This paper examines theoretically and empirically the extent to which the decision by foreign firms to invest in a group of countries is influenced by economic factors, as opposed to political risk and institutional performance. We consider the importance of these factors as drivers of foreign...

We provide evidence on the policy risk of social security in Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia by computing the changes in the social security wealth induced by the pension reforms undertaken since the 1990s. Methodologically we follow upon McHale' (2001) study of selected reforms in G7...

We will investigate valuation of derivatives with payoff defined as a nonlinear though close to linear function of tradable underlying assets. Derivatives involving Libor or swap rates in arrears, i.e. rates paid in a wrong time, are a typical example. It is generally tempting to replace the...

In the paper we research statistical properties of the Central European stock markets. We focus mainly on the tail behavior of the Czech, Polish, and Hungarian stock markets and compare them to the benchmark U.S. and German stock markets. We fit the data of the 4-year period from March 2005 to...

In this paper we study the finite sample behavior of the Hill estimator under α-stable distributions. Using large Monte Carlo simulations we show that the Hill estimator overestimates the true tail exponent and can hardly be used on samples with small length. Utilizing our results, we introduce...

This article provides an empirical insight on the heterogeneity in the estimates of banking efficiency produced by the stochastic frontier approach. Using data from five countries of Central and Eastern Europe, we study the sensitivity of the efficiency score and the efficiency ranking to a...

The paper applies the gravity model of international trade in its analysis of German exports. The added value of our research is derived from the innovative shift in focus from the traditional gravity model specifications to the national level in order to interpret its estimations in a...

In this work we focus on the application of wavelet-based methods in volatility modeling. We introduce a new, wavelet-based estimator (wavelet Whittle estimator) of a FIEGARCH model, ARCH-family model capturing long-memory and asymmetry in volatility, and study its properties. Based on an...

The results generally confirm that Czech trade is oriented towards European countries and determined primarily by key economic factors of domestic and foreign GDP. The institutional variables remain largely insignificant, except corruption due tothe counterintuitive result that a higher...

The purpose of this paper is to examine Austrian foreign trade and estimate the country's export function. The analysis is based on the gravity model of trade in the log-log form, augmented by additional variables in order to control for the impact of institutions on decision-making. Our panel...