Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, 2013 (vol. 21), issue 4
Hybrid Approach to Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis
Ondřej Vilikus
Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2013, 21(4):3-19 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.407 
Conjoint analysis is a popular tool for analysing consumer preferences in market research which has undergone rapid development throughout history. It is now generally agreed that choice-based conjoint (CBC) has a stronger theoretical background than traditional conjoint methods and that it mimics the real decision-making process of consumers more closely. When hierarchical Bayesian models allowed robust estimation of consumer preferences from sparse data available from choice-based conjoint tasks, formerly popular self-explicated or hybrid approaches lost their popularity. In this article, it is shown that hybrid approaches can be a useful alternative...
The Impact of Revisions of National Accounts on the Estimation of Derived Indicator
Jakub Fischer, Kristýna Vltavská, Igor Krejčí
Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2013, 21(4):20-33 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.408
The paper is devoted to an analysis of the impact of historical revisions of national accounts by the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) between 2010 and 2011. The theoretical part of the paper points out the importance of revisions of national accounts, describes the different types of revisions and summarises existing results of the revisions. The empirical part is devoted to an evaluation of the impact of the revisions on individual indicators entering the estimation of total factor productivity. While the level of hours worked was revised downwards, the level of fixed capital was revised upwards. Although the extent of revisions in the different years...
Value Driven Management of Auxiliary Maintenance Processes and Its Application in Practice
Miroslav Špaček
Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2013, 21(4):34-48 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.409
Maintenance performance measurement and evaluation is mostly underrated by companies. Even if maintenance activities contribute to customer value indirectly, it is not far from truth that the quality of maintenance processes may be decisive for winning a competitive advantage. This paper explains the concept of Value Driven Maintenance (VDM) as an approach focused on generating company value through proper alignment and management of company processes. In order to benefit from existing company processes, it is inevitable to set these processes into a proper strategic framework and align them efficiently so that maximum synergic effects can be generated....
Reflection of the Election Cycle in Public Procurement in Prague
Petra Drzková
Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2013, 21(4):49-68 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.410
The aim of this paper is to reveal whether there is a relation between public procurement and the election cycle in Prague. The examined data cover the period from 2005 to 2011. Two hypotheses have been set in order to discover whether there is such a relation. The first one postulates that public procurement is used for construction, wellvisible investment, so as to increase the probability of being re-elected. The second hypothesis marks the effort of politicians to maximise their own benefits until the end of their electoral term as the main reason for contracting public procurement. The hypotheses are proven with the number of public procurement...
Analysis of the Transformation of Selected Theatres - Allowance Organisations of the City of Prague
Jana Švubová
Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2013, 21(4):69-85 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.411
This paper deals with the transformation of theatres - allowance organisations of the City of Prague. The whole issue is placed in a wider context of economic policy. The paper aims to evaluate the transformation using the example of selected theatres that have been transformed; the analysis also considers allowance organisations (The Municipal Theatres of Prague). The Grant System of the City of Prague was modified several times in the years 2007-2009; because of its importance for the functioning of (not only) the transformed organisations, the paper will shortly deal with its changes and successive forming too. The transformation was highly monitored...
Economics Students' Language - Czenglish?
Marie Auerspergová
Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2013, 21(4):86-93 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.412
The article deals with typical mistakes made by students of the University of Economics, Prague, in their papers under the influence of English. Interferential mistakes adopted from English into Czech are a serious linguistic phenomenon and the literature focusing on the influence of English on Czech is quite large, but more attention is paid to lexicological and morphological problems than to syntactical ones. Knowing that borrowings from other languages are natural but adopting sentence structures is not, the author concentrates not only on lexicology (usage of foreign words in students' texts) and morphology but also on sentence structure, especially...