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The beginning of modern times, in contrast to the previous era, is still characterized by a growing importance of labour in human life. The article is focused on the new social policy and the evolution of institutions called workhouses and house of corrections which illustrate the growing meaning of labour. Workhouses, however they were seen as benevolent equipment, they have been strengthened also with practically advantageous symbiosis undertaken principles of mercantilism. Despite the controversial practice of workhouses, we can consider them as the most important stage in the long term evolution of active labour market policy. Labour as a topos of modern social policy identified new opportunities to help the poor and anticipated various forms of active labour market policies of modern times.

The paper analyses the developments on the Czech labor market in 1996 - 2000 from the perspective of economic adjustment: employment, unemployment and active labor market policies. On the one hand increasing economic pressures intensified the pace of the changes. On the other hand signals of hysteresis on the supply-side of the labor market may be identified: worsening efficiency of job-search, growth of long-term unemployment, increasing level of NAIRU. Since the flexibility of the labor markets seems to be crucial for successful economic adjustment and economic growth within contemporary de-industrialized and globalized economy, role of active labor market policies may be more important to influence the flexibility of the labor-force.

The Impact of Immigration on Occupational Specialization of European Union Citizens The article tests whether the impact of immigration on native workers differs depending on the business cycle. Previous studies proved that labor mobility and the effect of immigration differs with respect to the business cycle. For the expansionary years was found a sizable relocation of native workers to occupations with more interactive rather than manual content as a response to immigration. This is no longer the case for economy in recession period. However, there is null impact on native employment that does not change with the business cycle. The European labor market has been studied just in the period before crisis. Following the study about Spanish task specialization we would like to see if there is any change of impact of immigration on native task specialization in European Union. We split the data on the time period of expansion and the time period of economic crisis using the European Labor Force Survey. We would like to examine the effect of immigration on task specialization of natives on three groups of countries, West Europe, Germany and Middle and East Europe. The results show that the impact changes with the economic cycle and the country group.

The aim of the article is to describe effects of selected institutional factors on structural and cyclical unemployment. The theoretical and methodological basis of institutional aspects of the labour market functioning draws from a number of previously published studies. Factors are modified for national conditions of the Visegrad Group (hereinafter V4). The article compares NAIRU estimates of previously fine-tuned models with estimates of models extended by selected institutional factors. The difference between these groups will then be compared with development of relevant variables of the real economy. That will allow us to determine whether the institutional factor infl uenced structural or cyclical unemployment. We will also specify the intensity of its negative influence on the two types of unemployment. The final results of the analysis are compared with results of previous studies and world literature data.

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 aims to analyse the effects of the start-up subsidy programme for unemployed in the Czech Republic, which is provided by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. We explored to what extent participants in the programme in 2014 returned to unemployment three years after the end of the programme, i.e., 2014-2017. Methodologically, we conducted counterfactual impact analysis, where we matched participants in the programme with those who were not supported by any measures of active labour market policy. The results show that participants in the programme return to unemployment to a lesser extent. In total, they spent fewer days in unemployment during the follow-up period, and they returned to unemployment fewer times when compared with non-participants. Overall, 91.3% of participants never returned to unemployment during the analysed period. These results can be interpreted as a positive outcome of the programme. The article also offers implications for targeting the programme and for future research.

The aim of the presented paper is to estimate the cost of unemployment in the Slovak Economy. The cost of unemployment can be divided into a direct component, composed of decreasing government revenues due to reduced direct taxes and social contribution payments from the employees and the employers; increased public spending on unemployment benefi ts, social security and health insurance and finally increased expenditures on running the administration of unemployed persons and active labor market policies. The second part, consisting of indirect costs, is composed of one component, represented by the decreasing collection of indirect taxes. The analysis showed that the average estimated real monthly cost per one unemployed throughout the years 2008-2012 fall within the range from 416 euros to 588 euros.

The article deals with the modelling of the costs of unemployment of young jobseekers in Slovakia. This modelling used real data on young unemployed who participated in the intervention Contribution to the Graduate Practice, which is one of the measures of active labour market policy in Slovakia. The main objective of this study is to quantify the costs that have to be paid from the state budget of Slovakia for the unemployment of these young graduates. The analysis was performed using the counterfactual method of Propensity Score Matching, which was followed by a measurement of employability and sustainability of jobs after completing the intervention and the associated costs of the unemployment of the scheme participants and individuals in the control group during the intervention impact period. The results of this modelling indicate that although young graduates in the intervention are not able to repay the aid to the state budget on average, their participation in the intervention spared the state budget on average from almost 20% to 70% of the money spent on each unemployed individual. These results are important for policy-makers to set optimal terms of the intervention and the amount of grants provided so as to have the greatest impact on lowering the costs of unemployment of young graduates.

