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The aim of this paper is to apply the rules and principles of international trade in services - in formulation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services - in the rapidly developing sphere of environmental services. The paper characterizes the development and structure of environmental services, the dimension of the environmental market of EU countries and discusses shortcomings in the existing classification of environmental services. Special attention is devoted to the different forms of private sector participation in environmental service markets. The final part examines the export potential of environmental services in the Czech Republic and analyzes the main obstacles to the future development of this sphere.

This article analyzes the public-private pay gap in the Czech Republic. To prove the existence of this pay gap and measure for its decomposition, we used Mincer wage equations and Blinder-Oaxaca-based decomposition techniques. Using data from the IV/2012 Quarterly Survey of Average Earnings, an econometrical model intended for regression and decomposition analyses was set. The most important part of the model is the dummy variable representing pertinence to the public sector of the national economy. We found that this dummy was statistically significant throughout the wage distribution, and that the value of its coefficient was negative and rising. This means that public sector employees up from the lowest deciles can be discriminated against in their salaries, and that this potential for discrimination increases as we look at the higher deciles. This finding was further examined by decomposition analysis which showed that on average, public sector employees are better equipped (have better characteristics) but have worse return on them (lower regression coefficients).

Dynamic Model of Common-pool Emission Permit Market as a Method for Solving the Persistent Pollutant Problem In the paper, we develop a common-pool permit market formulated as a dynamic gross pool for trading emission discharge permits (EDPs) for persistent pollutants. We discuss individual agents' demand decisions concerning EDPs and develop a common-pool market dynamic gross pool formulation, including a general set of marginal-cost pricing rules used in this type of permit trading market. Numerical simulations are used to illustrate the usefulness of this type of permit market design for addressing environmental problems.

The urgent need to address climate change and the depletion of natural resources has led governments worldwide to allocate significant resources towards research and development in clean energy technologies and energy efficiency. This study evaluates the effectiveness of renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives in reducing CO₂ emissions, taking into account the influences of natural resource availability and political risk. Using data from France spanning from 1985 to 2021, we employ the kernel-based regularized least squares (KRLS) methodology, complemented by quantile regression (QR), to analyse these relationships. Our findings indicate that policies promoting energy efficiency and green energy have a positive impact on reducing CO₂ emissions. However, the availability of natural resources and political risk exacerbate environmental challenges by increasing CO₂ emissions. Thus, our study underscores the importance of continued support from policymakers for renewable energy development and energy efficiency research to effectively pursue Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Additionally, as the world prepares for COP28, our findings emphasize the urgency of these initiatives in meeting global climate targets.

Precarious work is characterized by flexible and nonstandard employment relations. It affects people's economic relationships and participation in social and political movements. Based on the data of the Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics 2015, this paper explores the influence mechanism of precarious work on political participation with political attitudes as a mediator. The results show that, for precarious workers, there is a significantly lower probability of institutionalized political participation and a higher probability of non-institutionalized political participation. Also, the young precarious workers have a lower probability of institutionalized political participation and a higher probability of non-institutionalized political participation than the middle-aged and the elderly. Political attitudes are a significant mediator between precarious work and political participation.

In the pursuit of sustainable development, economies such as China are placing a paramount emphasis on significantly augmenting the utilization of renewable energy sources. This marks a departure from conventional research approaches that solely focused on macroeconomic determinants while investigating patterns of renewable energy consumption. Thus, this research pursues to witness the relationship between the political risk index (PRI), renewable electricity output (RELOP), public-private partnership investment in energy (PPINENR), and renewable energy consumption (RECNS) in China from 1984 to 2022. For data estimations, this study utilizes time series methods, which include DF-GLS and Johansen cointegration for unit root and long-run equilibrium with FMOLS, DOLS and CCR as primary methods. The research also employs the least squares method with break years and robust least squares as robustness check methods while for causal relationships, we deploy the Granger causality approach. The outcomes assert that variables are found stationary at differences and long-run equilibrium is confirmed among variables. The empirical estimations predict that GDP and PPINENR reduce the RECNS in China in both short and long term. Furthermore, PRI and RELOP enhance renewable energy consumption in the short as well as long run. Therefore, policymakers should mostly focus on the encouraging role of PPINENR towards renewable electricity to enhance RECNS in developing economies, particularly in China. To achieve the targets of COP27, China should increase its focus on the efficient utilization of public-private partnership investments and also manage the political risks in the economy to promote renewable energy consumption and achieve a sustainable environment. Moreover, the causality analysis unearths that PRI could be utilized along with other variables to enhance RECNS in China. The robustness check asserts similar and robust outcomes.

