The Czech Republic has been a successful recipient of foreign direct investment over recent years. Therefore, it is important to understand the decisions made by foreign investors where to place their investments and how to decide about their location between alternative industries. The aim of...

This paper studies whether the dynamic behavior of real GDP, unemployment and inflation is systematically affected by the timing of elections and by changes of governments in the Czech Republic. Two basic models of political cycles are tested – the political business cycle models and the...

This paper summarizes the major events in the recent history of modelling human decisions under risk. After presenting the basics of expected utility theory, the key pieces of evidence are described which showed that under certain circumstances, this theory is not descriptively valid. The most...

Doubts about the intrinsic value of economic performance are nothing new (T.Scitovsky, J.Galbraith). The paper starts with a criticism of „catching up“ models and a „puzzle“ of East Germans dissatisfaction with a rise of welfare after the Berlin wall’s fall. Author provides a sketch of...

In this paper, we set out to examine an efficient fiscal-policy framework for a monetary union. We illustrate that fiscal policy’s bias toward budget deficit only temporarily ceased at the end of the 20th century as European countries endeavored to qualify for euro-zone membership, which...

The paper assesses the developments in the financial accounts of the balance of payments in 15 transition countries in Central, Baltic and South-Eastern Europe. It is a follow-up of the IES working paper no. 49 of May 2004, that dealt with the state of current accounts in these countries. In...

Paper explains the changing concept of privatization, regulation and deregulation of utilities. The theoretical and political background of new EU energy/gas directives in the framework of the limited impact of existing directives is discussed, their implementation in the Czech energy law and...

Heterogeneous agents' model with the stochastic beliefs formation is considered. Fundamentalists rely on their model employing fundamental information basis to forecast the next price period. Chartists determine whether current conditions call for the acquisition of fundamental information in a...

The paper reviews (in Czech) the main qualitative tools applied by (micro)economic analysis and surveys the main literature on the topic. Economics is often being criticised by its opponents for the use of unrealistic assumptions. On the contrary, my claim is that if economics has anything to...

We survey theories of impacts of budgetary rules in the budget process, review empirical evidence and on the basis of comparative studies design an optimal shape of the Czech budgetary rules. The theoretical section focuses on conventional and non-intuitive effects of spending caps under...