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A representative survey of adult population is used to analyse perceptions of existing income inequality and preferences for ideal income distribution in the Czech Republic. On average, Czechs view the distribution of disposable income as more unequal than it actually is. This biased perception results from underestimating total income shares belonging to bottom quintiles and overestimating the total income share belonging to the top income quintile. Whereas the majority of Czechs prefer some level of income stratification, there are about four tenths of people who would prefer to live in a completely equal society. These are primarily older, less educated and lower income people whose preferences formulated under uncertainty are mostly consistent with the maximin principle and inequality aversion. Almost a fifth of Czechs would prefer an income distribution consistent with efficiency concerns.

The paper aims to show a comprehensive insight into the history of business economics science in the Czech Republic, marginally also on the European continent and worldwide. It depicts business economics in its beginning as a doctrine that was largely underestimated. This science was, for a very long time, a part of economics (national/public); only slowly has it gradually become an autonomous branch of science. This article shows historical attitudes to the theory of business in Bohemia as well as abroad since the end of the nineteenth century up to this day. It describes the period of statism in Bohemia within the context of business economics, it focuses on fundamentals of this science and depicts consecutively aspects from which the theory of business economics as a science arises in the transition period to free market economy. The paper discusses the future of business economics as a science that, considering current economic conditions worldwide, has a huge potential to grow. The article contributes to the worldwide discussion about its further development.

The article is focused on the mutual relationship among effective tax burden, size of government spending and economic growth. Its aim is to verify the effect of taxation and government spending on economic growth, but also to verify the effect of taxation and economic growth on the size of government spending. The analysis is methodologically based on a panel VAR model where taxation is approximated by standard Tax Quota as well as an alternative World Tax Index (WTI), which was compiled by the authors. The data cover the period of 2005 - 2010 for the OECD countries. The results of empirical analyzes show that economic growth is positively influenced by government spending, while the effect of taxation is negative for all types of taxes. Government expenditures are negatively influenced by both economic growth and the size of the taxation. We come also to the conclusion that WTI is preferable approximator of the tax burden than the Tax Quota, and may be used in further empirical analyzes.

The article is the authors' polemic against the review of their book Economic and Social History of Czechoslovakia, Volume II 1945-1992, which was published by Antonie Doležalová in Politická ekonomie No. 3/2012. In this context, the article also deals with general issues of economic historiography, particularly with the development and object of investigation of economic history, periodization of the economic development of Czechoslovakia after World War II, external and internal impacts on the economy, construction of statistical data and terminological problems.

The ageing of population and its economical, social and political consequences is a topic very frequently discussed. This paper contains the analysis of consequences of the ageing of the Czech population during this century based on the population projection using the latest available data reflecting the results of the last census in 2011. Besides the usual simple (and of course very crude) measures of economic dependency in the population (e.g. various dependency ratios) the paper contains a computation of a more sophisticated measure - the ratio of social dependency - which takes into account not only the amount of personal consumption but also costs of education and health care.

This paper introduces possibilities for applying the economics of religion in Central European context. It reviews economic literature on religion, both the modern tradition of economic analysis of religious behavior and the Weberian tradition of analyzing consequences of religion for economy. Two local applications are used for illustration. The first one is an analysis of religious participation in post-communist countries; the second one is an examination of the role of religion in the post-communist transition. Changes in religious participation can be interpreted, among other models, using a model of individual time allocation. This model provides a good explanation for the post-communist period. The examination of the role of religion in the post-communist transition indicates that Western Christianity provides better conditions for introducing free market institutions as compared to Orthodox Christianity and Islam. Suggestions for further research are provided in the conclusion.

