Prague Economic Papers, 2008 (vol. 17), issue 1
Original contributions, Original article, Research article
Declining german export prices due to increased competition from newly industrializing countries - evidence from germany and the ceecs
Sebastian Gundel
Prague Economic Papers 2008, 17(1):3-22 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.316 
In this paper, the export demand and supply of German manufacturing industry is estimated for the period 1993 to 2005. The Johansen procedure (1991, 1994) is applied to estimate the long-run relationship in a VECM. Special attention is paid to the development of the German export prices being exposed to the competitive environment of fast growing countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Since they offer similar high-technology products on the international export markets and are gaining the market share, German export prices are under downward pressure. The results show that German export prices grow at a slower pace than that of the...
Real convergence in the new eu member states
Borut Vojinović, ®an Jan Oplotnik
Prague Economic Papers 2008, 17(1):23-39 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.317
This paper presents the analysis of unconditional b and s convergence among the ten European countries that accessed the European Union in 2004. Unconditional b convergence means that the less developed countries (with lower GDP per capita) grow faster than the more developed countries (with higher GDP per capita). s convergence exists when income differentiation among economies decreases over time. Our results confirm the existence of both types of convergence in the second half of the 1990s and the 2000s. The poorer New EU Member States grew generally faster than the richer New EU Member States. As a result, the income gap among these countries has...
Impact of globalization on taxation mixes in oecd countries during 1965-2003
Květa Kubátová, Alena Vančurová, Michaela Foltysová
Prague Economic Papers 2008, 17(1):40-53 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.318
The aim of the paper is to explore impact of globalization on the tax mixes of the OECD countries. The research object is the tax mix of 21 OECD member countries in the period 1965 - 2003. The relation of tax mixes and globalization, which expresses oneself through a tax competition, is analysed by methods of multidimensional statistical analysis. First, the cluster analysis enables us to identify countries` clusters (subgroups of the OECD group of countries) with similar tax mixes in the observed period. Consequently, the discriminatory analysis explains the reasons of the resulting grouping of the countries. Within the scope of the discriminatory...
Financing the health care in the czech republic: some comparisons with austria
Marie Vavrejnová, Herta M. Rack
Prague Economic Papers 2008, 17(1):54-73 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.319
This paper presents an insight into problems of financing the greatest part of public services for the population - the health care. The situation in this field in two nearby countries - the Czech Republic and Austria is compared. The health status of the population and the health care bases in both countries are on a high level, and the Czech situation is approaching the somewhat better situation in Austria. The main problem in the both countries is the lack of financial resources for covering the increasing needs in health care services and medicaments. Therefore, the new ways how to balance the deficit of the system both on the revenue and expenditure...