Archive

Input-output tables, structural analysis, supply and use tables, System of National Accounts, technical coefficients

The variability in technical coefficients calculated based on the input-output tables published by the Czech Statistical Office for the period 1995 to 2010 is examined in the present paper. The low variability of coefficients is a prerequisite for their applicability in macroeconomic forecasts and analysis. The paper progressively deals with the meaning of technical coefficients, the method of their calculation, and the characteristics of variability. It was found that the variability of coefficients is high and, therefore, that the technical coefficients, with few exceptions, are unsuitable for making predictions.

DEA method, efficiency, model BCC/CCR/SBM, NUTS 2 region, performance, Visegrad four.

Paper deals with an application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methods to multicriteria performance evaluation of the Visegrad Four (V4) countries and their NUTS 2 regions. The aim of the paper is to analyze a degree of efficiency achieved in individual countries and regions of V4 which is perceived as a reflection of development potential level in the reference period 2000–2010. The theoretical part of the paper is devoted to the fundamental bases of efficiency analysis in the context of performance theory and the methodology of DEA method. The empirical part is aimed at measuring the effectiveness of 4 countries and 35 NUTS 2 regions of V4 through 6 selected DEA models. When applying DEA method in the analysis, we used selected indicators of inputs and outputs, which are part of the EUs growth strategies. Using of DEA method for efficiency evaluation seems to be convenient because there is not only one factor evaluated, but a set of different factors that determine the degree of economic development. DEA method is based on inputs and outputs of used indicators and evaluates the efficiency how countries and regions are able to transform their inputs into outputs. Therefore, efficiency of countries and regions can be considered as a mirror of performance. Each country and region is ranked in terms of their effective and ineffective economic position within V4. The final part of the paper offers a comprehensive comparison of results obtained using selected DEA models – CCR, BCC and SBM.

Cointegration, financial crisis, financial integration, new EU member states, stock market, VAR model.

During the recent financial and debt crisis, spillovers of shocks occurred between stock markets, which negatively influenced their national economies. Interconnections of stock markets is therefore of vital interest to central banks and scientific research. Previous research of the markets of the new EU member states, however, focused primarily on their integration with the global market or the euro-area. This article therefore investigates and describes interactions among markets of the new EU member states. Based on the results of correlation, cointegration and regression analysis and vector autoregression model, the article concludes that before the beginning of the crisis in 2007, national markets were rather affected by domestic information than by information from other countries. This changed after 2007, when the significance of information from other countries (especially from Hungary) sharply increased and the markets became sensitive to regional information.

Advertising, logistic regression, marketing research, odds ratio, over-the-counter products, pharmaceutical market, purchase probability.

The size of the pharmaceutical market and sales is increasing constantly. Market is flooded with new drugs and preparations. There is an increasing number of the advertising (e.g. television and print) for these medicaments. This paper aims to analyze the relationship between (1) the awareness of the advertising and the purchase of the medicaments and (2) noticing the advertising leaflets in a pharmacy and the purchase of the medicaments. Five groups of drugs are monitored there, namely vitamins and minerals, immunity support medicines, painkillers, pharmaceutical cosmetics and medicines to support the nervous system. Analysis is made by using the logistic regression, there are determined odds ratio of purchase and purchase probability. The coefficients are estimated by using the maximum likelihood. The contribution involves the list of pharmaceutical products whose purchase is influenced by the advertising.

Information asymmetry, market failures, regional self-government, regions.

The subject of this article is the information asymmetry in the area of regional management. The aim of the Author is to discuss the significance of the information asymmetry for the regional government at the level of Czech regions. On the basis of present competences and powers of regional self-governments the main areas of the information asymmetry presence are identified. Possibilities of regional self-government how to eliminate the information asymmetry in the regions are discussed. First of all, there is the principal-agent problem. The regional self-government is partly the agent of local people and partly the principal in relation to its allowance organizations. Furthermore, the information asymmetry is also present in the grants providing and it is asymmetric information of the grant recipients qualities. The asymmetric information is evident in some types of goods and services provided by regional self-government, especially in the education and health care systems. Within the detached powers, the regional self-government has instruments to eliminate the information asymmetry in the private agents market relations in the region.

Economic effectiveness, export activities, productivity, top-100 enterprises.

The main purpose of this paper is to compare the 100 largest Czech and Polish companies on the basis of selected measures of economic effectiveness and also with regard to other characteristics of their activities such as export activities and rationality of employment. A division of the examined group was introduced and included some companies which concentrate on production activity (Group P) and others whose activity focuses on trading and service (Group TS). A chi-square test of independence, a z-test and cluster analysis were used. The structure of the 100 largest companies, in regard to the application of the criterion of division into P and TS, was not significantly different. The Czech Group P enterprises seem to be, on average, slightly better managed than their Polish counterparts. The classification (cluster analysis) allowed the separation of six groups of companies into different characteristics.

Employee turnover, knowledge continuity, knowledge management, knowledge worker.

The goal of organisations is efficient management leading to the efficient use of time, the minimisation of errors and the improvement of the organisations productivity. The article focuses on the factor of knowledge continuity, which can contribute strongly to productivity enhancement and simultaneously eliminate the impact of employee turnover and subsequent loss of knowledge of its employees. The purpose is to reveal the current approach in Czech organisations with regard to the causes of employee turnover and knowledge continuity as a critical part of human resource management and to formulate relevant recommendation. The data evaluated here has been obtained through two primary surveys of managers in organisations in the Czech Republic. The outcomes reveal that efficient management, based on applying techniques of knowledge management and knowledge continuity management, may eliminate the negative impact of employee turnover on the loss of knowledge in organisations. The utilization of knowledge held by knowledge employees can contribute to the improvement of efficiency of individual processes and in turn the productivity of the entire organisation. For management to be efficient, managers have to use suitable methods of employee leadership and to create conditions that support knowledge sharing, transfer and preservation. If appropriate conditions are established, employee turnover does not need to lead to the loss of knowledge possessed by knowledge employees.