We analyze the changes in Czech economic higher education after February 1948, focusing on the policy of the Communist Party, the role of individual politicians and the process of a multiple reorganization of universities which were dedicated to educate future economists. The study deals with specific circumstances in which the University of Economics, Prague was founded. The findings are based primarily on non-released documents from the records office of the University of Economics in Prague, Archives of the Czech Technical University in Prague, interviews with eyewitnesses and released sources of personal provenience. We came to the conclusion that the University of Economics in Prague emerged from a massive reform of the economic education system which had been commenced by the Communist Party after 1948. The new university was a result of a political decision and squaring with the so called Slánism of the University of Political and Economic Sciences. It also was a content and personnel continuation of the earlier University of Economic Sciences CTU. The guarantors of this reorganization were Felix Oliva and Vladimir Sedlák, the first chancellor of the University of Economics, Prague.

The recent financial and economic crisis has put considerable strains not only on public but also on private finances. In the paper we analyse the development of nonfinancial corporate debt (measured as liabilities minus shares and other equities) in the time period 1995-2010 for 17 European OECD countries. In growth equations the dependent variable is the growth rate of real GDP per head and forward moving averages of this growth rate. Descriptive statistics reveal that in the examined period the nonfinancial corporations' debt has been rising steadily (first of all in Sweden, the Netherlands and Portugal). The basic estimation technique has been panel fixed effects corrected for heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation. The coefficients showing the impacts of corporate debt on GDP growth have had the sign minus and have been highly statistically significant. A 10 percentage point increase in nonfinancial corporations' debt has been associated with an approximately 5 basis point reduction in per head real GDP growth. We have used also cross-section specific and period specific coefficients to gain a more profound look into the matter.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze awarded scientific degrees at the University of Economics, Prague (EUP) in the fifties of 20th century. Methodological approaches of economic, social, cultural and political history, economics and statistics were pursued and required in this study. An interdisciplinary approach that enabled further determination of factors will serve as the approach for all subsequent research of the UEP position in science in the fifties of the 20th century. Yet untapped primary sources from UEP Scientific Council Meetings were used, also published sources, newspapers, etc. We came to the conclusion that UEP failed to significantly increase the number of professors and associate professors in the first seven years of its existence. The reasons behind were: 1) Policy of the Communist leadership that followed cadre policies which frustrated many personalities and prevented them a chance to work for universities. 2) Only highly politically reliable teachers were awarded. 3) Bureaucratic apparatus rigidity and poor flexibility of the Ministry of Education and the State Committee for Scientific Degrees. 4) Ongoing continual changes in laws and regulations. 5) Lack of experienced teachers who had also been overwhelmed with paperwork and various out of university activities so they had little time to immerse in intense research activity. Analysis showed that some of the preferred fields after 1948 such as political economy were not preferred at the expense of others.

This article is a contribution to the discussion of national competitiveness as a concept for analysis of international economic relations. The main goal is the critical reflection of the concept. We consider the Paul Krugman's and Richard Baldwin's remarks regarding the problems associated with using competitiveness as an analytical concept still valid when restrained to the domain of neoclassical economics. Moreover - even though the competitiveness is widely accepted as an analytical concept - we believe a number of problems associated with its current use exist (both in theory and in process of policy formations). Mainly, there is confusion between the micro and macro-economic understanding of concept which stems from confusion between individual and national/territorial level of analysis. We also believe that even if new trade theory (increasing returns and strategic trade) is taken into account, it is quite problematic to formulate policy recommendation for structural and industrial policy on its grounds. When the assumptions of neoclassical economics are loosened, the concept of competitiveness might prove valid. Finally we stress than even if this is the case the sensitiveness of the most of recommendations for competitiveness promotion to retaliation and potential damage resulting to international economic regime from its enforcement is rather high.

Economic growth of the Czech Republic measured by GDP reached 3,4 % per annum in the decade 2001-2010 and was substantially faster than average annual growth of the European Union. Strong acceleration in the years 2005-2007 was followed by stagnation in the years 2008-2012 caused by strong decline of GDP in the year 2009 and milder recession in the year 2012. The modest recovery in the years 2010 and 2011 was pulled namely by foreign trade, while final consumption and gross fixed capital formation stagnated. Alternative indicator of national income was negatively influenced by growing outflow of primary incomes. Real gross domestic income indicates different results in comparison with gross domestic product because of changes in the terms of trade. Macroeconomic stability improved substantially in the field of foreign trade while general government deficit contributed to its deterioration.

