Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Václav Žďárek Title: An Empirical Investigation of the Purchasing Power Parity Hypothesis in European Transition Countries Abstract: The article is aimed at empirical investigation of the relative version of the purchasing power parity (PPP). It attempts to shed some light on the so-called ´PPP puzzle´ for selected countries in the CEE region a nd Turkey. Because of ambiguous results in the literature, various econometrics methods are employed: univariate tests (URTs: ADF, PP, KPSS, DF-GLS), robust URTs including nonlinear URTs (Kapetanios and Sollis´ and Bierens´ test) and tests allowing for (multiple) structural breaks (Perron, Lee and Strazicich). The euro currency pairs (bilateral) of 10 European transition countries covering the period 1995:1-2011:1 are utilized. Our results for conventional linear (such as ADF or PP test) do not provide a crystal-clear answer, more robust URTs at least partially do, once the source of nonlinearities has been controlled for (structural changes, non-zero adjustment costs). Nonlinear tests with structural breaks provide more convincing evidence in favour of the PPP hypothesis including asymmetrical effects of exchange rate adjustments. Keywords: transition countries, unit root, real exchange rates, exponential smooth transition autoregressive model Classification-JEL: E51, F21 Pages: 257-276 Volume: 2012 Issue: 3 Year: 2012 File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/download.php?jnl=pep&pdf=423.pdf File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/423 File-Format: text/html Handle: RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2012:y:2012:i:3:id:423:p:257-276 X-File-Ref: http://www.vse.cz/RePEc/prg/jnlpep/references/423 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jiří Mazurek Title: The Evaluation of an Economic Distance Among Countries: A Novel Approach Abstract: The aim of the article is to propose a new measure of a relative economic distance between two countries (RED) or among a group of countries (GRED). Both measures enable to evaluate ´proximity´ between national economies through time series of selected variables, and are related to the concept of the sigma (beta) convergence introduced by Barro and Sala-i Martin (1995). In the empirical part of the paper, the RED of Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, the USA and Japan with regard to the Czech Republic are estimated, as well as the time evolution of the GRED of the Czech Republic and its neighbours. The main finding is the strong convergence among these countries after the outbreak of the financial crisis which persists to this day. Keywords: unemployment, correlation, GDP, relative economic distance, the Czech Republic Classification-JEL: C19, F50, O57 Pages: 277-290 Volume: 2012 Issue: 3 Year: 2012 File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/download.php?jnl=pep&pdf=424.pdf File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/424 File-Format: text/html Handle: RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2012:y:2012:i:3:id:424:p:277-290 X-File-Ref: http://www.vse.cz/RePEc/prg/jnlpep/references/424 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Paulo Jorge Reis Mourao Title: The Weber-Fechner Law and Public Expenditures Impact to the Win-Margins at Parliamentary Elections Abstract: This paper discusses the electoral implications of psychological motivation on voting functions. We tested a claim of the Weber-Fechner law as applied to electoral behaviour-specifically, that an expanded public sector leads politicians to make more significant, opportunistic distortions of public expenditures than the distortions observed when the public sector is diminished. We employed a system of simultaneous equations to test this hypothesis for cases observed in more than sixty democracies since 1960. We gave a special focus to the cases of Central and Eastern European countries. Our results confirm the main implications of the Weber-Fechner law. Years in incumbency, running for re-election, higher unemployment and higher inflation rates tend to generate negative moods, feelings and affects in the electorate; thus, these factors tend to approximate the vote share of the most voted party to the remaining vote share of the challenger political forces. Keywords: voting, Central and Eastern European economies, Weber-Fechner law Classification-JEL: D03, D72, P20 Pages: 291-308 Volume: 2012 Issue: 3 Year: 2012 File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/download.php?jnl=pep&pdf=425.pdf File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/425 File-Format: text/html Handle: RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2012:y:2012:i:3:id:425:p:291-308 X-File-Ref: http://www.vse.cz/RePEc/prg/jnlpep/references/425 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stanislav Klazar Author-Name: Barbora Slintáková Title: How Progressive is the Czech Pension Security? Abstract: The aim of the paper is to examine the progressivity of the pension security in the Czech Republic using an intragenerational longitudinal approach. Since there is no available Czech panel data we modelled pseudo-panel data on lifetime earnings of employees on the basis of real crosssectional data. Then the present values of lifetime contributions paid to and lifetime pensions received from the system were derived from the simulated lifetime earnings. The analysis revealed that the Czech pension security redistributes the funds from the higher-income participants to the lower-income ones and from men to women. Furthermore the Gini coefficients confirmed that the scheme reduces income inequality. The results proved that the solidarity principle built in the pension formula prevails over the benefit principle, which is also present in the formula, when the benefit component is relatively more favourable for the rich employees because of the shape of the lifetime earnings function. Keywords: social security, progressivity, old age pensions, redistribution, lifetime incidence Classification-JEL: H23, H55 Pages: 309-327 Volume: 2012 Issue: 3 Year: 2012 