Prague Economic Papers, 2017 (vol. 26), issue 4

Personal Loan Companies in Poland: Does Empirical Evidence Justify Regulatory Transition?

Andrzej Cwynar, Wiktor Cwynar, Kamil Wais, Radoslaw Parda

Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):377-396 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.627  

We surveyed representative sample of 1,004 adult Poles to check the extent to which they distinguish among the entities operating in the market for personal loans in Poland, how they perceive loans and lending entities, and what is their knowledge on lending/borrowing issues. Particularly, we were interested in getting the insight into the fragment of the market that is operated by personal loan companies, with special emphasis on the profile of the average (statistical) borrower. Our examination was motivated by the controversies surrounding the law amendment started in Poland in 2015 in order to regulate the fraction of the consumer credit market...

Conceptualization of Historical Time in Post Keynesian Economics

Zdeněk Chytil, Lukáš Máslo

Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):397-421 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.619  

The paper deals with a problem of conceptualization of historical time in Post Keynesian models. The authors introduce a new notion that they call hysteretic persistence, which they see as essential because such a phenomenon as path-dependence in the short-run equilibrium cannot be described by the existing of notions of hysteresis and persistence. In the field of system (ir)reversibility, drawing upon their previous research (Chytil, Máslo, 2014, 2015), the authors introduce a new notion of general reversibility, which they justify on the account that such phenomena as a shock - counter-shock sequence in both...

Employment Growth and Labour Elasticity in V4 Countries: Structural Decomposition Analysis

Martin Hudcovský, Martin Lábaj, Karol Morvay

Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):422-437 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.623  

In the present paper, we analyse the determinants of employment growth in V4 countries. While a standard approach relies on the parametric estimation of labour elasticity coefficients, we employ a novel approach based on structural decomposition analysis. This allows us to identify several determinants which mitigate the effects of economic growth on employment. We decompose the overall change in employment into the contribution of six factors: changes in labour productivity, changes in the import of intermediate products, changes in the structure of production, changes in the final demand structure by industries and by sectors, and a change in final...

Modelling of Unemployment Duration in the Czech Republic

Adam Čabla, Ivana Malá

Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):438-449 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.620  

The paper examines the duration of unemployment in the Czech Republic in the three selected years (2008, 2010 and 2014). It is based on the Czech Statistical Office data collected from the Labour Force Sample Survey. Lognormal probability distribution (unimodal positively skewed heavy-tailed distribution) is used in the Accelerated Failure Time regression model including the following factor explanatory variables: years (three levels, 2008, 2010, 2014), gender (two levels), education (four levels), five-year age groups (nine levels) and municipality size (five levels). Apart from this parametric model, Turnbull's nonparametric estimator of the survival...

Calculation of Solvency Capital Requirements for Non-life Underwriting Risk Using Generalized Linear Models

Jiří Valecký

Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):450-466 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.621  

The paper presents various GLM models using individual rating factors to calculate the solvency capital requirements for non-life underwriting risk in insurance. First, we consider the potential heterogeneity of claim frequency and the occurrence of large claims in the models. Second, we analyse how the distribution of frequency and severity varies depending on the modelling approach and examine how they are projected into SCR estimates according to the Solvency II Directive. In addition, we show that neglecting of large claims is as consequential as neglecting the heterogeneity of claim frequency. The claim frequency and severity are managed using...

Higher Education and Economic Growth. A Comparison between Czech Republic and Romania

Bogdan Oancea, Richard Pospíšil, Raluca Mariana Drăgoescu

Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):467-486 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.622  

Although there is a strong theoretical framework for the economic growth and its relationship with education, the empirical evidence of this relationship is rather scarce. In this paper we investigated the causality and the long-run relationship between economic growth and higher education in the Czech Republic and Romania, using data series for 1980-2013 period. We used a VECM to analyse the long-run relationship between higher education and economic growth and Granger methodology to test the causality between variables. The results showed that higher education has an important positive effect on economic growth, although the impact level of the higher...

Green Growth, Green Economy and Sustainable Development: Terminological and Relational Discourse

Armand Kasztelan

Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):487-499 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.626  

The purpose of the survey and to some extent polemical article is to present the issue of green growth, a new operating strategy, which the OECD is currently working on. Green growth is seen as a practical tool for achieving the timeless objective, which is sustainable development. In the paper, a particular attention is put on the following question: what kind of relationship occurs between green growth, green economy and sustainable development. The author analyses the purpose of simultaneous functioning of the three "green" ideas. The added value of this paper is a presentation of the author's model of GG-GE-SD relations and a new approach to defining...

The Third Book Containing a Professional and Impartial Analysis of Important Aspects of the Most Radical Changes in the National Economy since the Year 1918

Jaroslav Daňhel

Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):500-502 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.642