The paper discusses Federal reserve's monetary policy during banking crisis interim 1929 - 1933. Main goal of the paper is to discuss the monetary policy implementation problems during 1930s based on Real-bills and Riefler-Burgess doctrine. First part of the paper reveals possible conflict between FED's monetary tools and targets arising from gold exchange standard. Expansionary monetary policy during banking crisis was potentially strongly limited by conflict among U.S. financial stability and sustainability of the gold standard. The second part describes monetary policy implementation during 1920s. The third part discusses FED's open market operations during the banking crisis and the fourth part explains the behavior of the interest rates. Finally, the work concludes that FED managed liquidity of U.S. banking system inappropriately and caused many bank deposit suspensions. FED considered monetary condition to be easy and sufficient to cover needs of production. Money interest rates responded very moderately to shortage of banking system's liquidity. We can find the origin of quantitative easing in 1932 when FED first bought large quantities of government securities. This policy was insufficient because of short term duration and the gold outflow neutralizations.

The paper is aimed at assessing efficiency of adopted measures of the concept of flexicurity in Sweden and Czech Republic in 2006-2015. It examines hypothesis that the matching process can be made more efficient by increasing the labour market flexibility. The Beveridge curve depicting the relationship between the unemployment and job vacancies is used to demonstrate a change in efficiency of labour market policies. The correlation analysis is used to address possible reasons for weaknesses of active labour market policies. Research findings show a better efficiency of the matching process in a rigid labour market, with the hypothesis being confirmed only for Czech Republic. However, the Czech labour market was fighting against higher imbalances than the Swedish one, throughout the whole period under review, with the most threatened unemployed having been both young and older people.

Abstract: This  article examines the development of the effectiveness of the Czech government fiscal policy in relation to the macroeconomic development in the period  of 1993-2015, as this problematic situation has not been published in professional journals yet. The most significant research results were: The Verification of the effectiveness of individual government´s fiscal policy in terms of smoothing the business cycle; An examination of the dependencies between the development of selected national economic parameters and the use of privatization receipts; An examination of the dependencies between the development of selected national economic parameters and expenditures from privatization revenues diversified into investment and non-investment. The stated objective and hypothesis determined the structure of empirical research, where economic growth, state budget deficit and growth of state budget revenues were selected as macroeconomic variables. First, descriptive statistics were prepared, followed by a chapter in which correlation coefficients are analyzed between macroeconomic variables and time series for privatization. The following is a test of mean value, by which it was verified whether the assumption of the different effect of individual governments is justified and statistically significant. The key part of the article is the determination of the determinants of the development of privatization, which is estimated by linear regression models, and the validity of the hypotheses is then evaluated through the results obtained by regression analyzes.

This paper employs a VAR model with economically meaningful structural restrictions to examine how monetary policy shocks originating from the FED and the ECB influence macroeconomic variables in Central European economies, specifically the Visegrad Group (V4). We investigate whether US monetary policy shocks impact the V4 independently or primarily through Germany. Our results indicate that US monetary policy shocks significantly affect V4 macroeconomic variables, at times equalling or surpassing the influence exerted by their European counterparts, even after accounting for indirect effects transmitted through Germany. Additionally, our findings highlight the dominance of the income absorption effect, leading to output contractions in these small open economies.

This study examines the link between cultural patterns and fiscal policy in 29 EU/EFTA countries. Using Ward’s clustering on Hofstede’s dimensions, five groups were formed. Results confirm that cultural clusters share similar tax and expenditure structures. Regression analysis shows that a 1% increase in individualism raises tax revenues by 0.686% and spending by 0.655% (social +0.740%, human capital +0.364%, classical +0.375%, economic +0.340%). A 1% rise in long-term orientation increases indirect tax shares by 0.717% and income taxes by 0.340%. Uncertainty avoidance (+1%) correlates with higher tax revenues (+0.164%) and indirect taxes (+0.298%). Dimensions like individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, restraint, and power distance differentiate expenditure structures. These findings indicate that cultural patterns significantly influence fiscal policies, posing challenges for a uniform EU fiscal model.

