Prague Economic Papers, 2015 (vol. 24), issue 5
Original contributions, Original article, Research article
Empirical Evidence of Ideal Filter Approximation: Peripheral and Selected EU Countries Application
Jitka Poměnková, Roman Maršálek
Prague Economic Papers 2015, 24(5):485-502 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.512 
We compare three filters commonly used for business cycle analysis: the Baxter-King, the Christiano-Fitzgerald and the Hamming window filter. Empirical contribution of the paper is numerical evaluation of the approximation of the ideal band-pass filters in the discussion of the filters' theoretical properties (gain and attenuation within the business cycle frequencies, as well as the leakage in the remaining frequencies). We consider the truncation factor for the BaxterKing filter and the sample size for the latter two. We show that the leakage and attenuation of the Christiano-Fitzgerald and the Hamming window filter perform similarly across the range...
Hysteresis and the NAIRU: The Case of Countries in Transition
Gordana Marjanovic, Ljiljana Maksimovic, Nenad Stanisic
Prague Economic Papers 2015, 24(5):503-515 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.526
The paper examines the hysteresis hypothesis in unemployment in the case of eight selected countries in transition, using the Kalman filter and testing whether the NAIRU time series are stationary. The empirical results show that the hysteresis effect is confirmed for the majority of the countries. Testing the influence of the inflation growth rate on the decline in the NAIRU and vice versa, performed using the panel regression with fixed effect, confirmed that the increase in inflation leads to decline in the NAIRU. The conclusion also suggests the existence of the impact of actual unemployment rate on the NAIRU, which may be affected by the change...
Financial Risk and Real Variables: Evidence Based on a SVAR Analysis of the Czech Economy
Vít Pošta, Zdeněk Pikhart
Prague Economic Papers 2015, 24(5):516-537 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.513
Recent financial crisis has brought to attention the issues of interactions between financial markets and real economy. This paper presents an analysis of the possible explicit effects of various measures of financial markets' risk on real economy based on impulse - response functions within structural vector autoregressive models. As discussed in the paper the riskiness of financial markets is closely related to the more traditional mechanisms based on financial accelerator approach, however, although the issue of financial risk is closely tied with the financial accelerator model, broader effects outside this model may be considered as well. The...
The Performance of Foreign-Owned Banks in Host Country Economies
Tereza Fišerová, Petr Teplý, David Tripe
Prague Economic Papers 2015, 24(5):538-561 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.527
The paper deals with the phenomenon of foreign bank ownership, which is prevalent in the countries of Central, Eastern and South Eastern European region as well as in New Zealand. Using a sample of 17 countries and filtering out more than 140 domestically operating foreign-owned banks, we examine the determinants of their performance in relation to host country conditions over the period of seven years between 2005 and 2011. Based on our knowledge, we use the largest data set in this respect compared to other researchers. Using system GMM and fixed effects models, we reveal that macroeconomic fundamentals of the host country affect the foreign-owned...
Remittances and their Impact on the Czech Economy
Martina Šimková, Jitka Langhamrová
Prague Economic Papers 2015, 24(5):562-580 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.548
Migration of population has been a significant feature of the international economy for a long time. It is an important source of income, foreign exchange and workforce for a large number of economies. The most studies dealing with the international migration consider it as efficient instrument for developing countries, because inflow of money (through remittances) has a positive impact on their economy. However, on the other hand, economically developed countries are threatened by outflow of money abroad. From this perspective, remittances may have negative consequences on the economy. This issue connected with remittances is very often neglected....
An Analysis of Expenses for the Outsourcing of Policy Advice on the Level of the Ministries of the Czech Republic
Arnošt Veselý, František Ochrana, Stanislav Klazar
Prague Economic Papers 2015, 24(5):581-601 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.549
The study is a contribution to the theoretical/empirical analysis of the problem of outsourcing of policy advice in the public administration. It provides the typologies of expenses for policy advice in the public administration and examines the relationship between internal and external expenses on an example of the ministries of the Czech Republic for the period from 2001 to 2011. It shows that extreme changes in the form of increases in expenses for outsourcing arise when an amendment to the Act on Public Contracts is prepared. We explain the problem on the basis of changes in the behaviour of the clients as a result of expected changes to the contracting...
The Poor or the Kids? Distributional Impacts of Taxes and Benefits Among Czech Households
Libor Dušek, Klára Kalíšková, Daniel Münich
Prague Economic Papers 2015, 24(5):602-617 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.550
This paper provides an up-to-date analysis of the redistributive effects of the Czech tax and benefit system at the household level. We provide several measures of the extent in which the tax and benefit system redistributes from the rich to the poor and from the childless households to the households with children. We find a rather weak combined power of the tax and benefit systems in alleviating income inequalities. The system redistributes primarily towards households with children. While households with children earn 55 per cent of total earnings, they pay 39 per cent of total taxes and receive 68 per cent of total benefits. Even the richest households...