Prague Economic Papers, 2004 (vol. 13), issue 4

Original contributions, Original article, Research article

Foreign Trade in Environmental Goods in the Czech Republic (1993 - 2002)

Eva Tošovská

Prague Economic Papers 2004, 13(4):291-309 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.243  

This paper analyses the trade flows and tariff rates of environmental goods in the Czech Republic in the period 1993 - 2002. The analysis is based on environmental goods' categories according to "OECD list of environmental goods". The export and import of environmental goods is investigated also from the foreign trade territorial structure point of view. The five indicators have been used to describe the achieved level of trade liberalization in environmental goods in the Czech Republic.

Social Policies and Structures Under Transition: Cohesion and Tensions

Jiří Večerník

Prague Economic Papers 2004, 13(4):310-322 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.244  

The article tries to demonstrate important links between social structure and social policies. The post-communist state interferes more than other governments into social structure and supports strong actors. This hinders expansion of the main actor of a successful transition - the middle class. Its stagnation or adverse development causes that the social structure (disintegrated, polarized and unstable) implicitly becomes the main social problem itself which generates other "minor" problems. The middle-class perspective frames many tensions and there can be exhibited four of them: between pensioners and economically active; between working and non-working...

Selected Problems of Public Expenditure Programmes on Regional Level in the Czech Republic

Markéta Šumpíková, Jana Krbová, Jan Pavel, Juraj Nemec

Prague Economic Papers 2004, 13(4):323-338 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.245  

Efficiency, economy and effectiveness: outcomes and impacts of public expenditures are main issue especially from mid eighties, when massive changes in the public sector started, influencing both allocative and X-efficiency of public expenditures. Public expenditure programmes are implemented on many levels, from international to municipal, and in many different forms. In our paper, we decided to perform the analysis on the level of self-governing regions in the Czech Republic. We focus on the following dimensions of expenditure analysis: the scope and scale of allocative and regulatory public expenditure programmes in the region (from EU level programmes...

Impacts of Macroeconomic Policies on Output in the Czech Republic: An Application of Romer's ISMP-IA Model

Yu Hsing

Prague Economic Papers 2004, 13(4):339-345 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.246  

Extending Romer's IS-MP-IA model to include foreign trade and exchange rates and applying the GARCH method, the study came to the conclusion that real gross domestic product is negatively associated with the inflation rate, exchange rate depreciation, and the foreign interest rate and positively affected by government deficit spending and world output. Therefore, inflation targeting is an appropriate monetary policy, and the depreciation of the koruna would be harmful to the Czech economy even though it would help the export sector.

Current Account Deficits in the Transition Economies

Mark J. Holmes

Prague Economic Papers 2004, 13(4):347-358 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.247  

This study tests for the stationarity and sustainability of current account deficits for ten transition economies. For this purpose, a new test is employed that allows one to test for unit roots in heterogeneous panel datasets. While the benefits from creating a panel to overcome low test power are well known, this test also offers key advantages over existing alternative panel data unit root tests: it is able to identify which members within the panel are responsible for rejecting the null hypothesis of joint non-stationarity. In addition, the SURADF test does not presume disturbances that are independently and identically distributed. Using data...

Development of Czech Economic Theory from the Aspect of Discussions in the Politická Ekonomie Journal (1953 - 1989)

Jiří Řezník

Prague Economic Papers 2004, 13(4):359-375 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.248  

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of establishment of the Politická ekonomie economic periodical six articles were published in 2003 reviewing the history, rise and fall of this journal in 1953 - 1989. This review presents to foreign readers a brief outline of economic thinking in this country in the period concerned that was reflected in articles published by Czech and Slovak economists in Politická ekonomie.