by prevailing research interest, methodological configuration and main findings in order to determine the state of the art and provide a starting point for further research in this subject area. The main research agenda of efficiency studies focused on Czech and Slovak banking was classified into eight relatively compact research interests ranging historically from effects of transition reforms to effects of asset...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(5):812-840 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1447
Practical analysis of the policies implemented by countries successful in the field of science and technology is crucial, especially in the context of optimal policy selection for countries needing technological development. In this context, ranking the world's countries in terms of technological development is important for increasing the effectiveness of the policies to be implemented in this field. This study ranks 28 OECD countries on seven key science and technology indicators in 2022 using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods. In the analysis, first, the importance of the variables was ranked based on the entropy method. Then, a ranking...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(5):780-811 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1433
Socio-economic and political systems are becoming increasingly unstable under the influence of various recent global events. The resilience of territorial units and their ability to respond to new challenges is significantly different in both the international and national context. In the presented work, we try to quantify the level of socio-economic resilience of Slovak regions and districts, while evaluating its state in time sections (2010 and 2020) capturing two crisis periods: the global economic and financial crisis and the onset of the crisis associated with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We use a set of indicators that reflect the demographic, economic,...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(5):752-779 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1426
Exchange rate expectations are a crucial element in the main monetary models. Therefore, this paper analyses the mechanism behind their formation. To achieve this, we analyse traditional expectation models using data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) for the CZK/EUR currency pair. The data used cover one-year expectations in the period from January 2001 to December 2022, which are provided monthly by the Czech National Bank (CNB). The paper demonstrates the poor performance of the perfect expectation model. Furthermore, it demonstrates that traditional models, such as static, extrapolative, regressive and adaptive expectations, exhibit...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(5):727-751 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1421
In accord with international transfer pricing regulations, the borrower's creditworthiness is the main factor to be reflected in valuation of cross-border loan transactions between associated enterprises. However, trouble invariably arises for small and medium-sized enterprises that do not have an assigned credit rating. The aim of this paper is to determine the most reliable predictors of a company's credit rating for European entities facing missing rating coverage for the purpose of transfer pricing. Based on 2015-2019 data sourced from the Orbis database, the study examines key financial ratios and non-financial information that could be instrumental...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(4):702-726 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1436
Over a period of more than three decades from 1982 to 2019, this study examines the impact of financial globalization on financial development, taking into account differences between developed and developing countries. It also examines sub-indices of financial-development and provides a comprehensive perspective on the topic. The analyses in this study use the Durbin-Hausman panel cointegration test, which provides more precise and less biased results for panel data with a large number of units and the augmented mean group (AMG) estimator, which combines the advantages of both fixed-effects and random-effects estimators to provide more efficient and...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(4):676-701 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1412
This study examines the significant influence of oil price fluctuations on the economies of oil--exporting countries. While elevated oil prices can result in foreign currency inflows and advantages for oil-exporting countries, they can also trigger adverse effects, including a reduction in manufacturing sectors and a loss of price competitiveness due to currency appreciation. This research focuses on the period from 2004Q1 to 2021Q4, examining the influence of oil price fluctuations on key macroeconomic indicators in Russia, including industrial production, exchange rates, inflation and interest rates. The structural VAR model findings confirm that...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(4):653-675 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1430
Remittances are a major source of income for many countries. In this regard, the importance of remittances to national economies is increasing. Altruism and self-interest are the two main motivations for remitting. Economic policy uncertainty may determine which of these motivations is more prevalent. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the altruism and self-interest hypotheses. In this study, unbalanced panel data are used to analyse the remittances received by the top 10 countries. These countries account for half of all remittances in the world. Due to cross-sectional dependence in our dataset, we need to use methods with robust standard...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(4):626-652 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1424
The tourism industry has flourished considerably over the years in Turkey and has competed with top international destinations. This study aims to identify the structural breaks specific to Turkey with a developing capital market and examine the causality relationship between tourism index return and financial, macroeconomic and tourism industry development indicators from January 2005 to February 2022. The MS-VAR econometric model based on two regimes detects nonlinear and asymmetrical structures in the dataset. Our findings indicate local effects of shocks on financial and macroeconomic indicators during regime transition periods. Furthermore, there...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(4):597-625 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1429
This critical review explains the negative impact of the euro on the Spanish economy and its distortion in the period from 2002 to 2014. In this first cycle within the euro area, there was a financial boom, without voluntary savings, which generated a lack of coordination in the economic process and structure. The result was a bubble of overconsumption and malinvestments, which burst with a deflation of capital and wages, and a switch from construction industry to tourism services as Spain's main economic sector. The economic distortion was such that it delayed the exit from the Great Recession of 2008 and the European Financial Crisis of 2010 until...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(3):565-596 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1416
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a brand-new disruptive procedure that encourages the use of blockchain technology for developing and distributing a variety of financial goods and services. This study investigates the time-varying and asymmetric interplay between DeFi and CEE stock returns, concentrated around the COVID-19 outbreak and the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. While the associations between other cryptocurrencies and conventional assets have been studied, DeFi assets have not. For this purpose, we employ the multivariate DECO-GARCH model and cross-quantilogram framework. The results reveal a positive equicorrelation between DeFi and CEE stock market...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(3):501-564 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1418
We investigate the effects of trade openness and international financial inflows (including foreign direct investment, remittances and foreign aid inflows) on Africa's productive capacity and how governance institutions are moderating these effects. We adopt the dynamic system GMM modelling framework and the Bun and Carree (2005) bias-corrected least square dummy variable estimator with a panel of 43 African economies. We also use the Driscoll and Kraay (1998) standard error fixed effect estimation, which controls for cross-sectional dependence to provide robustness check. We find that trade openness and the various components of international financial...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(3):478-500 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1415
This study aims to investigate whether clean energy exchange traded funds (ETFs) exhibit long-term memory properties and whether the efficient market hypothesis is valid for these assets. The results of the model established to test the dual long memory indicate the existence of long memory in both return and volatility of the ICLN, PBD, PBW series, while the long memory feature is found only in the volatility of the other variables. The results reveal that the selected clean energy ETFs do not exhibit weak efficient market characteristics and volatility has a predictable structure. These results mean that by using the past price movements of clean...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(3):446-477 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1409
This study investigates the effects of information and communications technology (ICT) on economic growth. Our study focuses on 16 MENA countries from 1995 to 2018. We examine not only the impact of ICT usage and investment but also the moderating role of the quality of national institutions shaping this relationship. The results obtained using the panel ARDL method suggest that while ICT usage drives economic growth, ICT investment alone has a limited effect. Moreover, our research confirms that higher-quality institutions boost the impact of ICT use and investment on economic expansion. These results are essential for policymakers who want to boost...