This study investigates the impact of the Central Bank of Turkeys (CBRT) unconventional monetary policy shift in 2021 particularly aggressive interest rate cuts on inflation and macroeconomic stability by applying the Synthetic Control Method (SCM). A synthetic counterfactual is constructed from countries with comparable macroeconomic characteristics to estimate what Turkeys inflation trajectory would have been in the absence of the policy change. The results reveal a sharp post-2021 inflation divergence between Turkey and its synthetic counterpart, suggesting that the surge in inflation was largely policy-induced. Placebo tests validate the statistical significance of the findings, while robustness checks confirm the stability of the results.

This study investigates the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness on labour productivity across 27 European Union (EU) countries between 2019 and 2024. Using a dynamic panel approach, we apply Pooled OLS, Fixed Effects, Difference GMM, and System GMM estimators to account for endogeneity and persistence in productivity. The System GMM model is preferred for its robustness and reliability. Results show that AI readiness positively influences labour productivity, though the effect remains modest, reflecting disparities in adoption across regions. Other significant drivers include foreign direct investment and R&D expenditure, while government consumption and labour costs have a negative impact. Unexpectedly, trade openness shows a negative association, likely due to structural differences in value chain integration. Education and institutional quality were statistically insignificant in the short term. The findings suggest that EU policymakers should prioritize AI implementation, digital infrastructure, skill development, and innovation to close regional gaps and promote inclusive productivity growth.

This study investigates the relationship between green finance and energy efficiency using panel data from 276 Chinese prefecture-level cities over the period 2006-2021. Employing a two-way fixed effects model and robustness checks including Tobit regression, propensity score matching, and lagged dependent variable approaches, we find that green finance significantly enhances energy efficiency. The positive effect is particularly pronounced in cities with higher levels of financial development. Mechanism analysis reveals that green finance promotes energy efficiency primarily through two channels: increasing market openness and accelerating industrial structure upgrading. Based on these findings, we recommend strengthening institutional support for green finance, leveraging regional financial advantages, deepening market reforms, and promoting industrial transformation to enhance energy efficiency and support sustainable development goals.

This study analyses the impact of inflation targeting on the external debt of middle-income countries using the propensity score matching (PSM) method. The results indicate that the adoption of inflation targeting is associated with a significant decrease in external debt, with an average reduction estimated at approximately 15.16 percentage points. This reduction reflects the enhanced credibility of monetary policy, which lowers the risk of default on public debt. These findings suggest that inflation targeting can be a useful tool for managing external debt and reducing fiscal pressures on public finances, but its effectiveness depends on its integration within a broader economic policy framework tailored to each country's specific conditions.

Energy plays a crucial role in driving global economic growth. As a result, global energy demand has risen sharply, leading to growing concerns about energy security. Despite its significance, few studies have explored the determinants of energy security risk. This analysis aims to fill this gap by examining the impact of green ICT, education, financial stability, and environmental policy stringency on energy security risk. To estimate the short and long-run estimates, this study employs the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model. The long-run estimates reveal that green information and communications technology (ICT), education, financial stability, energy innovation, and gross domestic product (GDP) cause the energy security risk to fall, whereas environmental policy stringency escalates the energy security risk. In the short-run, the results are meaningless for most variables except for the environmental policy stringency, which boosts the energy security risks, and the GDP, which mitigates the energy security risks. These results suggest that any policy designed to mitigate energy security risks should be based on integrating green ICT, financial stability, and education. However, environmental policy stringency should also be used with great caution, as it may escalate energy security risks.

The digital economy is unquestionably a globally recognized priority among nations, yet comprehensive scholarly discussions on the specific determinants driving its growth remain relatively limited. To fill this gap, this study pioneers an investigation into how research and development, natural resources, and economic policy uncertainty influence the digital economy in the United States, using data from 1996Q1 to 2020Q4. Given the nonlinear and non-normal distribution of the data, the study employed a series of quantile-based approaches, particularly the wavelet quantile-on-quantile regression (WQQR). The results from the WQQR reveal that research and development, globalization, economic growth, and economic policy uncertainty positively impact the digital economy, while the abundance of natural resources appears to hinder its growth. Based on these findings, policymakers in the United States should prioritize fostering innovation through R&D while addressing the challenges associated with natural resource dependence to drive the growth of the digital economy.

