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This paper analyzes an influence of some economic variables to a probability of the occurrence of currency crises. The variables were at first derived theoretically and then analyzed using logit regression on panel data for up to 78 countries of the word in 1980-2012. The analysis shows that the indicators mostly considered as measures of external economic balance - current account and net foreign assets - have not much statistical significant impact on the risk of currency crisis. Much more important is a structure of foreign liabilities in terms of liquidity - a greater share of foreign direct investments on foreign liabilities and a lower share of short term foreign debt to total debt statistically significantly reduce the risk of crises. The risk significantly decreases also with higher trade openness, faster GDP growth and underestimation of nominal exchange rate with respect to the purchasing power parity. Signs of parameters of these variables are staying unchanged even if we estimate over two thousand models.

The aim of this paper is to quantify the implementation lag of discretionary fiscal policy in the Czech Republic between 1997 and 2013. Based on a unique dataset created for this study, the length and structure of implementation lag is analysed. Dataset is extending the original dataset used by the Czech National Bank. This study further analyses factors with an impact on implementation lag. Implementation lag is the length of period between decision of the economic policy makers on the actual response to the fundamental change in the economy and implementation of this response to the legislation. Average implementation lag of discretionary fiscal policy in the Czech Republic is 2.4 quarters. The greatest deal counts for the implementation lag in the Chamber of Deputies. Length of implementation lag of discretionary fiscal policy is influenced especially by the total occupancy of the Chamber of Deputies, majority, which the government parties have in the Parliament, and the frequency of the veto power usage.

The sovereign debt crisis inside the European Monetary Union (EMU) as well as competitiveness problems of some EMU members made the members and non-members of the club address one question: Is a monetary union advantageous? This paper deals with the issue whether or not the Maastricht criteria are good indicators for deciding to join the eurozone, namely for a small open economy, as the Czech Republic. In particular, this analysis addresses the issue of price competition, which can be measured by the real effective exchange rate. In fact, the Maastricht criteria do not reflect the competitiveness of a country. Thus the arguments concerning the advantages/disadvantages of the adoption of a common currency should not be based only on the Maastricht criteria, but at first on the philosophy of the real effective exchange rate. We define a basis for setting new criteria to decideing on joining the monetary union. To sum up, if depreciation/devaluation of the real exchange rate is not a competitive advantage for both Czech exports and the Czech economy (especially in the long term), then the main economic argument against joining the EMU disappears.

Revision of Marc Lavoie's Monetary Model by the Endogenization of the Parameter γ This paper tries to point out a fallacy in Lavoie's (2006) conclusion that incorporation of deep endogeneity of parameters into the PKA model suffices to bring about irreversibility of such a system. The arguments of the authors are supported by Setterfield's (1998a, 2008) concept of hysteresis as path-dependence in the long-run outcome of systems with direct shocks. The paper shows that extension of Lavoie's PKA model by deep endogeneity of the parameter γ causes the fulfillment of the necessary condition of hysteresis - Setterfi eld's condition (a) ensuring deep endogeneity of the alleged exogenous parameter and, by means of this, path dependence in the long-run output - but not the fulfi llment of the sufficient condition of hysteresis - condition (c) ensuring the presence of adjustment asymmetry and, by means of this, irreversibility. Thus, deependogenisation of the parameter γ does not bring about Setterfi eld's hysteresis and, in effect, does not cause irreversibility.

The fundamental premise for the regular performance of economic policy, fulfilment of the revenues of the state budget and thus creating optimal conditions for efficient fiscal policy realization, is to minimize state receivables after maturity, as the theoretical planning of the revenue side of the state budget is irrelevant considering that tax payers and other entities fail to fulfil their liabilities towards the state, more precisely state budget, and conversely the state is not able to provide the approved income in the state budget. The objective of this paper is to: analyse the development of state receivables in years 2001-2014; identify the causes of the state receivables origin; test econometrically the dependence of formation of the state receivables after maturity on the economic cycle, the tax rate change and entry of the Czech Republic to the European Union; evaluate the results of the long-term research of implementation of an experimental model, during which the possibility of reaching incomparably higher efficiency was verified and proven in the management process of state receivables recovery; highlight this important negative determinant of the state fiscal policy. With regard to aforesaid, this text is structured in the following way. First, the author took into consideration the theories which are connected with surveyed matters, following by the characteristic and causes of state receivables development for the period of 1991 to 2014. The economic testing of dependence comes after. Next chapter characterizes the development of two experimental models for management process of recovery of state receivables after maturity, research results included. The last chapter provides all the research results, evaluates the economic policy significance of this destructive factor of fiscal policy and suggests some solutions.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the market concentration of audit services in the Czech Republic and compare its results with the international research. The analysis is based on transparency reports for years 2011-2014. Auditors that in the reporting period carried out the statutory audit at some public interest entity are required to compile and publish the transparency report. Among other information, auditors are required to specify their total turnover split into turnover of audit fees and turnover of non-audit fees. Globally recognized Herfindahl-Hirschman index is selected as an appropriate analytical tool. Herfindahl-Hirschman index is complemented by indicators of market share (Current ratios) and the Lorenz curve which graphically displays the unequal distribution of the turnover on the market of audit services. These data show that in the period under investigation the firms forming Big4 obtained about 85% of audit fees. In the year 2014 the Big4 firms occupied 80% of total fees and 84% of audit fees. As a major player on the Czech market of audit services can be regarded two firms - Ernst & Young (EY) in the area of total fees and KPMG in the area of audit fees. The analysis clearly indicates a high level of market concentration of audit services in the Czech Republic. The high level of market concentration has its impacts on the audit quality and leads Authorities in the US and in the EU to the tightening of audit regulation.