β and σ convergence, comparative price level, GDP per capita, Maastricht criteria, real and nominal convergence.

Real convergence of economies in macroeconomic terms is accompanied by convergence of nominal variables. The paper provides an analysis of the relationship of the GDP per capita development as an indicator of the real convergence and the development of the comparable price level as a representative of the nominal con-vergence in relation to the EU average value in the EU economies. Using the concept of convergence, the devel-opment of variability of real and nominal convergence indicators among the EU and euro area economies is also evaluated. The Maastricht criteria are an alternative concept of the nominal convergence and their fulfilment interacts with the convergence in previous conceptions. The aim of the paper is to detect relationships between the real and nominal convergence via given indicators within the EU economies, with impacts on the euro area participation regarding the obligations to comply with the Maastricht criteria. In this sense the impacts on the new Member States are taken into account. It is clear that countries of the EU with lower levels of GDP per capita also achieve lower price levels and that simultaneous real and nominal convergence is likely to occur in these countries. The Maastricht criteria may lead to negative effects on the catching up economies joining the euro area, which experience simultaneous real and nominal convergence in the above mentioned conceptions.

Benchmarking, local government, service, performance, contracting out services, Slovakia.

Outcomes of realized researches in service benchmarking at the local self government level in Slovakia have showed the limited and merely dummy implementation of this method. The local self government bodies express the ambition to introduce the method of benchmarking in performance management. However, this ambition alone is not sufficient for producing the expected results of benchmarking in higher effectiveness and quality in service delivery. The goal of this paper is to confirm the problem of dummy benchmarking implementation in service management at local government level by outcomes of own primary research realized in 141 self government bodies. Analytical part provides selected data trying to face the relatively optimistic account of benchmarking using in service delivery management given by the attitudes of the local authorities representatives towards using benchmarking with the outcomes of the service delivery analysis targeted the expected results of benchmarking using – the proper make or buy decision regarding the effectiveness and quality services. This unique approach comparing the original collected survey data on expressed benchmarking using with supplementary data on services delivery enable to cross-check the reality of benchmarking in service delivery management.

Gini coefficient, incomes, inequality, tax, transfer payments.

The paper focuses on an analysis of income inequality of population in the Czech Republic on the basis of data from the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, for the period of 2005–2009. The partial goals of the paper include evaluation of the development of primary income inequality in the Czech Republic, evaluation of the effects of income components and also tax-transfer tool on the income inequality. The basic methodological tool is the Gini coefficient and its decomposition according to individual categories of incomes. The analysis identified a decreasing tendency of income inequality. The main determinant affecting income inequality may be considered income from entrepreneurship. Tax-transfer tolls effectively eliminate mentioned inequality and the social incomes have the strongest redistribution effect. The establishment of equal tax in the year 2008 does not cause increase in income inequality.

Classification table, default probability, fractional polynomial, logistic regression, logit, ROC curve, scoring.

The paper is devoted to the proposing a scoring model of firms bankruptcy on the basis of logistic regression which could be used in the purpose of classifying the good and bad firms in the Czech Republic. Firstly, the general foundation of logistic regression is described and then the general procedure of model-building strategy including the statistical verification and in-sample validation are explained. Then, we have built the empirical scoring model using results of financial analysis carried out over 400 Czech firms in 2008 and we select such financial ratios with the most substantial prediction capability, i.e. return on assets, current and long-term indebtedness and cash ratio. Our proposed model is fully statistical verified and we also perform the in-sample validation via classification table and ROC curve. Finally, we compare our model with others studies made in this field.

Gender, gender pay gap, wage differences, wage discrimination.

The paper examines the amount of gender pay gap (GPG) in the selected company to find out if the company wage discriminates women or not. To estimate the discriminatory component of gender pay gap, authors have used two methods: the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and the method of pair-wise comparison. The authors conclude that in selected companies the gender pay gap is about 19%. This pay gap can not be explained by different performance characteristics of men and women in this company. By contrast, women have better characteristics compared to men. Their wages should be higher than the wage of men. Using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, it was found that the effect of discrimination makes up more than 100% of GPG. The existence of wage discrimination against women in the company has been confirmed using method of pair-wise comparison too.

Benchmarking, municipalities with extended powers, performance, public administration, quality.

Paper deals with the application of benchmarking in the practice of the selected type of public administration institutions in the Czech Republic – authorities of municipalities with extended powers. Benchmarking belongs to methods of increasing quality of public administration which are applied in terms of public administration institutions in the Czech Republic since the year 2000, particularly in conditions of territorial self-government authorities. Aim of the paper is to describe and evaluate benefits of benchmarking for improving the performance and quality of authorities of municipalities with extended powers. In the first part of the paper, there are defined basic theoretical postulates in the view of types, application and possibilities of benchmarking, both in general and also in terms of public administration. Following parts of the paper are focused on the evaluation of questionnaire survey conducted in 2010 among the active authorities of municipalities with extended powers in the area of benchmarking, mainly through the means of correlation analysis.

Czech Republic, government budget, social security, tax reform, value added tax.

Evaluation of the impacts of tax changes on government revenues and expenditures is indispensable for evidence-based policy making. Czech government discussed several alternative proposals to change the value added tax rates and social security rates during 2010 and 2011. This article estimates the impact of these proposals on the public sector budget deficits. The main contribution of the article is in quantifying a wide range of response channels through which the proposed tax changes affect the government revenues and expenditures. The relationship between the proposed VAT changes and the pension reform is discussed, as is the reallocation of revenue and expenditures within the public sector.

Central bank independence, Central bank of Iceland, de facto, de jure.

One of the most outstanding characteristics in the recent development of the central banking is the genesis of the central bank independence. Nevertheless this evolution is mainly based on improvement of legislation. This paper examines the possibility of dichotomy between central bank independence de facto and de jure on the case of the Central bank of Iceland. The aim is to evaluate independence de jure and de facto of the chosen central bank. The possibility of disharmony between these types of the independence will be shown on the results. The independence of the chosen central bank was studied during the last twenty years when the independence of this central bank made the biggest progress. The development of both types of independence was quantified due to indexes which are focused on the main aspects of independence. The results of the paper have shown that despite of important legislative changes which were focused on empowering independence de jure there still remain great deficiencies in the independence de facto.