This study is the first to explore the effect of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on multidimensional financial development. Using data from 22 countries over 20 years (2002-2021) and employing fixed effects regression and two-step dynamic system GMM estimators, the results reveal a significant negative impact of EPU on financial development. This adverse effect spans both key dimensions: financial institutions and financial markets development. The analysis further highlights how EPU hampers key dimensions of financial institutions and markets\' performance - depth, access, and efficiency. Importantly, the study highlights the positive moderating role of institutional quality, which mitigates EPU\'s negative impact, reinforcing its importance in enhancing financial resilience. Furthermore, this study differentiates between elevated and mild EPU regimes, highlighting the capacity of the latter to significantly hinder financial development. These findings underscore the vital role of strong institutions in stabilizing financial systems amid policy uncertainty.

The US is the leading carbon emitter globally, and it has been confronting significant environmental issues. The fundamental reason behind these issues is massive non-renewable energy consumption. Therefore, energy management is required to curb environmental degradation. In order to reshape energy management policies, understanding the influencing factors of non-renewable energy is inevitable. Thus, the current study aims to explore the relationship between climate policy uncertainty and non-renewable energy consumption in the US by applying the novel wavelet quantile correlation framework. Additionally, using the augmented ARDL model, the study examines two transmission channels - energy pricing and clean technology - that link climate policy uncertainty to non-renewable energy consumption. For the core empirical analysis, a monthly time series dataset is used covering the period January 1990 to December 2019. The findings suggest that climate policy uncertainty initially decreases non-renewable energy consumption in the short run, but it also has a positive effect in the medium and long run. The analysis of transmission channels reveals that climate policy uncertainty can influence non-renewable energy consumption both positively, through the clean technology channel, and negatively, through the energy pricing channel. The findings from robustness analysis are consistent with baseline outcomes. As a result, the study recommends a set of policy implications, such as stabilizing climate policies in the US, protecting clean technology investments from fluctuations caused by CPU, potentially through mechanisms such as green bonds, loan guarantees, or tax incentives aimed at research and development in low-carbon technologies.

This study investigates the asymmetric effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU), geopolitical risk (GPR), and liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices on green bond returns in China from August 2012 to July 2022. Using quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR), quantile Granger causality, and wavelet coherence analysis, we examine the relationships between these factors and green bond prices across different quantiles. Our findings reveal significant asymmetric impacts of EPU, GPR, and LNG prices on Chinese green bond returns. Specifically, EPU, geopolitical threats (GPRT) and LNG prices show strong positive effects on green bonds across most quantiles and frequencies. In contrast, geopolitical acts (GPRA) generally exhibit negative relationships with green bond returns. The quantile Granger causality tests confirm bidirectional relationships between the variables across multiple quantiles. The wavelet coherence analysis demonstrates time-varying co-movements between the factors and green bond prices, with stronger correlations observed in recent years, particularly at medium to high frequencies. The results show that green bonds can be used as an effective hedge against economic uncertainty and geopolitical risks. At the same time, the findings have important implications for investors, policymakers, and market participants to develop effective risk management strategies and promote sustainable finance in the face of global economic and geopolitical challenges.

This study extends the heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) model by employing the principal component analysis (PCA) and scaled PCA (sPCA) methods on lagged heterogeneous realized volatilities to construct the HAR-PCA and HAR-sPCA models using high-frequency data from 20 stock indices. The in-sample fitting and out-of-sample forecasting performances consistently show that the HAR-PCA and HAR-sPCA models have superior performance. The findings suggest that the heterogeneous principal components of lagged volatilities alleviate the subjectivity associated with the selection of the heterogeneous lag terms. This emphasizes the importance of optimizing the long-period lags under the HAR framework to better capture the heterogeneity of investors.

This paper examines the profound effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on South Korean society, particularly focusing on the economic repercussions of a shock in energy use efficiency from Q1 2020 to Q3 2023. Employing advanced Bayesian estimation and impulse response function methods, the study reveals that enhanced energy use efficiency significantly boosts key economic metrics, including output, consumption, employment, energy use, real wages and investment. Additionally, an increase in real money holdings and a decrease in both deposit and loan interest rates are observed. The analysis further explores the impact of monetary policy adjustments made by South Korea to mitigate the economic challenges posed by the pandemic. Our results indicate that these policy shifts temporarily elevate the aforementioned economic variables and raise deposit and loan interest rates, despite a concurrent reduction in real wages. The findings provide critical insights for policy formulation and economic recovery strategies in the context of global health crises.

The relationship between monetary policy and inequality has received limited attention in the economics literature. This study aims to contribute to the literature by examining the relationship between monetary policy and income inequality in developing countries, specifically by analysing the results of the Turkish experiment. The local projection method was used to determine the relationship between monetary policy shocks, obtained through the VAR model, and the calculated inequality measures. The main findings of the study suggest that monetary policy can potentially influence the distribution of total income, particularly when the monetary policy shock is significant. The results indicate that monetary policy has a significant impact on income distribution, favouring property income. Moreover, this effect is most pronounced among the highest-income group, highlighting the heterogeneous nature of the impact across different income groups. However, the middle 20% group experiences the sharpest deterioration in income distribution following monetary policy shocks.

