Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, 2016 (vol. 24), issue 1

The impact of Institutional Distance on FDI inflows in the Czech Republic

Pietro Andrea Podda

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2016, 24(1):3-14 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.495  

This paper studies the impact of institutional distance on FDI inflows in a specific country, the Czech Republic. This study contributes to the literature on the importance of institutional distance between home and host country among the factors able to influence FDI. The novelty of our paper is that (1) we consider whether institutional distance matters also when the host country is already endowed with institutional standards relatively close to those of the main home countries of MNEs, and (2) we run separate investigations of home-host countries' institutional distance, distinguishing between institutionally safer and less safe home countries...

Gas Swing Options: Introduction and Pricing using Monte Carlo Methods

Andrea Klimešová, Tomáš Václavík

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2016, 24(1):15-32 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.496  

Motivated by the changing nature of the natural gas industry in the European Union, driven by the liberalisation process, we focus on the introduction and pricing of gas swing options. These options are embedded in typical gas sales agreements in the form of offtake flexibility concerning volume and time. The gas swing option is actually a set of several American puts on a spread between prices of two or more energy commodities. This fact, together with the fact that the energy markets are fundamentally different from traditional financial security markets, is important for our choice of valuation technique. Due to the specific features of the energy...

The Best and Worst-Paid Sectors in the Czech Republic

Diana Bílková

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2016, 24(1):33-53 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.497  

The present paper deals with the issue of different behaviour of wage distribution of two highest and two lowest-paid sectors of the Czech economy in the period since the beginning of the global economic crisis; the former ones are the sectors of "Financial and Insurance Activities" and "Information and Communication", the latter ones being those of "Accommodation and Food Service Activities" and "Administrative and Support Service Activities". The aim is to capture the differences between these two groups of sectors, not only in terms of wage levels, but also as far as the variability and concentration of wage distribution is concerned. The gross...

Interval and global progressivity of the income tax from wages in the Czech and Slovak Republics

Květa Kubátová

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2016, 24(1):54-67 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.498  

The article deals with the measurement of progressivity of personal income tax in the Czech Republic and Slovakia imposed on wages. It works with both the methods known from the literature: the local method (interval) and global progressivity. The data source is the wage statistics of the Statistical Offices and taxes are calculated fictitiously on the basis of law with adoption of assumptions.Results for interval progressivity in both countries show that while progressivity of the lowest income taxpayers is higher, it decreases with increasing gross income. Personal income tax in the Czech and Slovak Republics is observed as progressive in the...

Approaches to Czech Passenger Railway Market Liberalisation

Zdeněk Tomeš, Monika Jandová

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2016, 24(1):68-81 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.499  

Competition on the Czech railway passenger market has been developing recently. It is possible to distinguish two types of competition - unregulated competition (competition on the market) and regulated competition (competition for the market). Competition on the market is present on the Prague-Ostrava route and competition for the market has been applied in a few public tenders for subsidised services. However, the substantial part of the Czech railway passenger market has remained closed and there is a question how to proceed with the competition development - whether to promote competition on the market or competition for the market. Based on European...

Half-Forgotten Personalities of Economic Thought - M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky

Pavel Sirůček

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2016, 24(1):82-90 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.500  

M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky was a Russian-Ukrainian economist, scientist, policy maker and journalist. He promoted the ideas of co-operativism. He tried to describe an eclectic synthesis of the marginal utility theory and the value theory of D. Ricardo and K. H. Marx. He is famous for the business cycle theory and he belongs among the best-known Russian economists.

Komplexní pohled do světa strategií úspěšných firem z dílny profesora Součka

Bohumír Štědroň, Eva Kostrecová

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2016, 24(1):91-92 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.501