This study examines the long-run relationship between the unemployment rate and labour force participation rate in South Korea from June 1999 to January 2023. The study utilizes the traditional Johansen cointegration test and augments it with Fourier terms to control for an unknown number of breaks in the cointegration system. The empirical findings suggest a significant long-run relationship between the unemployment rate and labour force participation rate in South Korea, which provides evidence against the unemployment invariance hypothesis. The study also finds evidence of the discouraged-worker effect for males and the added-worker effect for females. The findings of this study have important implications for policymakers in creating more effective plans to lower unemployment and foster economic growth in South Korea. This study contributes to the literature by clarifying the validity of the unemployment invariance hypothesis in the South Korean economy, which is regarded as a growth miracle in the literature. Instead of using the standard configuration of dummy variables, the Johansen cointegration technique now has the ability to adjust for an unknown number of multiple structural breaks in the cointegration system.

This research investigates the effect of political stability and geopolitical risk on environmental sustainability (ES) by considering R&D investments in nuclear and renewable energy. Considering the high political stability and recent energy crisis and increasing geopolitical risk, the study focuses on three leading European countries. We use the load capacity factor, include data between 1985/1 and 2020/12, and apply quantile on quantile regression (QQ), Granger causality in quantiles (GQ), and quantile regression (QR) models. The study finds that in higher quantiles (i) increasing political stability stimulates the ES in Sweden and the United Kingdom; (ii) increasing geopolitical risk supports the ES in France; (iii) R&D investments increase the ES in all the countries; (iv) there are generally causal effects from the explanatory variables to the ES except some quantiles (0.45-0.50) in all the countries; (v) the power effects of the variables differ according to countries, quantiles and variables.

Electricity production strategies of countries rely on fossil fuel-based electricity generation. Environmental regulations (ER) are needed to shift to green electricity for achieving energy transition, but corruption and bureaucracy can influence ER, energy transition and ecological quality. Hence, this research considers two important constituents of country risks including corruption and bureaucracy in the model while understanding the connections between green electricity, ER and the load capacity factor (LCF) in BRICS from 1992 to 2018. The research chooses a recent proxy of ecological quality (i.e., LCF), which effectively measures the ecological quality and indicates the possibility of sustainable growth by using biocapacity and ecological footprint figures. The results of the research disclose that green electricity Granger-causes and enhances the LCF, whereas controlling corruption and enhancing bureaucracy quality improves ecological quality. ER improves environmental quality and the load capacity curve (LCC) hypothesis also exists. Lastly, policy directions are discussed.

This study examines the impact of monetary developments on environmental quality and economic growth. We utilize ARDL/PMG models to study twelve climatically vulnerable countries from 1996 to 2018. We find that a 1% increase in real GDP and domestic credit harms the environment by 0.827% and 0.220%, respectively. However, savings improve environmental excellence by 0.373%. A 1% environmental degradation decreases human health by 0.317%; consequently, economic growth declines by 1.102%. Good governance emerges as a key solution, with a 1% improvement in public institutions mitigating the adverse impact of real GDP on the environment by 0.777%. Redirecting 1% of loans to eco-friendly projects improves the environment by 1.311%. Dumitrescu-Hurlin and PVAR Granger tests support these findings.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the distribution of salaries in the public sector with a focus on employees receiving a salary at the level of minimum wages in the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the methods used is the construction of salary distribution models by gender and educational attainment and the creation of predictions using exponential smoothing. The results of the analysis show the highest increase in real salaries among women with the lowest education. The results further show that the highest benefit in terms of the average real monthly salary of both men and women comes from changing the employee's educational attainment from secondary education without A-level examination to secondary education with A-level examination. On the other hand, for women originally with primary education, obtaining an apprenticeship certificate does not have a significant effect on their real salary on average.

This article studies the environmental and societal impacts of a polluting monopoly when a society strives for a clean environment. Two scenarios are considered: (1) the government levies an environmental tax to induce investment in emission-reducing technology, and (2) the monopolist engages in environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR). It is shown that taxation has a lower environmental impact, but the monopolist undertakes CSR activities only if the abatement technology is efficient. Social welfare is always higher under CSR; therefore, when the technology is not adequately efficient, the government should implement a second-best environmental tax policy to avoid the worst welfare outcome.