Emerging economies are consistently targeting advanced approaches to attain sustainable development while reducing their risk exposure and factors simultaneously. This research examines the influence of political risk, digitization and environmental policies, along with a set of economic and environmental factors, on the sustainable development of the BRICS economies. For the period from 1990 to 2020, the diagnostic tests confirmed a mixed order of integration. Therefore, the autoregressive distributed lag test is utilized and the results show that political risk, mineral resources and exports are harmful to sustainable development in the short run but significantly enhance sustainable development in the long run. On the other hand, environmental technologies are positively associated with sustainable development in the short run but transform into negative development in the long run. These diverse influences occur in the short and long run. The results indicate a consistent influence of digitization (positive) in both the short and long run. The long-run results are authenticated using panel fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS). Furthermore, the panel causality test validates diverse inferences regarding the causal association between the variables. Following the empirical outcomes, we recommend policies regarding equitable implementation of digital technologies, enhanced investment in environmental and green technologies, equitable resource management and a reduction in political risk, which could stimulate sustainable development.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize the importance of energy by making affordable and clean fuel access the focus of Goal 7. Energy poverty is a widespread issue globally, particularly in developing countries. Thus, this investigation inspects the drivers of energy poverty in Brazil using data from 1997Q1 to 2022Q4. The study introduces the wavelet Zivot-Andrews (WZA) unit root test, which modifies the traditional Zivot-Andrews (ZA) test by incorporating wavelet analysis, allowing decomposition of the time series into different time scales (short-term, medium-term and long-term). This enables the WZA test to capture structural breaks and unit roots more effectively across various time scales. In addition, the study employs wavelet quantile-on-quantile regression. The results show that across all quantiles and time scales, an increase in financial globalization and economic policy uncertainty increases energy poverty. The study also shows that female political participation increases energy poverty in the short and long term. In contrast, in the medium term and across all quantiles, female political participation decreases energy poverty. Lastly, an increase in financial development decreases energy poverty across all quantiles and periods. Based on these findings, policies are suggested.

We shed light on the German-Russian relationship, focusing on the complexities that underlie their economic policy uncertainties over the period 1994–2023. We start with static unconditional correlation and dynamic conditional correlation analyses to examine the strength and temporal variations in the correlation between economic policy uncertainties of these two major countries. We then utilize standard and time-varying Granger causality analysis to uncover causal relationships. Importantly, we use a novel energy policy uncertainty index for Germany to explore interconnections between economic and energy policy uncertainties. We emphasize the importance of incorporating energy policy uncertainty in economic policy decision-making and international cooperation.

Production in Turkey has a high dependence on imported inputs. Therefore, the policy aiming at increasing exports through the depreciated national currency leads to different results depending on the degree of dependence on imported inputs. In this context, this study econometrically analyses increases in exports of manufacturing and service industries which have different levels of imported input dependence. The analysis findings indicate that national currency depreciation leads to competitive effects in the manufacturing industry, but not in the service sector. The effect of labour costs, on the other hand, is much lower in the manufacturing industry than in services. In addition, we found that the unit value index of crude material imports has a significant negative impact on the sectoral competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. In contrast, changes in import prices seem to have no significant impact on service exports.

This study investigates whether the response of stock returns to economic policy uncertainty de- pends on the level of government size in the economy. Although there is a consensus in the liter- ature that stock markets react negatively to policy-related uncertainties, the factors that determine the magnitude of this effect have been ignored. This study is the first to demonstrate that the magnitude of this effect depends on the size of the government in the economy. In the study, data for the period 1997Q1-2021Q4 pertaining to 18 countries are used. According to results of fixed-effects estimations with Driscoll-Kraay robust standard errors, economic policy uncer- tainty affects stock returns negatively. In addition, the coefficient of interaction term formed by the variables of policy uncertainty and government size is also negative and significant. These results indicate that the negative response of stock returns to policy uncertainty grows as gov- ernment size increases. The sensitivity analysis results show that the findings are not sensitive to the estimations made by alternative approaches and are therefore robust. The findings of the study contain important implications for policymakers. Investors can also benefit from the results at the point of international asset allocation against future policy-related uncertainties.