The paper examines the quantitative easing as a policy contributing to government debt sustainability in the context of government debt cycle. Thus, the emphasis is primarily not put on the rescue of financial system after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Instead, the attention is paid to a role of central bank as a lender of last resort in government bond markets and quasi-fiscal motivation of the quantitative easing programs. The theoretical part of the analysis defi nes quasi-fiscally motivated QE program, government adjusted net debt position plus its determinants and a rate of debt monetization. Empirical analysis focuses on the case of three large economies - United States, United Kingdom and Japan, empirical defi nition of quasi-fiscally motivated quantitative easing, net debt position of their governments as well as the explanation of significant empirical relationships between its determinants. The paper concludes that the most important factor infl uencing net debt position dynamics is economic growth which cannot be relied on in bust phase of debt cycle. Thus, the decisive role is played by quantitative easing and related interest transmission channel as remaining factor influencing dynamics of government fnancial assets and liabilities.

The latest financial crisis has led to significant changes in the central bank's monetary policies. They have tried to respond by expansionary monetary policy in the different forms. We analyze if commercial and other banks use a higher quantity of reserves in order to increase granting of loans into the economy. Analysis is focused on the tendencies in money and credit multipliers. There are four analysed economics during the period 2008-2014: Czech Republic, European Monetary Union, Great Britain and the USA. No surprise that multipliers had tendencies to decline, especially from high values in the Great Britain and the USA. Development was quite surprising in the EMU, where all multipliers were very stable. We have observed the biggest exceptions in the USA, and the Czech Republic, respectively. Money multiplier of M1 is still less than 1 in the USA. Czech Republic is specific according to the values of credit multiplier. They are lower than values of money multiplier of M2, and even lower than multiplier of M1 since 2012. The most likely reasons for all trends are presented in the article.

Conditional Political Budget Cycle in the OECD Countries Examination of the so called political business cycle (i. e. macroeconomic cycle induced by the political cycle) provides little evidence in empirical studies. The empirical evidence of statistically signifi cant increase in the economic activity before election is especially a matter of less developer countries. There is a shift in focus to the examination of the political budget cycle in case of the developed economies. This paper examines the presence of conditional political budget cycle (PBC) in the OECD countries using data from all 34 member states over the period 1995- 2012. We suppose that the conditionality of the PBC depends on the credibility and transparency of the fi scal policy. The dynamic panel linear regression model is used in this article. Generalized method of moments (GMM) with instrumental variables (IV) is used for estimating arameters in this model. Three important results emerge: First, there is a PBC in the OECD countries. Second, the PBC in OECD countries strongly depends on credibility and transparency of fi scal policy. Third, the shape of the PBC in the OECD countries indicates that there is an immediate fi scal restriction after the elections.

The analysis builds on existing empirical and theoretical literature in the field of job polarization, which is primarily focused on advanced economies. Hypotheses of the incidence of "skill-biased" and "routine-biased" technical change in the Visegrad group countries are verified in the analysis. The aim is to find out whether the impact of technical change on the labour market in the V4 countries is similar to or different than that in advanced economies. The analytical part is primarily performed on the EU-LFS. The results suggest that the structure of the labour market has changed in the V4 countries in a heterogeneous way. In Hungary and Slovakia, there was an apparent slight job polarization over the period under review. In addition, the evidence suggests that the technical change in these countries may be of a "routine-biased" nature. On the contrary, the pattern of "upgrading" was evident in the Czech Republic and Poland, where the evidence suggests "skill-biased" technical change.