The first aim of the study is to compare the intensity of participation in cultural activities among natives, first- and second-generation immigrants in Czech Republic. The second aim is to examine whether the participation in those activities improves the emotional and psychological well-being of first-generation immigrants compared to the natives. The empirical analysis relies on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe in 2017. We perform a system of simultaneous ordered probit models. To further improve our estimates, we apply an instrumental variables (IV) approach to reduce the endogeneity issue. The results show that natives report higher levels of psychological well-being, but there is no difference in cultural participation between the second-generation immigrants and natives. First-generation immigrants participate less frequent-ly, except attending a sports match, where we find no difference in the frequency. However, in the majority of the cases, we conclude that immigrants participating in those activities are more likely to improve their well-being. Furthermore, there is no difference in cultural participation between immigrants and natives in areas characterized by high net migration rates. On the other hand, a lower frequency of participation is found in the areas with low net migration rates, indicating that migration and diversity in an area may encourage participation in the cultural activities explored in this study. Finally, the length of residence and mixed marriages are related with a higher frequency of cultural participation. The findings suggest that fostering accessibility of cultural activities and migration policies should be regarded.

The central banks of developed countries and those in the region of Central Europe responded to the global financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent economic recession by considerably easing monetary conditions and using new monetary policy tools. One of those tools was the entry into the so far uncharted territory of negative interest rates. The passage of some years after the inception of these new tools has allowed the emergence of new empirical literature, which addresses their effects and effectiveness. The primary objective of this paper is to examine and summarize the empirical literature that deals with the effective lower limit of interest rates, especially in relation to the banking sector and bank interest margins. We then use empirical findings from other countries and apply them to the Czech Republic and draw conclusions for the future monetary policy of the CNB. Our results confirm that the CNB has got enough manoeuvring room even in the area of negative interest rates, which it can take advantage of either for the purpose of price stability, or for more effective management of FX operations.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between service exports and productivity in 27 OECD countries by using a panel dataset for the years 1995-2018. In the theoretical context, this relationship is basically handled by the learning-by-exporting and self-selection mechanisms. Additionally, product life cycle and technological gap theories also have implications related to the export and productivity association. In the study, after detecting the cross-sectional dependence, the stationarity characteristics of the exports and productivity series were investigated by Pesaran's (2007) panel unit root tests. The findings of Westerlund (2007) panel co-integration test indicated that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between service exports and productivity. Common correlated effects estimators also supported this finding and showed that productivity affects exports positively in both short and long run. Finally, Dumitrescu and Hurlin's (2012) heterogeneous panel causality tests showed that there is a unidirectional causal relationship running from productivity to service exports. The findings support the predictions of product life cycle theory and technological gap theory regarding the exports and productivity linkage and indicate the validity of the self-selection mechanism for OECD countries' service exports.

The paper estimates the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour under biased technical change in the manufacturing sector in the Czech Republic. We use a dataset covering the period 1995-2019 and a 2-digit industry level, from NACE10 to NACE33. We find industry-level elasticities to be 0.19 and 0.94; therefore, labour and capital seem to be gross complements rather than substitutes across all manufacturing sectors. In the core industries of the Czech manufacturing sector, the elasticity is below average. Even if these core sectors have high and increasing labour costs (except NACE29, where the labour costs are below average), they do not replace labour with capital at a higher pace. This cannot be explained by the direction of technological bias because it is not capital-augmenting. On the other hand, our findings are in line with the literature, as most studies on transition countries report low estimates for the elasticity.

Pension systems are strained with negative impacts on the state budget as a consequence of the endangering trend of worsening demographic structure and population aging. The aim of this paper is to map trends of employment rates of persons 65-69 years old in the Czech Republic and Slovakia between 1998 and 2017 and to analyse selected determinants affecting these rates. These determinants are then subjected to statistical and regression analysis using panel data for the period 1998-2017. Based on the analysis results, the authors come to three conclusions for both countries: firstly, the increase in pensions is not a limiting factor in the employment of persons aged 65-69; secondly, the participation of persons with tertiary education is of great relevance, implying the need for support to tertiary education; thirdly, the results confirmed the significance of the health determinant of persons aged 65-69, ensuing the need for stimulating investment in health.