Multi-investment horizons, portfolio choice, portfolio insurance, Value at Risk.

This paper presents and analyses the structure of a new mutual fund management model that allocates a fund’s resources with respect to the different time preferences of investors. The proposed model enables the explicit definition of investment horizons in a regular open-ended fund framework that uses the popular portfolio insurance strategy based on value at risk. Investors are assumed to be homogeneous in terms of their risk/reward preferences but heterogeneous in terms of their investment horizons. Time moments when investment decisions are made by individual investors are spread out over time randomly because of the different life cycles of investors. We assume that all investors in the fund can be separated into manageable numbers of groups regarding their remaining investment horizons. The fundamental concept of the proposed multi-horizon portfolio insurance model is optimising the composition of the fund according to the most conservative allocation among the optimal portfolios of all considered groups of investors. A historical simulation based on US financial data is also used to compare the proposed model with the regular single horizon strategy and the to stress test proposed model with its various parameterisations.

Concordance measure, dimensionality reduction, large-scale portfolio selection, reward measure.

The dependency structure of random sources plays a crucial role in portfolio theory and in several pricing and risk management problems. In this paper, we discuss the possible usage of alternative association measures in portfolio problems. Among association measures, we highlight those that are consistent with the choices of risk-averse investors and we characterise semidefinite positive association measures. Additionally, we propose new portfolio selection problems that optimise the association between the portfolio and market benchmarks and follow a dimensionality reduction problem. Finally, by carrying out an empirical analysis, we show the impact of selected association measures within the portfolio problem. This analysis proves that the proper usage of both a risk measure and an association measure can increase the portfolio performance substantially.

Causes of employee turnover, employees, knowledge, knowledge continuity, turnover.

Determining the causes and consequences of employee turnover is necessary in order to maintain competitive advantage in today’s knowledge economy. For an organisation, an employee’s departure can mean the outflow of the knowledge that he or she possesses, and it is thus necessary to ensure its transfer in order to maintain knowledge continuity. The objective of the present article is to present the results of surveys on the causes of employee turnover and its perception by employers as possible knowledge loss. The impact of employee turnover on knowledge continuity was examined by combining quantitative and qualitative surveys. The differences between provable factors leading to an employee’s departure from small and large organisations provided a base for a follow-up survey focusing on the preservation of key knowledge in organisations dealing with turnover problems. One of the conclusions is that the threat arising from a departing employee with critical knowledge about the organisation is dependent on their ownership interest in the organisation, on the size of the organisation and on the sector of the economy. Today‘s knowledge-based organisations must be aware of the main causes and consequences of employee fluctuation in order to maintain competitiveness at this time of economic crisis.

Decision-making process, Erasmus programme, exchange programmes, information sources, marketing commu-nications, student mobility.

Learning mobility is a key priority because of its impacts analysed by a number of studies. International education is becoming increasingly competitive with a growing importance of branding within educational institutions. Member states of the EU have been invited to increase the attractiveness of their higher education institutions, and several research studies have concluded that mobility should be better promoted. The aim of this paper is thus to analyse a student’s decision-making process on exchange programmes in order to help improve the marketing communications of a university. Eight individual surveys were carried out in order to understand how students decide on where to study abroad. The results of this study illustrate how to effectively use information sources within a university communications strategy and how to design a creative strategy.

Competitiveness, economic growth, growth competitiveness index, human development index, quality of life, world economic forum.

Competitiveness of the economy is today increasingly a hot topic not only among politicians but also professional communities. We can meet with the competitiveness in micro and macroeconomic level. Competitiveness growth is the main aim of many governments, political parties and integrated economies, e.g. the Lisbon strategy or Europe 2020. The aim of this article is to determine whether economic growth represented by the growth rates of gross domestic product boosts competitiveness. The competitiveness will be measured by the Growth competitiveness index used by the World economic forum at first and then by the Human development index in next part. Research is carried out on annual basis data; in the first case the analysis carried out in 2001–2005, in the second in 2000–2007. For evaluation are selected OECD and BRIC countries. The method used in the paper could not confirm a positive and strong correlation between economic growth and competitiveness.

Assessing the effectiveness of public services providing, benchmarking, benchmarking performance indicators, local self-government, program budgeting.

The paper is focused on issues of the program budgeting implementation to the financial management of Slovak local self-governments, with an emphasis on its possible use in the benchmarking process. The aim of this paper is to analyze the structure of the first local self-governmentss program budgets and to highlight the benefit of program budgeting in the context of its potential use as a data source for self-governments mutual comparing and learning in the field of effective public-services providing. Case study compares the structure and volume of program budgets of selected municipalities in Žilina region and realises the initial phase of benchmarking on the basis of benchmarking performance indicators proposed by Transparency International. The intention of this paper is to provoke discussion and to activate the practice for making the missing databases and partnerships of local self-governments.

Allocative efficiency, cost efficiency, data envelopment analysis, technical efficiency, transport companies.

The paper analyses the total cost efficiency of the selected transport companies of the Czech Republic by means of data envelopment analysis (DEA). This method with using information on input prices and nature of returns to scale provides a detailed insight into the structure of potential inefficiency of the analyzed companies. Conclusions of the analysis in the identification of types of inefficiency of individual companies may be beneficial both for the business itself in terms of their orientation to the future, as well as in terms of emphasizing the role of DEA as an important tool in decision-making process of corporate governance.

Competitiveness, Czech Republic, Lisbon strategy, NUTS 2, point method, structural indicators, traffic-light method.