Politická ekonomie 2024, 72(3):431-445 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1427
The literature on economic uncertainty has focused on the effects of uncertainty on the formal economy. Still, it has not addressed a relationship between uncertainty and shadow economy until now, to our knowledge. Therefore, this paper analyses the dynamic relationship between economic policy uncertainty and the shadow economy using panel vector autoregression estimates exploiting a dataset for 21 countries from 1997-2018. The impulse response analyses in this context reveal a mutual interaction of policy uncertainty and the shadow economy. In this respect, not only is the shadow economy found to respond to shocks in economic policy uncertainty, but...
Politická ekonomie 2024, Volume 72(2), Special Issue: 306-330 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1434
The energy transition process might face cognitive bankruptcy because of prevailing gender bias in the energy sector. Policy reorientation is needed to ensure diminishing of gender bias in the transition process. The political risk persisting within the economy, as well as among its international counterparts, also needs to be internalized within this framework. Existing regulatory infrastructure might possibly have an impact on shaping the dimensions of this association. The present study aims at analysing the effect of energy transition on gender inequality in the USA in light of political risk and regulations. Moderation effects are captured using...
Politická ekonomie 2024, Volume 72(2), Special Issue: 403-430 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1440
To better promote the transformation of the economic development mode and improve technological innovation, the Chinese central government adjusted the performance assessment criteria for local officials. This study explores whether the government green performance assessment can serve to promote technological innovation. Data from 288 Chinese cities from between 2009 and 2018 is taken as the sample and the fixed effects model is utilized as the methodology. The findings show that the government green performance assessment has significant direct and long-term effects on technological innovation. The promotion of technological innovation is more evident...
Politická ekonomie 2024, Volume 72(2), Special Issue: 375-402 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1439
The transition towards green and clean energy sources is the need of the day and a key target for several economies across the globe. Besides, emerging economies also aim to minimize fossil fuel dependence, promoting the adoption of green electricity. However, several obstacles, including governance, corruption and economic-related issues, are forthcoming in attaining sustainability in the context of green energy. This research examines seven emerging economies from 1990 to 2020. The study uses novel panel diagnostic assessment approaches, which validate the slope heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence and confirm the cointegration between the...
Politická ekonomie 2024, Volume 72(2), Special Issue: 357-374 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1438
Exploring the political economy of clean energy development, this study appraises how political (de)stabilization influences the clean energy transition process in selected South Asian countries. Using yearly data spanning from 1998 to 2021, the results show that political stabilization facilitates the clean energy transition process by raising the share of renewables in the final energy consumption profiles of the concerned South Asian nations. Contrarily, political destabilization is found to inhibit the transition process. In addition, political stabilization is witnessed to partially offset the clean energy transition-inhibiting impact of rising...
Politická ekonomie 2024, Volume 72(2), Special Issue: 331-356 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1437
The urgent need to address climate change and the depletion of natural resources has led governments worldwide to allocate significant resources towards research and development in clean energy technologies and energy efficiency. This study evaluates the effectiveness of renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives in reducing CO2 emissions, taking into account the influences of natural resource availability and political risk. Using data from France spanning from 1985 to 2021, we employ the kernel-based regularized least squares (KRLS) methodology, complemented by quantile regression (QR), to analyse these relationships. Our findings...
Politická ekonomie 2024, Volume 72(2), Special Issue: 278-305 | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1425
In the contemporary times, with the major conflict of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the global economies are facing several challenges and disputes in various economic, energy, and financial sectors. Still, policymakers and scholars are concerned about exploring factors affecting greener energy. The present study examines the impact of research and development (R&D) budgets, financial globalization and socio-economic conditions on greener energy adoption. Besides, this study considers the role of internal and external conflicts on greener energy adoption in the "Emerging Seven" economies during the period 1990-2020. Using various diagnostic and cointegration...