Teachings of economic policy were present at the VŠE from its inception in 1953 needless to say that most activities were highly influenced by the ruling political climate. Despite all limitations there were some achievements of value, esp. works of prof. Olšovský and his team in 50s and early 60s. Till the economic reform of Ota Šik was real engagement people from the VŠE in economic policy limited (Kurt Rozsypal arrived to the VŠE years after his reform was already enacted). 70s were again years of high political infl uence characterized by creation of Institute of Marxism-Leninism where consisting of all original social science departments. 80s were characterized by the hidden duality of teaching when dominating teachings of political economy of socialism was supplemented by teachings of political economy of capitalism mostly in a guise of history of economic theories. In 90s a full renaissance of economic policy as a subject followed.

This paper deals with the topic of experimental computations and estimation of regional GDP components by expenditure approach in the NUTS 3 regions of the Czech Republic. As huge amount of data is necessary, this topic has not been successfully solved by official statistics yet. Just one expenditure component - gross fixed capital formation - is regionally published by the Czech Statistical Office, the others, such as final household consumption expenditures, government expenditures or net export balance, are estimated in this paper. Also the net savings of regions are experimentally computed. Different data sources needed to be used for estimations; apart from Czech Statistical Office and Institute for Regional Information data other sources as transportation statistics, health statistics etc. had to be employed. An important related issue is also the regional price level problem, whose implications are discussed in the paper as well. Finally regional differences in the structure of regional GDP are examined.

In January 2008 the Czech Republic introduced the environmental taxation based on the directive 2003/96/EC, restructuring the Community framework for the taxation of energy products and electricity. Environmental taxes are imposed on electricity, solid fuels and natural gas. This paper discusses impacts of environmental taxation in the Czech Republic in the period after its implementation, particularly impacts on price indexes of energy intensive sectors, structure of energy products consumption in the economy and production of CO2 emissions by sectors ranking among EU ETS. The paper is divided into six parts. The first part is the introduction where both the main target of the paper and four hypotheses for testing are formulated. The theoretical problems which are connected with the impact of taxation and tax incidence are discussed in the second part. The third part describes the ideas and expectations of lawmakers regarding environmental taxation implementation, precisely European Commission, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic. In the fourth part authors describe the methodology and data, provide results of ex-post analysis based on both linear and non-linear correlation analyses. The next part deals with the discussion of the results and the hypotheses testing. The last part, conclusion, focuses on the main ex-post analysis findings and formulates the recommendations.

As of 2015, the yearly number of live births in the Czech Republic will probably be lower than the number of deaths. Latest population forecast, presented by the Czech Statistical Office in 2013, shows that without permanent international immigration the population of the Czech Republic would decrease. The paper presents the results of our own population forecast, which takes into account the recent fertility increase observed in 2013-2015, and the replacement migration concept, i.e. the estimate of the amount of annual net migration needed to stabilize the Czech Republic population size at its current size (10.6 million of inhabitants) until the end of this century. Three different scenarios of future fertility levels are assumed. We also compare our results with the population forecast without migration and with constant net migration. Additionally to the population forecast itself, we present future trends in the productive, post-productive and old-age population, and compute old-age dependency ratios. We define the upper threshold of the productive age in agreement with the increasing retirement age in the Czech Republic. Based on our findings, we conclude that immigration is not able to stop the population ageing process as such, but can partially eliminate its consequences. Possible opportunities, as well as migration risks, are also discussed.

The aim of our paper is to identify factors that influence the territorial selection and allocation of development aid of the Czech Republic. We applied random-effects probit and tobit models in our regression analysis which revealed that flows of Czech aid to individual developing countries are determined by variety of factors. Czech interests and mutual relations were mostly identified as statistically significant determinants, namely export volumes, closer historical relations and geographical proximity. The presence of Czech embassy in a country was not confirmed as a significant factor. The reflection of recipients' needs in Czech aid selection and allocation is rather ambiguous. While Czech aid flows depend positively on total population and negatively on per capita income of recipient countries, they are positively influenced by the recipients' level of social development. Similarly, the Czech Republic tends to give (more) aid to more democratic and freer countries with lower institutional quality.