This paper explores whether downward rigidity in nominal wages has negative impacts on the economy in the case of deflation caused by economic growth. In this situation, growth of real wages may be delivered by a fall in the price level even if nominal wages are constant. Hayek's proposal to stabilize MV is studied in detail. The nominal GDP is stabilized within this framework, and when potential output is growing, the price level might decrease. It is derived that this Hayekian rule would lead to a fall in nominal wages in an economy with positive population growth, which restricts the space for deflation. Friedman's proposal to stabilize prices of factors of production is also examined. It results in weaker deflation than Hayek's proposal and no need for decrease in nominal wages. The next part of the article demonstrates that the Hayekian framework may not require a fall in nominal wages in a converging economy if the labour share of income is gradually increasing, even if population growth is positive.

We use EU SILC data for the Czech Republic to estimate the size of the motherhood penalty for the period 2006-2017. We find out that adjusted motherhood penalty amounts to 11-15% in the period 2006-2008. At that time, the Czech Republic appeared to be comparable to countries such as Germany and the UK. However, the motherhood penalty effectively disappears after 2009 and the Czech Republic is now placed in the same group with Scandinavian countries, France and Belgium. Despite that, there are still many obstacles for mothers to increase their labour market participation, which translate mainly into wage penalties via the experience and labour intensity channels. The study also supports other general evidence from cross-country motherhood penalty comparisons, motherhood penalty being mostly a phenomenon of middle-educated, married women located outside large cities, employed in private industry and having more than one child.

Due to progressing globalisation and deepening integration of global financial markets, the topic of relations between individual markets has got into the centre of attention of many economists. Especially on the stock markets, we can observe a tendency of the more developed markets to affect developments on the less developed markets. This is also valid for stock markets of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, the V4 countries included. In the case of returns and volatilities of the V4 stock markets, it is possible to expect a strong influence of the German stock market. We follow this influence using the Granger causality. Our analysis shows that in the period 1999-2018, the German DAX stock index was Granger-causing the development of the Czech (PX), Hungarian (BUX) and Polish (WIG 20) stock indices, while this relation was not confirmed for DAX and the Slovak stock index SAX. However, the analysis of two sub-periods (1999-2007 and 2010-2018) shows slightly different results.

This paper tests the usability of the Taylor rule under the conditions of the Czech economy using a single-equation error correction model in the period from 2000 to the second quarter of 2019 and finds key variables for the CNB's monetary policy setting. Other important monetary policy rules and their effect on the optimal monetary policy setting are also discussed. The starting point of the empirical part is a summary of the current monetary policy of the CNB and an analysis of its decision model. Since 2008, the new DSGE model g3 replaced the previous QPM model. At the end of the theoretical part, foreign experience and various approaches to the estimation of the Taylor rule are summarized. The CNB's two-week repo rate is best described by the size of the output gap in the domestic economy, the ECB's base refinancing rate, the change in the price level measured by the consumer price index and the previous value of the repo rate. The paper also analyses the relationship between the repo rate and the ECB's basic refinancing rates, confirming the historically high dependence of domestic monetary policy on the ECB's actions.

The objective of this study is to estimate effects of tax family benefits, social family benefits, availability of kindergartens and economic situation on fertility in the Czech Republic. The data cover the period 1993-2018 and come from the Czech Statistical Office and Czech legislation. The relationship between the variables and the total fertility rate as the dependent variable was analysed using regression analysis. The results show that fertility is positively affected by the supply of kindergartens and social family benefits. On the other hand, higher unemployment as an indicator of unfavourable economic situation decreases fertility. The effect of tax benefits was not statistically significant, which is not surprising, because tax family benefits are much lower in comparison with social family benefits. The model is limited by the number of variables and the number of observations; therefore, the model results should be taken as signals, not as definite answers.

The goal of the article is a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the relationship among savings, investments and credits in a business cycle in the Czech Republic. The presented analysis brings specific recommendations on the interaction between monetary policy and macroprudential regulation. The article starts with a critical analysis of the Austrian Economic School and its monetary theory of business cycle, which provides a methodological base for further empirical analysis in the paper. Based on the data of the Czech economy, the authors empirically test a hypothesis whether credits create a financial bubble when a credit growth exceeds a real GDP growth. The financial cycle had a significantly higher volatility comparing to real business cycle volatility in the Czech Republic in the period 1997-2013. The existence of the credit bubble was confirmed by statistically significant model parameters, when using the differences in relative year on year changes of banking client credits as a depended variable and relative year on year changes of real GDP as an independent variable. Currently valid European regulation doesn't allow using the same tools to host regulator and supervisor towards the bank subsidiaries and branches in a need to react to the different phases of financial cycle. If a host supervisor needs to influence and safeguard the financial stability, it has only the following tools applying to both forms of banking operations in the host countries: counter cyclical capital buffer, capital regulation of real estate exposures, and setting the loan to value (income) limits.

