Prague Economic Papers, 1997 (vol. 6), issue 2

Original contributions, Original article, Research article

Czech economy at the beginning of 1997

Kamil Janáček, Martin Čihák, Marie Frýdmanová, Tomáš Holub, Eva Zamrazilová

Prague Economic Papers 1997, 6(2) | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.123

Czech GDP growth in 1996 failed to reach the rates expected by most domestic and foreign experts and institutions. Compared to initial forecasts which ranged between 5.0 and 5.5 %, the actual growth of real GDP fell short by roughly 1 percentage point: we expect the final GDP growth figure to be within 4.1 - 4.4 %. Private consumption and fixed investment were the main factors of GDP growth in 1996. A gap persisted between domestic supply and domestic demand; the gap tended to be relatively stable and was covered by a fast increase of imports of goods and services.The slowdown of GDP growth was caused by several factors, prominent among them are:...

Foreign direct investment in the czech manufacturing sector

Vladimír Benáček, Alena Zemplinerová

Prague Economic Papers 1997, 6(2) | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.124

In the period of 1991-96 there were large volumes of foreign direct investment directed to various Czech manufacturing industries and services. Our empirical analysis has shown that enterprises of the manufacturing sector, into which the foreign capital was invested, were generally physical capital intensive and labor saving. At the same time, both capital and labor efficiencies in firms with FDI have been significantly above the domestic average. Another salient feature of the FDI enterprises is that they are very export intensive and, on the input side, they have a higher proportion of material inputs and thus relatively lower proportion of value added.

Ethical infrastructure of emerging markets

Marie Bohatá

Prague Economic Papers 1997, 6(2) | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.125

The emerging negative phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe underlines the importance of the need for an ethical infrastructure of emerging markets to be built. Logically, the first step must be a formal, e.g. legal infrastructure, which is also, for obvious reasons, under principal reconstruction. The challenge here is not only that the new law must be passed but also correctly interpreted and fully implemented. For some people compliance with law is sufficient; for others this represents only the minimal ethical requirement. The role of individuals and institutions, especially governments, in the process of building the ethical infrastructure is...

Environmental impairment liability in the czech republic

Eva Tošovská

Prague Economic Papers 1997, 6(2) | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.126

The subject treated in this article is environmental impairment liability, which becomes a still more important legal and economic instrument of environmental policy complying with claim of denationalization. It is a market-conforming instrument not requiring that the public authorities will focus their activities on direct management of microeconomic agents. The article reflects: brief description of the functions and position of environmental impairment liability among the other tools of environmental policy; evaluation of the extent to which the initiatives aimed at European harmonisation have been successful; analysis of the present state of works...