This article deals with multistate demography approach applied on the labour market. The multistate demography - methodology and history - are briefly described. The application of this method is presented using transitions between economically active and inactive states on the labour market and among economically inactive, employed and unemployed states. Estimation based on the Labour Force Sample Survey (LFSS) for the Czech Republic shows that during the life course (15-64 years of age) the expected length of stay for each state changes depending on the original state and age. Main differences were found for younger (25-40 years) and older (55+ years) persons.

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 aim of the research is to show differences between characteristics of insolvency proceedings of traditional and virtual enterprises. This paper focuses on results of insolvency proceedings in the case of enterprises which do not have a traditional headquarter. Instead of the traditional headquarter these enterprises are registered at virtual addresses for a purpose of business register. Among the professional public this institute enables discussions about lower transparency and even functioning of grey-area. First the paper analyzes results for enterprises with virtual address and second these results are compared with traditional enterprises. Research questions are based on probability of insolvency proposal, kind of bankruptcy (with default and without default) and level of creditors' satisfaction. The used data are extracted from business as well as insolvency register. The gained results show that there are significant differences between the insolvency proceedings of traditional and virtual enterprises which have in this case higher probability of insolvency, lower level of creditor's satisfaction and therefore many cases finish without default due to enterprises' property emptiness.

This article analyses the development of the public procurement market in the Czech Republic in the period from 2008 to the present in connection with the adoption of new legislation relating to the Act on Public Procurement no. 137/2006. This text evaluates the objectives of legislative changes (transparency, increase in competition powers and effective price enforcement) exa-mined from the viewpoint of selected parameters of the procurement market. It was found that the transparency in terms of reducing the use of the restricted procedure of public procurement improved and the share of public contracts conducted under the new Act on Public Procurement increased immediately after new legislation. This article positively evaluates a drop in one-offer contracts and continuous tendency towards lower price levels of the public procurement. This analysis includes identification of the impact of an accelerated drawdown of funds from EU programs in connection with the end of the program period in 2015. Based on the analysis's conclusions, there are obvious limits of the positive impact of the new legislation.

We analyze how efficiency of firms in the Czech Republic is affected by their size, age, competition, capital structure, ownership types, and global financial crisis. We employ the stochastic frontier approach, use a large and detailed dataset, and cover time span 2001-2012. While effects of firm characteristics are small, the effects of ownership are economically substantial. We show that majority owners are most contributive with respect to firm's efficiency when compared to other categories we analyze. Minority owners with legally grounded power are able to impose significant efficiency improvement. The effect of the foreign ownership is strongest when foreign owners control firms with less than majority of voting power. Minority owners sharing the control do not seem to contribute to efficiency. The impact of crisis is not balanced but can be regarded as marginally positive in general. The firms' characteristics change only a little. In contrast, worsening impact of the crisis is evidenced for controlling ownership categories. Minority owners exhibit a limited disciplining effect to improve efficiency after the crisis, though.

This article analyses the options how changes in Czech tax-benefit system could increase mother´s economic activity. The article builds up on the study (previous author´s study published in 2015). This underlying study presents a calculation according to which women, taking care of children up to 3 years, results with a lower net cash flow after returning to work compare to staying at home. The aim is to propose measures that would motivate women, with children up to 3 years, to return to work and simultaneously quantify the impact of these measures on the state budget. Economic effects of the proposed measures are quantified, including the cancelation of conditional entitlement to parental benefit, introduction of tax relief for working mothers and 50% relief on employer's mandatory contributions, which employ parents part-time. Implementation of these measures, which would motivate more women to return to work, would bring an estimated net income amounting to 9.5 billion crowns to the state budget per year.

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.

