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...

A simple algebraic model of a property structure leading to the Leontief-type input-output scheme is developed and used to eliminate indirect ownership relations and evaluate the final distribution of national property among individual owners. Concepts of "family capitalism" and "capitalism of...

This paper analyzes microeconomic production functions of Czech small medium enterprises. We use the data from 2002 to 2005 of thirty manufacturing industries (agriculture and services are not included), each divided into five subgroups according to the number of employees. We employ stochastic...

This paper shows results of comparison of the original theoretical conception of modeling human decisions under risk with two well known models. In the paper the demand function for insurance is constructed for the model of maximization of the probability of agent’s (economical) survival. This...

We present a model of job search in which information about job opportunities is available either through direct search at the labor market or through network of socially tied individuals. We consider two cases - altruistic and self-interested agents that maximize their utility function. We show...