Evaluation of regional competitiveness is issue constantly in the forefront of economic science, which lacks a mainstream approach. The paper examines and analyses regional competitiveness of the Czech Republic by selected structural indicators of the European Union. Theoretical background of the paper set out the methodo-logical concept and thesis of regional competitiveness, focusing on the possibility of measuring, and the methodology of EU Structural indicators system, which is used for the evaluation and the attainment of the objectives of the Lisbon strategy. The empirical part of the paper analyses the level of regional competitiveness of the Czech Republic through selected statistical and scaling methods in the case of 6 selected regional structural indicators.

Backtesting, copula functions, NIG model, returns modeling, Value at Risk.

Modeling, measuring, and subsequent management of the portfolio risks is of great importance for decision making in financial institutions. This article is focused on the portfolio returns modeling with the use of two particular probability distributions, normal probability distribution and normal inverse Gaussian model. The normal distribution is chosen because of its general and easy use and normal inverse Gaussian distribution is selected because of its ability to model the skewness and kurtosis. The goals of the article are to backtest chosen models for VaR estimation and to choose the best one. Models based on these two distributions are compared on the basis of VaR estimation of market risk. The backtesting results are statistically tested on the number and independence of the exceptions. The conclusion, that the models which utilize the normal inverse Gaussian model are for portfolio modeling more appropriate than those with normal probability distribution, is based on the results shown in the application part of the article. On the other hand even these models are not accurate for VaR estimation on lower confidence levels because of the existence of bunching.

Accounting theory, capital maintenance, economic theory, expenses/costs, income, profit, revenue.

The paper outlines basic features of accounting and economic concept of income. Several substantial differences exist between both concepts. The paper tries to reveal possible ways for the narrowing a gap between accounting and economic income. Ongoing worldwide economic globalisation elicits a demand for high-quality accounting information. As a consequence of changes in a real economy, financial reporting has been abandoning the traditional accounting paradigm based on the prudence principle and historical costs measurement. The new concept of accounting income has been approaching to the concept of income as defined by economic theory. The paper analyses fundamental features of income in economics and accounting and outlines the ways of its possible integration in both disciplines.

Cyclically adjusted fiscal balance, discretionary measures, fiscal effort, fiscal policy.

The article deals with the cyclically adjusted fiscal balance and its changes that are usually used for evaluation of fiscal effort. The first part is aimed on stabilization function of fiscal policy and some limitations of discretionary measures. OECD methodology of cyclically adjusted fiscal balance estimation, which has been also adopted by European Commission and MFČR, is described then. Last but not least the development of cyclically adjusted fiscal balance in the Czech Republic after its entering into the EU is analysed. It shows that fiscal policy in the Czech Republic has been mostly performed in accordance with the business cycle. Finally the future development of fiscal policy in the Czech Republic is outlined.

Cointegration, credit market, panel data, stationarity, the least squares method, the generalize method of moments.

This paper aims to explore the credit markets development of selected EU countries by selected economic variables. The article shows the common features of credit markets in selected EU countries. When comparing the results of both methods, we can identify several similarities, but also some contradictory results. Main results show that the EU credit markets panel regression have some weaknesses due to non-existing cointegration causalities. The work is initially focused on data analysis of 25 EU member states. The analysis is selected on the basis of the existence of cointegration causalities for using the method of least squares. The same panel data are then analyzed by the GMM. The second method also allows the installation of a generalized regression model constructed from the data in a selected panel of 25 countries. The annual frequency data includes the data from the period 1998 to 2009.

Economic and monetary union, optimum currency area, euro, optimum currency area index.

The purpose of this article is to identify, which of the new EU member countries is, in accordance with Optimum Currency Area (OCA) theory, appropriate candidate of the euro area membership. The author uses the OCA index to consider the suitability of monetary union membership. The OCA index is calculated for the EU10 countries and four selected traditional EU member states. The author concludes that, according to the OCA index, the Czech Republic is the best candidate for membership of the euro area. In the period 1999–2009, this amounted better value of the OCA index with the euro area than Austria and the Netherlands. Least suitable candidates are, according to the conclusions of the article, the Baltic countries.

Great Society, labor market policy, New Frontier, unemployment, USA, welfare state.

The paper deals with changes in labor market policies during one of the stages of welfare state expansion in the U.S.A. The federal New Deal policy on the labor market in the course of the Great Depression is briefly discussed; specifically, its emphasis on direct state involvement in the form of work creation programs together with unemployment relief. In contrast to this policy, active labor market policies are analysed under the Presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. These policies consisted particularly of extension of availability of job training and retraining for the unemployed, the poor, young people, and members of ethnic and racial minorities. Even the passive role of the state was not left out; the minimum wage and unemployment benefits grew and were more accessible to more people. However, reduction of unemployment cannot be ascribed to government measures, since rapid economic growth could have led to this result as well. The study also addresses the relationship between federal spending on welfare and the Vietnam War. While expenditures on both increased in the first two years of Johnsons administration, in 1967 and 1968 more money was directed to defense, partially at the expense of growth in welfare spending.

Efficiency, monitoring of contribution of object, particular parts (components, objects) of the company, projects, resources, sale of services.

This contribution solves the decomposition of value added (Value Added) of unit (company) to defined economic objects. The aim is to solve following tasks: the company has planned values of sales and real values of sales, capacity utilization of consultants. How can we find out, how big is the share of productive departments on achieved companys results? Company is here decomposed to following objects: human resources, projects and sales. Solution was created by the synergy of several methods: economical cybernetics, flows in the network and the efficiency indicators. Each type of object and also the unit has defined behavior. From results of objects outcome the result of the unit: the contribution of each object is transparent. This contribution contains the diagnostic method of companys efficiency, that allows quantitative measurement and secondary allows increasing of effectiveness of management of the companies.

Content management, data archiving, document management system, enterprise content management, workflow.

Amount of information that are necessary to process in our society is permanently growing. It implies the increasing number of digital documents and attention must be paid to their management and archiving. The paper deals with Content Management Systems, Document Management Systems and Enterprise Content Management. The aim of the paper is to provide a methodical guide for the implementation and innovation of such systems in companies/organizations and archiving of digital documents. The proposal is based on digital document flow and main criterion for selection of technology is minimization of risks given by components of proposed system.