File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/download.php?jnl=pep&pdf=426.pdf File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/426 File-Format: text/html Handle: RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2012:y:2012:i:3:id:426:p:309-327 X-File-Ref: http://www.vse.cz/RePEc/prg/jnlpep/references/426 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Martina Mysíková Title: Gender Wage Gap in the Czech Republic and Central European Countries Abstract: This paper aims to quantify the basic structure of gender wage gaps in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, using the EU-SILC 2008 dataset. The structure of the gender wage gap is analyzed based on the Heckman selection model and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. The findings are to a great extent similar for the Czech and Slovak Republics. The observed gender wage gap is relatively high in these two countries, compared to Hungary and Poland. A relatively small but positive part of the observed gender wage gap can be explained by gender differences in characteristics in the Czech and Slovak Republics, with a high contribution of job characteristics. An opposite result proved in Hungary and Poland, where working women have on average even better characteristics than working men, mainly in terms of individual characteristics. Keywords: endowment effect, gender wage gap, Heckman model, labor market participation, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, remuneration effect, sample-selection effect Classification-JEL: J16, J24, J31 Pages: 328-346 Volume: 2012 Issue: 3 Year: 2012 File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/download.php?jnl=pep&pdf=427.pdf File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/427 File-Format: text/html Handle: RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2012:y:2012:i:3:id:427:p:328-346 X-File-Ref: http://www.vse.cz/RePEc/prg/jnlpep/references/427 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Iustina Boitan Title: Development of an Early Warning System for Evaluating the Credit Portfolio´s Quality. A Case Study on Romania Abstract: The current financial crisis has boosted the efforts of international financial institutions to strengthen collaboration in the field of banking supervision, with a particular focus on macro prudential supervision. One of the stated objectives is the creation of a warning system, in which economic and financial vulnerabilities at the regional level will be coupled with the potential for spillovers or contagion between markets and countries. The aim of this study is to design an early warning system in order to highlight, at an earlier stage, the likelihood of deterioration of the Romanian banking system credit portfolio´s quality. The paper focuses on the relationship between several macroeconomic and bank-specific variables and overdue and doubtful loans. The warning system developed will be used further to made predictions on the degree of credit portfolio impairment, under the auspices of the actual financial crisis. Keywords: early warning system, logistic regression, probability of deterioration of the loan portfolio, goodness-of-fit tests, predictive ability Classification-JEL: G01, G21 Pages: 347-362 Volume: 2012 Issue: 3 Year: 2012 File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/download.php?jnl=pep&pdf=428.pdf File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/428 File-Format: text/html Handle: RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2012:y:2012:i:3:id:428:p:347-362 X-File-Ref: http://www.vse.cz/RePEc/prg/jnlpep/references/428 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Petr Duczynski Title: On Net External Assets in Developed and Transition Countries Abstract: The paper focuses on net external assets (NEA) in developed and transition countries in 1995, 2000, and 2005. The net international investment position is used as the main NEA indicator. In addition, alternative NEA estimates for developed countries are based on the cumulated current account, the cumulated financial and capital accounts, and the net factor income from abroad. The NEA estimates are divided by the gross domestic product (GDP) based on the U.S. dollar exchange rate. We identify the most important net creditors and net debtors, for which we study the average behavior of the real product growth, the unemployment rate, and the inflation rate among developed countries. We conclude that all the given estimates of NEA are good but imperfect. Keywords: transition countries, developed countries, net external assets, the balance of payments Classification-JEL: C82, F34, F41 Pages: 363-376 Volume: 2012 Issue: 3 Year: 2012 File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/download.php?jnl=pep&pdf=429.pdf File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/429 File-Format: text/html Handle: RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2012:y:2012:i:3:id:429:p:363-376 X-File-Ref: http://www.vse.cz/RePEc/prg/jnlpep/references/429 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Juraj Barta Author-Name: Michal Považan Title: Publication Activity of New Slovak Professors In Economics and its International Reception Abstract: The paper deals with quality of economic research in Slovakia, which is strongly connected with quality of economic education at Slovak universities. Quality of economic research is described by publication activity of Slovak professors of economics, who are usually the leaders in number of publications and citations and used to be internationally recognised. The paper does not seek for possible roots or explanations of the situation. It only tries to describe the status quo and provide useful data and comparisons. Keywords: education, economic, quality, professor, Slovak, research, scientometrics Classification-JEL: A11, I23 Pages: 377-387 Volume: 2012 Issue: 3 Year: 2012 File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/download.php?jnl=pep&pdf=430.pdf File-URL: http://www.vse.cz/pep/430 File-Format: text/html Handle: RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2012:y:2012:i:3:id:430:p:377-387 X-File-Ref: http://www.vse.cz/RePEc/prg/jnlpep/references/430