Prague Economic Papers, 2010 (vol. 19), issue 3

A Cardiograph of the Dollar's Quality: Qualitative Easing and the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet During the Subprime Crisis

Philipp Bagus, Markus H. Schiml

Prague Economic Papers 2010, 19(3):195-217 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.372  

In this article we argue that the balance sheet of a central bank contains valuable information for the quality of a currency. As an illustration we analyze the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve System (FED) during the subprime crisis between June 2007 and December 2008. Until September 2008 the balance sheet of the FED did not expand strongly. However, the structure of the FED assets varied pronouncedly. Starting in September 2008 the balance sheet expanded dramatically. The calculation of certain balance sheet ratios supports the assessment of an important decrease of the quality of the currency. Our analysis shows that the analysis of central...

Turkey and the European Union: Possible Incidence of the EU Accession on Migration Flows

Ondřej Glazar, Wadim Strielkowski

Prague Economic Papers 2010, 19(3):218-235 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.373  

This paper analyzes possible incidence of Turkish EU accession on the emigration from Turkey to the European Union. Panel data estimators are applied on the emigration data from EU-18 into Germany in order to construct possible future scenarios of Turkish migration to the EU. Eventual migration flows from Turkey into the EU are forecasted based on the estimated results. We find that seemingly unrelated regressor is the most efficient estimator that can be applied in Turkey-EU migration framework. Our results reveal that both the network effect and target country labour market conditions represent the strongest determinants for migration, whilst the...

Improving Risk Adjustment in the Czech Republic

Radovan Chalupka

Prague Economic Papers 2010, 19(3):236-250 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.374  

This paper analyses possible options how to improve the risk adjustment of the health insurance system in the Czech Republic. From the possible options it argues for including pharmaceutical cost groups (PCGs) as additional risk factors since it is an improvement that can be implemented almost instantaneously. On real data from an anonymous sickness fund it confirms that predictive performance of PCGs models is consistently better than the performance of the demographic model that is currently used. The study also describes and examines the Czech health insurance market and implications of proposed changes of policy makers. Based on experience from...

An Alternative Approach to the Dating of Business Cycle: Nonparametric Kernel Estimation

Jitka Poměnková

Prague Economic Papers 2010, 19(3):251-272 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.375  

The paper provides the methodological background for the Czech Republic business cycle dating process using an alternative approach. This approach is based on the mathematical principle of identification of extremes using estimates of derivations of time trend of the analysed time series, for which the nonparametric Gasser-Müller estimate is used. The presented methodological approach is applied on the real gross domestic product data sets, the total industry (excluding construction), the gross capital formation and the final consumption expenditure. The selected variables are taken from the national accounts system. The obtained results are compared...

Media Capture and Local Government Accountability

Jiancai Pi

Prague Economic Papers 2010, 19(3):273-283 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.376  

This paper mainly discusses the effects of media capture on local government accountability in undemocratic countries. Firstly, we construct the models with and without media capture from the perspective of incentive theory. Secondly, we conduct a comparative analysis between the outcomes with and without media capture. The analysis shows that no media capture decreases the local official's equilibrium efficiency wage under whatever conditions, and at the same time makes the central government's constraint to incentivize the local official to exert effort easier to be satisfied under some conditions, while harder to be satisfied under other conditions.

An Anniversary of an Institution - A Report on the "Teaching Economics for 90 Years" Conference

Antonie Doležalová

Prague Economic Papers 2010, 19(3):284-288 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.377