Employability, EU sector analyses, future skills needs, human capital, occupational mobility, transferable skills.

Employment and its changes caused by restructuring are topics, which European Union pays attention to in long-run horizon, and the experience of current economic crisis confirms the rectitude of this approach. Structural changes always generate a need of the re-emplacement of laid off workers. Possibilities of their emplacement is strongly influenced by knowledge and skills offered by workers and demanded by employers. Acquaintance with future demand on knowledge and skills applicable across whole economy or applicable in different segments of labour market, i.e. in concrete occupations and sectors, enables effective targeting of educational activities at both individual and social levels, which will lead to higher flexibility of labour market mirrored mainly by high occupational mobility and low structural unemployment. The aim of this paper is to analyse future knowledge and skills needs recognized in 18 future-oriented sector analyses, published by European Commission in 2009, and identify knowledge and skills applicable in individual sectors, occupations and on the whole labour market, i.e. identify transferable knowledge and skills.

Foreign trade, changes, sensitivity, structure, trend, value.

This paper is devoted to the analysis of foreign trade development in selected Central European countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary). The analysis is concentrated on identification of general development trend in the period 1994–2008. The main idea is to analyse those factors which have influenced the basic characteristics of foreign trade value development. The linear regression is applied to analyse the sensitivity of individual countries’ export on selected macroeconomic indicators changes. The following findings result from the analysis. The value of foreign trade of the V4 countries has been growing steadily. The value of trade has been increasing in all analysed segments – i.e. the agrarian products, fuels and raw materials and the manufacturing products. The analysis of the effects of selected variables on the value of exports of V4 countries is confirmed by the high interdependence between the export and GDP value. The impact of inflation, exchange rate and unemployment in the final value of export is minor.

Advertising on the Internet, ANOVA, google analytics, pearson´s correlation coefficient, spearman´s correlation coefficient, website traffic measurement.

Web traffic analysis and a correct interpretation of the results are essential to optimize the site and effective online communication, which is today for some organizations even more important than offline communication. The aim of this paper is to analyze the influence of a time period and banner adverts on Web traffic of school newspaper monitored by using Google Analytics tool. The methodological basis is the use of statistical system, namely the correlation coefficient and ANOVA. The research results confirm the importance of planning, mana-ging and adapting the content of online communication to increase web traffic.

Rate of openness, the Visegrad group, trade liberalization, trade policy, trade preferences.

The article showed trade liberalization in the countries of the Visegrad Group before their entrance into the European Union by the characterization of the main trade policy instruments. After the entrance into the European Union, the Visegrad Group assumed the Common commercial policy and the competences in the area of trade policy were delegated to the EU´s institutions. The aim of the article is to make a comparison of external trade policy and the rate of openness in the countries of the Visegrad group. The rate of economic openness is analyzed in the period 1995–2008. Although the growth of the rate of openness in the countries of the Visegrad group was variable, the highest level of economic openness was achieved by the Visegrad group countries after their entrance into the EU. It was caused mainly by the realization of intra-EU trade, which enables free movement of goods and services on the common internal market for all member countries of the European Union. Whereas after the entrance into the EU a higher average rate of the growth of the rate of openness was recorded in Hungary and Poland, the contrary was recorded in Czechia and Slovakia. Although trade liberalization continues now in the countries of the Visegrad group according to the intention of the Common commercial policy of the EU, it is evident that the economic crisis which hit the world economy in the second half of 2008 has a negative influence on the rate of openness in the Visegrad group.

Employability, EU sector analyses, future skills needs, human capital, occupational mobility, transferable skills.

Employment and its changes caused by restructuring are topics, which European Union pays attention to in long-run horizon, and the experience of current economic crisis confirms the rectitude of this approach. Structural changes always generate a need of the re-emplacement of laid off workers. Possibilities of their emplacement is strongly influenced by knowledge and skills offered by workers and demanded by employers. Acquaintance with future demand on knowledge and skills applicable across whole economy or applicable in different segments of labour market, i.e. in concrete occupations and sectors, enables effective targeting of educational activities at both individual and social levels, which will lead to higher flexibility of labour market mirrored mainly by high occupational mobility and low structural unemployment. The aim of this paper is to analyse future knowledge and skills needs recognized in 18 future-oriented sector analyses, published by European Commission in 2009, and identify knowledge and skills applicable in individual sectors, occupations and on the whole labour market, i.e. identify transferable knowledge and skills.

Life cycle, publication activity, scientific performance, scientometrics.

There have been many papers (both theoretical and empirical) in last hundred years, which tried to explain the relationship between age and scientific output in the academia. Although most of those papers conclude that the productivity of scientists’ declines after reaching certain age and then continuously declines, there is still no agreement about factors, which stand behind the reverse U-shaped age-productivity curve. The aim of this paper is to summarize the theoretical arguments, which may explain the declining productivity of scientists in later phases of their life cycle. Moreover, it provides preliminary analysis of relationship between age and scientific output of Czech economists. Because the recent studies do not take age as relevant factor influencing the scientific performance, an alternative approach examining productivity dependency upon the phase of academic career is also provided.

Forecast quality, global Sensitivity Analysis, model fit, Bayesian posterior odds ratio, parameter importance.

The paper is focused on an analysis of model fit of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models following New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM). Unlike most of the literature on the topic, this paper does not use Bayesian posterior odds ratio to analyze model fit to data; it uses alternative tools instead. In order to compare the results of the alternative tools to the standard posterior odds ratio, this paper uses the findings of Slanicay and Vašíček (2009), who compared model fit to data of several models with the tool Bayesian posterior odds ratio. The goal of the paper is to verify the results of Slanicay and Vašíček’s (2009) model variants with different criteria than posterior odds and to compare the results with findings of their paper. The tools for the analysis are criteria based on root mean squared error (RMSE) and tools from the Global Sensitivity Analysis toolbox. Conclusions of this paper are the following: Habit persistence in consumption is found to be important and price indexation unimportant as in Slanicay and Vašíček (2009). Furthermore, model variants with foreign economy modeled as AR1 processes always perform better than the ones with structurally modeled foreign economy. This finding is in contradiction to the results of Slanicay and Vašíček (2009).