The aim of this paper is to find a long-term relationship between the economic growth and the size of government. Four different characteristics are used to measure the government size. Total public expenditures, total tax revenues, fi nal government consumption and share of compensation of public workers to overall spending. There are also added control variables and time dummy variable to prevent biased results. The analysis was performed on data from 30 OECD countries from years 1995-2014. Fixed-eff ects panel regression was used to determine relationship between these individual indicators of government size and the economic growth. Main findings of this paper are that change in all indicators is negatively correlated with the growth. Especially in case of final government consumption which indicated the strongest negative relationship.

Reflection on Political Economy of Global Society Today Recently we could observe an accumulation of problems in the global society. Beeing more serious and complicated these problems have become a kind of the historical excess when all possibilities of the countinous development have been exhausted and consequently a crucial societal transformation must be done. This article deals with the reflection on the roots of the present political and economical problems and how to solve them. It demonstrates some theoretical conclusions of the articles published in the Political Economy in the previous ten years. Successively, the attention is paid to the most important works which illustrate the possibilities of a radical societal transformation from the different perspectives. To be concrete there are presented works of R. Richta (the 50th anniversary of his well - known work will be commemorated in 2016), of Francis Fukuyama (whose very optimistic original visions had to be reviewed later) and of S. Huntington (who focused on searching the causes of global conflicts in a broader context). Finally, it is proposed a new concept of solving problems - a transition to the society whose economy is based on the productive services which means on the services linked to the human capital in its three phases: gaining, preservation and realization. At the same time the barriers of this transition and possibilities how to overcome them are identified.

The paper extends existing research on the effects of ownership structures on company performance by including a dimension of transparency in the ownership structure. We analyse the effect of an unknown owner and pyramidal structure on company profitability, capital structure and investment. We conduct this research in accordance with existing theories on a panel of private companies within the cultural and political alliance of four Central European countries, called the Visegrad Group. The total population includes over 111,000 firm-level panel data observations between 2001 and 2015. Lack of transparency in the ownership structure leads to lower investment and profitability, both for the case of an anonymous owner and for companies in a corporate pyramid. The capital structure of the company is not influenced by the presence of an anonymous owner; however, the existence of the ownership pyramid leads, ceteris paribus, to a larger debt for the firm.

The EU labour markets show a number of long-term imbalances and asymmetries, which are refl ected in a persisting high unemployment rate. A group that is particularly affected by the high unemployment rate are young people. The aim of the paper is to analyse causes and consequences of the youth unemployment in the EU and compare them with the measures. We test 894 POLITICKÁ EKONOMIE, 7, 2015 following hypothesis: "The high rigidity of the labour markets in the EU increases the rate of youth unemployment." Further, we analyse the correlation between the rigidity of the EU labour markets and youth unemployment rate. There is some evidence that Employment Protection Legislation index (EPL) is one of the key factors infl uencing youth unemployment. However, the results have differed significantly the according to the various regions (socio-economics models) of the EU. In the end of the paper the research leads to the conclusion that if the education systém allows a smooth transition between school and work, a higher rate of EPL doesn't increase youth unemployment. In order to reflect high complexity of the problem is the examination of the systems approach.

We analyse potential sources of internal imbalances, specifically as regards private and public indebtedness. The combination of a high public debt and increasing private sector indebtedness have been a source of concern in the perspective of the funding of the economy in examined countries. We utilize the detailed financial accounts as an analytical framework for revealing the development of private sector 's indebtedness in 18 EU countries in the period 1995-2012. Ratio of private debt (non-financial corporations, households and non-profit institutions serving households) to GDP was steadily increasing till 2009 with a decrease in the following years. After the decomposition of the private sector debt several facts stand out. Highly indebted, on the average, are households in Denmark and The Netherlands. Postsocialist countries have still low indebtedness, but are catching up. In panel regressions (fixed effects) the dependent variable is overlapping two-and free-year forward looking averages. The control variables are those usually used in growth equations a la R. Barro. We have utilised also instrumental variables (Pooled IV Two-stage EGLS) and 3 years averages for all variables to capture medium-run impacts. Having analysed the impacts of different private debt variables on the growth rate of real GDP we assert that the impact has been negative and statistically significant in almost all growth regressions.

This paper analyses the geographical concentration of the industry sector according to technology intensity of industries. The analysis of spatial distribution employs a database including information on the number of plants at the 2-digit level of sector aggregation in the period 1997-2016. We estimate parameters for a spatial panel data analysis with random and fixed effects in order to examine two related research questions: (1) to what extent are the effects of internal economies of scale present in the technology-intensive industries; and (2) which types of external economies of scale are used by different industries depending on technology intensity. Our results indicate that the regional industrial structure of Slovakia has become more diverse. As a consequence of the phase of economic integration, some of the regions have been integrated into global production networks and maintain high levels of specialisation.