The article deals with the theoretical issues of macro-prudential policy, the influence of risk channel of monetary policy on financial stability and the cooperation of macro-prudential and monetary policy, respectively the compatibility of the objectives of these policies. On the Czech economy data is therefore tested the relationship between monetary policy conditions and prices of selected categories. The model results open the door to greater use especially of the industrial producer price index, respectively its sub-indices, for the coordination of monetary and macro-prudential policy in the Czech Republic.

The aim of this paper is the formulation and econometric estimation of a small macroeconomic model, which is intended to provide an understanding of fundamental economic relationships in the eurozone. Unemployment is used to represent real economic activity. Phillips curve links unemployment with infl ation and Taylor rule describes the monetary policy of the European Central Bank. The results from econometric estimation indicate that interest rate policy of the European Central Bank has only a very limited effect on unemployment. Furthermore, the reaction coeffi cient for infl ation in the Taylor rule does not support Taylor principle. This paper also presents original method for measuring NAIRU. The proposed method for estimating NAIRU uses probabilities of fi nding and loosing a job. These probabilities are made endogenous in the model, which is the main contribution of the paper.

Paper outlines economic connections of labor market discrimination. It is intended on discrimination based upon gender, because this type of discrimination is on the point of our social background. In the introductory part are defined discrimination and delineated the various types of discrimination. Further there are presented data to suggest the possibility of discrimination. The major part of paper presents four important labor market models of discrimination: taste for discrimination model, monopsony model of discrimination (market power model), statistical discrimination model and the crowding model of discrimination (occupational segregation). In the following part are discussed the other nondiscriminatory factors determinating male - female earnings differentials. Discrimination in law is the last part of this paper.

This article addresses the issue of the relationship of parenthood, employment and economic inactivity of childcare holders. It focuses on the mother's motivation to work in the context of Czech social policy measures. The aim is to empirically verify the willingness of women, taking care of children under three years old, to return to work. The decision of mothers, about their participation the labour market, is analysed by indicator "Effective cost of return to work" and by using sensitivity analysis. Negative net fi nancial effect of return to work was identifi ed for all studied regions and types of workloads. These results demonstrate clearly that mothers, entering the labour market, are confronted with very high additional costs. These costs would not be covered by their employment income and other received benefi ts. Estimated amount of potential wage, which would encourage women to return to work, reach in some cases up to four times the median wage of women in the particular region.

The aim of the paper is to fi nd out what is the effect of different types of government spending and taxes on economic growth in developed economies. The analysis is performed on a sample of 27 OECD countries in the period 1997-2011. It is based on the neoclassic growth model extended with the level of human capital and fi scal variables. Those include particular types of government spending (according to the COFOG classifi cation) and taxes (according to the OECD classifi cation), and state budget defi cit. From a methodological point of view, panel data estimation is used. We support the view that only some types of government spending are growth-enhancing, and only if they are fi nanced through indirect taxes. However, the results show that only expenditure on defense, education and health, and general public services may be labeled as productive. In addition, we show that direct taxes, especially corporate taxes, negatively affect the growth, also in case they are used to fi nance productive spending.

This study is devoted to analysis of different aspects of world oil market development and its role in further growth of individual national economies, especially in connection with the ever intensifying globalization process. The study shows individual aspects and parts of the oil market, be it production and consumption of crude oil, its territorial dislocation, including EU, and also an analysis of the impact that has the development of oil consumption on economical results of individual national economies. In the first place it analyses the connections with the growth of competition ability of companies. Further research is devoted to the establishment of crude oil price and to the most important aspects on which depends the price creation process. Supply and demand factors are also analyzed. The study comes to a conclusion that the biggest obstacle in using the crude oil will not be its availability, at least in the short run, but the ever fast increasing price. This high price will enable the use of oil only to such companies and countries that will be able to implement the oil in the production process with very high efficiency. Such conditions satisfy only products and services that are based on unique technical and scientific know-how, with high added value, or in such areas of national economies where the use of oil is unenviable.