Adjustment dynamics, demand shock, European union-15, supply shock, VAR model.

In this paper, we use structural vector autoregression model with two variables to decompose economic disturb-ances to supply and demand shocks. This allows us to compare supply and demand shocks adjustment dynamics of output and price level among the EU-15 countries. The symmetry of output and price responses to these two kinds of shocks is assessed on the basis of correlation analysis. For our purposes we work with data for the EU-15 countries for the period 1995-2009. Our results suggest higher symmetry in the adjustment process to supply shocks and differences regarding price responses to both kinds of shocks.

Budget balance, business cycle, fiscal responsibility, regression analysis.

This paper examines dependence of public budget balance on business cycle and the budget balance persistence, using data of 22 countries of EU. Results suggest that adopted regression can explain the behavior of state budget balance in the most examined countries and the best data fit is in the countries with long tradition of market economy. For those countries where was our regression statistically significant we examined their fiscal responsibility. Results suggest that the most responsible fiscal policy in the last 14 years was made by Finland, Denmark, Luxemburg and Sweden. Relatively responsible in fiscal policy was Estonia. Irresponsible in fiscal policy were Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Slovenia, Latvia, Italy, Great Britain, France, Czech Republic and Poland.

Consumer, direct revealed preference, evaluation of welfare changes, index theory, indirect revealed preference, revealed preference, SARP, quantitative indexes, WARP.

P.A. Samuelson, one of the most important economists of the 20th century, died in December last year. P.A. Samuelson influenced significantly economics in many ways. Revealed preference theory can be considered as his main contribution to microeconomic analysis and as one of the fundamental thoughts in consumer theory. Samuelson´s theory has been extended gradually (e.g. by H.S. Houthakker) and is used in many areas of economics. The aim of this paper is to describe the Samuelson´s process of formulation of basic revealed preference theory thought, to define its relation to WARP and SARP and to show use of revealed preference in index theory to evaluation of consumer´s welfare changes. The paper is conceived as a theoretical one, it can be considered as a basis for possible further analysis.

Cluster analysis, correlation analysis, expert, indicator, region, regional development.

Regions in the Czech Republic, the same as in most European countries, are for purpose of grant policy characterized by defined indicators. Information level of indicators is different and selection of the most important indicators is based on experts compromise and utilization of many analytics steps. The aim of this paper is to purpose acceptable methodological tool for selection of important indicators of regional development. In this subjective and also objective methods for variables selection paper were applied. Moreover, a three-phase selection procedure based on combination of subjective and objective approaches was realized. Methodological frame of application is verified on economic indicators of Czech regions including years 2003–2007.

Diversification of production, mobility of production factors, openness of economy, optimum Currency Area theory, the business cycles synchronization, the similarity of shocks.

Entry into the euro area would derive not only from the fulfilling of Maastricht criteria, which are official conditions of entry into this grouping. The Optimum Currency Area theory is the theoretical basis for examination of the monetary integration. Criteria of the Optimum Currency area theory can be used for analyzing of the countrys suitability for membership in a monetary union. The paper deals with three basic criteria of the theory: mobility of production factors, openness of the economy and diversification of production with application to the Slovak economy. I focus also on the business cycles synchronization and the similarity of the shocks with the euro area. The aim of the paper is to determine the level of the fulfilment of these criteria in Slovakia and to assess whether Slovakia has been the good candidate to join the euro area based on these criteria.

Costs, economic model, integration architecture, system integration.

Almost in no organization we have information systems and applications without cooperation or communication with other systems. Usually it is necessary to integrate information systems and applications in an organization with systems of other institutions. Nowadays, integration of existing and new implemented information systems is a key subject of interest for every organization. In this paper we will introduce basic concepts of integration styles and architectures and we will point out differences, advantages and disadvantages of these approaches. Furthermore, we will present a simple economic cost model for various integration architectures and approaches.

Categorical data analysis, correspondence analysis, innovative teaching, interactive presentation, questionnaire survey analysis.

The article is focused on the evaluation of a questionnaire survey. The aim was to determine whether the creation of interactive manuals, which monitor working in statistical software, helps to make education processes effective. For a clear evaluation and presentation of the pilot survey a method of correspondence analysis was chosen. The correspondence analysis is a multivariate graphical technique for representing information in a two-way contingency table. Analysis outputs indicate that these manuals are an effective way of teaching how to work in statistical software. This conclusion was confirmed primarily by less skilful students.

Cointegration, economic growth, error correction model, export, foreign direct investment.

Foreign direct investment is generally considered to be an instrument how to stimulate economic growth of any country. Just because of this purpose governments of transition countries try to encourage the inflow of foreign direct investment by various measures. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relation between foreign direct investment, economic growth and export in Croatia. For this purpose we apply cointegration analysis along with the vector error correction model. The results confirm the existence of a long-term relation between the variables analysed. We reveal a positive impact of GDP and negative impact of foreign direct investment on export.

Organic farming, panel data, stochastic frontier analysis, technical efficiency.

Organic agriculture is the fastest developing branch of the Czech agriculture production. Nevertheless, foreign researches evidence that it is not dealt with an efficient production technology. The mentioned research has not been realized in the Czech Republic yet, therefore the aim of supposed paper is an evaluation of technical efficiency of Czech organic farms and determination of main factors which affect the technical efficiency of organic farmers. The methodological tool for achievement of the mentioned aim is the analysis of frontier production function and simultaneous estimation of technical inefficiency. The results of research verified the hypothesis of lower efficiency of organic farming, based on foreign papers, but withal they declared more problematic situation of Czech organic farms.

Acquisition, development, mind map of talent management, retention, talent, talent management.