The article discusses the approaches and options for identification of equilibrium exchange rate. It focuses mainly on the outcomes of behavioural (BEER) and fundamental (FEER) model of the equilibrium exchange rate of the Czech Koruna, which are presented in both nominal and real terms. The results of both models of equilibrium exchange rate (BEER and FEER) showed significant long-term appreciation trend, mainly due to faster growth in labour productivity in the Czech Republic compared to the euro area. The results also confirmed the estimates of exchange rate overvaluation by mid-1997 and in 1998, 2002 and 2008. Since 2009, the model suggests a significant slowdown in the appreciation of the equilibrium mainly due to slowing domestic growth rate of labor productivity compared to the euro area.

There is a growing effort to find alternative measures of the overall performance of economy and social development. More complex indicators are constructed, multi-dimensional approaches are searched and concepts of subjective well-being are increasingly applied. While academic research is booming and politicians are interested about innovative approach in the West, not much attention is given to the topic in the Czech Republic. The article drafts some of many problems appearing on the interface of the objective and subjective indicators. In the first section, some multi-dimensional approaches are tackled and in the second, concepts of happiness and satisfaction are overviewed. The relationship between economic growth and human happiness is described next. In the fourth section, survey data on reported happiness in the Czech Republic, ready for analysis and comparison, are described. In the conclusion, perspectives of research in the area are outlined, together with a possible use of subjective indictors in policies.

This paper aims to contribute to the theoretical discussion of free trade and protectionism in international trade within the context of International political economy. Presented approach broadens the standard political economy view of trade policy and goes beyond the redistribution consequences and the political consideration of policy makers. Our interpretation of trade policy works with broader economic values and preferences of individual actors and understands the nation state and its policies as institutions. Social, cultural and historical context is taken into consideration, when interpreting the trade policy. More complex understanding of these determinants helps to explain contemporary trade policies and also their dynamic change. Paper also discuss the links between the trade policy and other economic (structural and industrial) policies and attract attention to possible misunderstandings in contemporary free trade discourse.

The article evaluates the distributional impacts of the value added tax changes in the Czech Republic using the Household Budget Survey, a representative sample of approximately 3000 households. It evaluates the impacts on the living standards both for the VAT reform that was actually approved in 2011, as well as for alternative reform proposals that were discussed during 2011 and that also considered a reduction in payroll tax rates. The estimates refl ect the recent empirical fi ndings about the incidence of consumption and payroll taxes. Unifying the VAT at a single tax rate has an almost proportional impact on the households from the 2nd to impact 10th income decile while having a disproportionately larger impact on the poorest decile. A reduction in the payroll tax would have reduced the progressivity of the tax system across the entire income range.

In the second half of the year 2000 the intensity of the economic integration of the country with EU economies was on a very high level. Czech law system has already absorbed and transposed major part of the acquis and has advanced also in building adequate administrative capacities to implement it. In spite of this several problems and barriers have blocked the road to accession, both on the EU side and on the Czech side as well. In the end the outlooks of the real convergence of the Czech economy to the EU average based on Czech, EU and Austrian calculations are commented.

This paper analyzes the effects of macroeconomic shocks on the government debt dynamics in an open economy using the analytical framework of Favero and Giavazzi (2007) extended to an open economy. Applying this modelling approach to the data for the Czech Republic, the authors derive some implications for fiscal policy. The modelling framework includes structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model, estimated using short-term identification restrictions, and non-linear specification of the government debt dynamics. The main variables of the analyzed system are GDP, inflation, the effective interest rate on government debt, government revenues and expenditures, the exchange rate and government debt. The estimation is carried out using the Bayesian approach. The results suggest that allowing for a non-linear dynamics in the government debt to GDP ratio could imply stronger persistence and higher volatility in the responses of government indebtedness to macroeconomic shocks. The fiscal stance of the Czech Republic seems to be most vulnerable to unexpected depreciation of the local currency, discretionary pro-cyclical increases in government expenditures, and deflationary shocks.

This paper examines two rules concerning translation right as a part of copyright - the existing rule which gives an author or a copyright owner control over the translation of his works and a new rule that removes the translation right from the copyright owner. It adopts the approach of Gordon (1992) and evaluates these rules using the concept of asymmetric market failure and a gametheoretic framework. In each case, conditions are stated