The article deals with the issue of fiscal sustainability, which has gained in importance after the recent financial and sovereign debt crisis. The article defi nes the term of financial sustainability in its theoretical part. The next section continues with the historical fiscal data for countries in the European Union. The main part of the article estimates reaction function of fiscal policy using panel data regression model. Tests are performed for multiple groups of countries, namely for the entire European Union, the old member states, the new member states, and the states most affected by the recent financial and sovereign debt crisis. This classification allows higher accuracy and better interpretability of the model results. Data results show rather pro-cyclicality of fiscal authorities' behaviour.

This paper deals with allocation of financial resources from selected operational programmes among Czech regions and assess whether a regional innovation paradox occurs in the Czech Republic. Regional innovation paradox expresses a state when some regions with lower innovation performance and higher investment needs exist but at the same time these regions are not able to gain the offered resources. The article examines the relationship between amount of obtained resources and selected characteristics of regions through correlation analysis. The attention is focused on Operational programme Enterprise and Innovations and Operational programme Research and Development for Innovations. The analysis confirmed the existence of the regional innovation paradox in the Czech Republic. The paradox is apparent especially if the amount of subsidies is compared to the total regional gross domestic product. The paradox is in higher degree apparent at OP Research and Development for Innovations than OP Enterprise and Innovations.

The paper explains wider economic, financial and macroeconomic context of the unconventional monetary policy during 2001-2006 in Japan. The objective of the article is complex discussion of Bank of Japan's unconventional monetary policy measures from theoretical and practical point of view. The structure of the papers is following: the fi rst part reveals macroeconomic condition behind unconventional monetary policy, the second part describes changes in monetary policy implementation, focuses also on commercial assets purchasing and describes exit strategy as well. The last part of the paper evaluates unconventional monetary policy impacts. Bank of Japan achieved accommodative financial condition and reduced uncertainty in the money market. Large liquidity buffer works preventive in case of unexpected liquidity shocks. Excess ample liquidity did not support prices and real economic activity considering broader deleveraging process and corporate markets fragmentation. Entry and exits strategy was successful without financial markets disruption but exit was not complete. Finally, the paper can conclude, that unconventional monetary policy had positive stabilization effect without significant transmission to the real economy.

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

This paper discusses the thesis that the main danger for eurozone survival does not lie in the areas that most economists have focused on; that is, it lies neither in insufficient regulation of the financial sector (banking union) nor in fiscal irresponsibility of the European governments (fiscal compact). The eurozone technically has unlimited financial resources at its disposal to solve its recent financial problems, but the potential threats are rather of a political origin. The most important challenges are the distinct expectations that the strongest European economies harbored before the foundation of the eurozone. The French sought to gain more autonomy in the conduct of their domestic economic policy, which had been impeded by external constraints, particularly exacerbated by German monetary policy. The German goal was to prevent permanent upward pressure on their currency, which had been undermining their export-led economic model. These distinct expectations did partly influence the institutional arrangement of the Economic and Monetary Union. However, the essence of the Franco-German conflict has not been adequately addressed and we hold that the eurozone in its current setting is not able to fully resolve it. That being said, the ECB can employ means that could allow it to postpone the solution for a very long time.

The article describes both the theory and the practice of exiting from the unconventional monetary policy of quantitative easing (QE). At the theoretical level, the following issues are outlined: exit step sequence, options to decrease the amount of securities purchased, relationship between exit and interest rate hike, communication of the change and liquidity-absorbing instruments. Further, examples from Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA are introduced, especially regarding their experience with the QE exit. In detail, the monetary policy-related numbers (QE purchases, QE portfolio, central bank balance sheet, monetary base and reserves) are observed both before and after the exit announcement. The charts of these changes prove to be substantially different, mainly due to unique key features of each QE policy and diverse exit strategies.

Considering the differences between public and non-public beneficiaries, the main aim of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between the disadvantage of Czech regions and the spatial distribution of EU structural funds in the programming period 2007–2013. The empirical results reveal negative and significant influence of socioeconomic disadvantage of regions on the amount of structural funds obtained by public beneficiaries. On the contrary, agglomeration economies are the statistically significant determinant of the amount of structural funds obtained by non-public beneficiaries. These conclusions are related to different absorption capacity of regions, regarding the number and size of projects. Overall, structural funds do not compensate for the disadvantage of regions, neither for public nor for non-public beneficiaries.

The article deals with the theoretical issues of macroprudential policy, shift of monetary policy paradigm towards application of so called "leaning against the wind" strategy and mutual cooperation of these policies, which are both aimed at maintaining financial stability. For detection of financial instability are mainly used early warning indicators, which are most often based on the credit activity of the economy and asset prices development. In the second part, we examine the impact of the credit activity in the Czech Republic on the prices of particular assets and its subsequent effect on the consumer price index.