The wish of every organization is to achieve in advance stated objectives and to fulfill its tasks successfully. In order to be able to carry out its intentions, the organization has to employ all its resources - people, materials, technique and technologies, capital as well as methods - as efficiently as possible. A key element in the fulfillment of in advance stated objectives and achieving organizations required performance efficiency are human resources, mainly talented individuals. These employees contribute to a large extent to the implementation of strategy and to organizations economic objectives. There is therefore a need that the organization pays the increased attention to them, concentrates on comprehensive and systematic work with them and applies the system of talent management in the organization. It is just talent management in the context of human resources management in the organization what this paper is focused on. It is based on a prerequisite that a well-adjusted and working system of management may enable to the organization to survive and grow in the existing competitive and globalized business environment, outstrip the existing competition, raise substantially its added value, and to implement a competitive advantage. The article is aimed, on the basis of available theoretical information and the existing practical experience, not only at describing the nature, significance, benefits and particular processes of talents management (their acquisition, development and retention) but mainly at bringing information on the scope and the level of use of talent management by organizations in the Moravian-Silesian Region. On the basis of data acquired by a questionnaire survey it has been found out that organizations in the above-mentioned region are implementing the system of talent management on a small scale: this approach is used by 3.8 % of organizations only that is 9 from 237 (100 %) of the approached respondents. The main reasons why this approach is not used is either that organizations have no knowledge of it or there is lack of financial and personnel resources. In the article recommendations suggested by the author can be found for a wider application of talent management in the Czech practice. The text also includes a schematic illustration of logical sequence, continuity and interconnection of areas, sub-areas as well as activities of the specified approach - a mind map of talent management in the organization.

Family savings, pension system, risk, sociological research.

Retirement income policies belong to fundamentals of any welfare state. The current demographic development in the Czech Republic reflects badly on its retirement income strategies. This fact should attract our constant attention. There is no doubt that a pension scheme reform is a top priority. This paper focuses not only on the domestic retirement income planning and suggested change but also provides for the brief on approaches to retirement income planning in the neighbouring countries of Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and Poland. The paper also gives and discusses results of sociological investigation concerning retirement income strategies.

Antidiscrimination policy, discrimination, microeconomic analysis.

This paper addresses the issue of antidiscrimination policy and provides a brief summary of its potential impacts. It appears that normative antidiscrimination lacks a coherent set of principles, proposed measures tend to be arbitrary and lead to inconsistent results. Implementations also disproportionally harm the social classes, whose protection or promotion would presumably be acceptable. A case is made of existing EU antidiscriminatory legislation, regulating the insurance market, including some rudimentary figures.

Bank sector in Slovakia, credit risk management, global crisis, regression analysis, regulation of risk.

This paper focuses on management and analysis of selected risks in bank sector in Slovakia in context of global crisis. It gives the analysis of implications of global crisis on bank sector and observes changes in bank behaviour at the market from aspect of increase of credit risk. The first part of the paper is devoted to regulatory framework of risk and to effects of implementation of Basel II on changes in credit risk management. The main attention is paid to analysis of indicators of credit risk in Slovakia, dependence on selected risk factors and quantification of impacts through models of regression analysis. In the end of this paper are discussed next possibilities to improvement, efficiency of risk management, reduction of risk and rules for regulation in bank sector in EU.

Benchmark, replication, restructuring, tracking error, transaction costs.

The aim of the paper is to perform an analysis and compare the accuracy of a benchmark replication using various replication methods of Tracking Error methodology. On the historical data and under the existence of the proportional transactions costs, we verify the impact of stocks number in portfolio and transaction costs on the selected replication methods of passive and active asset management strategies, namely replication with daily and controlled restructuring and the method with penalization of transaction costs. We also found out which selected replication method is the most precise in the sense of benchmark replication and we give several general recommendations for benchmark replication strategy including the eligible proportion of repliacting porfolio on the market capitalization with respect to the target replication accuracy. Firstly, the Tracking Error methodology and its application in asset management are presented and optimization problem of particular replication methods is formulated in the next part of the paper. In the application part, the replication accuracy is analyzed and the quality of benchmark replication is verified on the Czech index PX-GLOB during the period of the year 2007. It emerged during our experiment that under the condition of passive asset management strategy the replicating portfolios with the proportion of the market capitalization on the benchmark at the level 70 – 85 % give very good results. Moreover we conclude that the method with penalization of transaction costs is the most precise replication method from the selected and analyzed methods of active assets management strategy.

Binomial model, Black-Scholes model, hyperbolic distribution, hyperbolic model, volatility, warrant.

In the last two decades a special market with option contracts specialized for retail investors has developed in Europe. Warrant had become the right option contract with corresponding attributes. Substantial part of this work is pointed at possibilities and ways of warrant pricing. A useful innovation is the usage of pricing models based on alternative distributions. In our work, we use class of generalized hyperbolic distributions, which demonstrates good empirical performance in describing stock returns. The problem is that this class of distributions is mathematically rather more demanding but after handling these mathematical difficulties there is a new way opening for describing performance of stock behavior. In this work, we show the pricing of warrants with a ČEZ share as an underlying asset. The worse performance of the theoretically better hyperbolic model can be explained by a short memory of the Czech capital market.

Economic relations, Germany, Great Britain, Ruhr crisis, 1923.

This study deals with the occupation of the German Ruhr area both in the context of recent developments in reparations negotiations, and in terms of the economic repercussions in two selected countries - Germany and Great Britain. The Ruhr crisis had serious impacts on the German economy - a collapse of the German currency, and an increase in state indebtedness, which was subsequently alleviated by hyperinflation, a significant economic downturn, and a loss of foreign markets. In contrast, Great Britain capitalized on the conflict by both improving its economic output and increasing exports in its traditional industries.