This paper examines payout characteristics of firms in a cultural and political alliance of four Central European nations, the Visegrad Group. The sample consists of more than 100,000 firm-year observations from 2001 to 2015. Our results indicate that smoothing behaviour diminishes among firms with majority ownership and that the total payout characteristics behave according to existing theories on passive ownership behaviour and agency costs.

In this paper, we employ the high-frequency data from Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to analyse the variation in extreme price movements and market volatility around the period of fall of Lehman Brothers. The sample ranges from January 2008 to July 2009. We employ the price jump indicators optimal with respect to Type-I and Type-II errors. The former one shows an increase in market volatility and extreme price movements during financial distress, while the later one distinguishes extreme price movements and shows that they do not react in the long-run to fi nancial distress at PSE, while for the matured US market suggests a company/sector-specific reaction. We analyse behaviour of extreme price movements with respect to CDS. Our results suggest that both markets are different - extreme price movements at PSE are independent of CDS movements, while those at NYSE show a sector/company specific reactions to CDS.

The paper is discussing CNB FX intervention and its impact on all segments of Czech financial markets from process and volumes of transactions point of view and possible consequences. The focus is on foreign exchange, bond and stock market. Although the impact of FX intervention was evident on all markets under discussion, it was not so significant having macroeconomic effects. The only exception is the FX market. The Czech National Bank contributed to the widening gap between market and equilibrium exchange rate. The undervalued Czech currency will have a temporal positive impact on the macroeconomic external balance.

We analyze and quantify link between quality of the banking sector and sovereign risk in the states of the European Union (EU) using data over 1999-2014. We employ two market-based measures of the sovereign risk along with several empirically and theoretically motivated variables that characterize banking sector. We perform Bayesian estimations on several panels of countries. Our results show that higher ratio of the non-performing loans represents the most important industry-specific variable that is linked with a heightened rate of the sovereign risk. On the other hand, findings related to the size and depth of the banking sector, along with the capital adequacy ratio, are less clear-cut. Higher penetration of the foreign banks and higher degree of competition characterize a diversified structure of the banking industry that seems to be beneficial for the banking sector stability and is linked with lower sovereign risk.

Czech society is ageing, and the availability of these services should be important part of social strategy for the Czech Republic. Thus, the development in this area is not optimal and much more attention should be put on. Increasing life expectancy cause not only higher demands on the pension systems but also higher demands on social services. This is emphasised by the slower increase of healthy life expectancy and therefore it can be assumed that more people in higher age will require more social services. The paper deals with the issue of the macroeconomic costs and benefits of satisfying the requirements for residential care activities, especially for homes for the elderly as one of the most important area of social care. The aim of the paper is to estimate overall direct and indirect macroeconomic effects for the Czech Republic at the level of the regions. The relation between demand and supply of residential care activities is illustrated for 2013. While some issues can simply be related to the Czech population as a whole, some estimates are presented at the regional level. Economic impacts on the gross domestic product, employment and government finance are estimated by the semi-dynamic input-output analysis. It is illustrated how the investments into social facilities are transformed into economic development with different regional scale.

Three methodological errors in the economics of authors' rights and their consequences.Using a realistic and holistic approach, this theoretic contribution corrects three main assumptions of the economic theory of copyright and explains why they hinder the proper understanding of its role. First, authors' pieces of work are like a public good that needs the protection of copyright to overcome the free rider problem. However, a piece of work can be spread only with a medium good or service. Such a pair might not possess the properties of a public good like nonexcludability and nonrivalry. The second assumption that copyright enables authors to charge the price above marginal costs was rejected as too simplistic because the copyright affects different markets with pairs work + medium variably and moreover, it ensures for authors a non-market revenue. The complexity of copyright also explains why the third assumption that copyright can be modelled as a single index is meaningless. A new framework for optimisation behaviour of authors is offered.

The commentary defends the central idea of current institutional social research - that institutions are significant variables influencing the human action regarding the resource allocation. This idea was strongly opposed by the scientific board of the Czech economic faculty (institutionally oriented economic research was labeled as needless). The goal is to open the debate about this issue and ask the opponents to formulate concrete objections. Theoretical arguments and empirical examples are raised in favor of the institutional economics.