Euro area, euro implementation, stability and growth pact, taxes, tax quota

While previous states of the EU-15 could decide if they would accept the common European currency or not, new entering states are committed to accept the EUR. The first country that accepted the EUR (apart from the EU-15, of which 12 countries have the common currency) was Slovenia (2007), and afterwards Cyprus and Malta (2008) and from 1.1.2009 the EU was joined by Slovakia. Countries have to fill defined criteria to enter the EU, so it can be assumed that there is indirect but doubtless interconnections: taxes → state budget revenues → state budget balances → Maastricht criteria accomplishment (before the country enters the euro area), or the Stability and Growth Pact filling. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the possible influence of EUR implementation on tax systems in the selected countries. The author deals with the evaluation of EUR implementation consequences in the first 12 countries by means of a macro-economic characteristic analysis in the first part of the paper, and in the second part offers more detailed analyses of Slovenia, Cyprus, and Malta.

ARCH-GARCH models, forecasting accuracy, granular computing, soft neural networks, time series.

Forecast accuracy of economic and financial processes is a popular measure for quantifying the risk in decision making. In this paper, we develop forecasting models based on statistical (stochastic) methods, sometimes called as hard computing, and on a soft method using granular computing. We consider the accuracy of forecasting models as a measure for the risk evaluation. It is found that the risk estimation process based on soft methods is simplified and less critical to the question whether the data is true crisp or white noise.

Electricity, electricity price, non-linear time series, regime-switching model, SETAR model.

This paper is concentrating on the electricity market and electricity prices. The electricity sector is one of the key strategic sectors of every economy and knowledge of demand, supply and prices are very important. Because of the features occurring in the time series of electricity prices (i.e. high frequency, non-constant mean, autocorrelation, non-normal distribution, heteroscedasticity, seasonality, etc.), it is necessary to employ more sophisticated models for the purposes of their modelling. The goal of this paper is to propose the empirical model for modelling daily electricity prices in three selected regions (California, North Europe and Austria). To exploit non-linearity, we apply the SETAR (Self Exciting Threshold Auto-Regressive) models that imply and distinct regimes in time series dynamics with potentially different parameters (and thus dynamics properties) of each regimes. First, the most appropriate SETAR model for modelling electricity prices at selected markets is developed; next, statistical verification of each model is performed in accordance with Hansen (1997, 2000); finally, it is verified whether the proposed non-linear models give satisfactory results in the sense of data fitting and diagnostic checks.

Copula functions, correlation, CVaR, financial modelling, portfolio construction

The paper deals with modelling of mutual dependencies among financial assets. Its aim is to investigate the impact of different copula assumptions on optimal portfolios, when CVaR optimization is used. Strategic asset allocation perspective is supposed. It is demonstrated that copula functions enable to separate the modelling of dependency features of financial assets from the modelling of marginal distribution characteristics, in context of practical portfolio construction tasks. The difference between portfolios constructed using normal copula and student t copula is showed when mutual or pension fund exposed to long only constrain is assumed. The fund is considered to invest solely into equity and fixed – income instruments. As expected, the exclusive use of linear correlation coefficients leads to underestimation of total portfolio risk. The superiority of student t copula portfolios intensifies as the confidence level of CVaR raises and/or as the CVaR target increases.

Abnormal returns, Colombo Stock Exchange, Event analysis methodology, Stock dividend announcements.

This study examines the market reaction to Sri Lankan stock dividends from 1998 to 2007 using the event analysis methodology. The positive abnormal returns in Sri Lanka (Colombo Stock Exchange) are much higher than any other international findings on the announcement day. Even after controlling the contaminated information, abnormal returns for pure stock dividends are positively significant on the announcement day. Further, announcement day abnormal returns are positively related with the size of the stock dividend announcement. Therefore these findings, based on Colombo Stock Exchange expand the empirical evidence on the signaling hypothesis of stock dividends.

Public administration, citizen, municipality, data mailboxes, electronic registry, file service, tools of communication

The article is aimed at assessing the findings of the small Moravian-Silesian region municipalities in relation to the new technical means of communication in particular. For this reason, it deals with such special features of the small Moravian-Silesian region municipalities as the level of education, the average age of the population, the possibilities of desktop computers in households and their connection to the Internet. It brings about the results of the research, which was implemented by the author in April 2009. The research was focused on the issue of informing the small Moravian-Silesian region municipalities´ citizens (the size category of the municipality population covered was 0-499). Collection of Laws No. 300/2008, related to the electronic acts and the authorized conversion of documents, considers the institute of data mailboxes as the major support of the development of e-government at all public administration levels in the Czech Republic. The article presents this device as a means of communication between the citizen and the public administration, and between public authorities as well. The intention of the article is to provoke discussion about various tools of communication between citizens and the public office.

Cost of IPO, Czech capital market, financing, IPO, world security market

Funding development of the company through the “Initial Public Offering” has a high representation globally and belongs to traditional methods of raising funds necessary for development of business in the developed capital markets. Also in the Central and Eastern European countries, including the Czech Republic, there can be found growing interest in this form of company financing. The objective of the article is to analyze the amount of costs related to an IPO launch on the main world security markets, and compare the same to the costs of IPO‘s launched on the Prague Stock Exchange during its modern history. To attain the objectives, research based on the collection of secondary and primary data was carried out. The results obtained show that the direct IPO costs are reaching the minimum value on the market Euronext, the maximum on the market HKSE. Results showed that the direct IPO costs on the Czech capital market range between 5.6% and 9.0% of the value of issue. The biggest cost element are underwriting fees, generating usually more than half of all direct IPO costs. The rest of direct IPO costs include fees due to professional advisors for audits, legal and other advisory services, costs of marketing and issuer’s internal costs.

elimination of tradeoffs, industrial ecology, optimal portfolio, sustainability

Industrial ecology has been promoted as a possible method to reach sustainability, by redesigning industry as an organisms-like community of companies, in order to increase materials and energy efficiency. A common direction has been mainly focused on the end of the production process, while the concern of the portfolio of resources involved in the manufacturing process has been limited. This paper evaluates and presents the implications of developing eco-linkages supported by a portfolio designed using the DNP method. The author argues that the new approach can deliver significant benefits to economic players in terms of profits/added value and environmental protection. In this context, sustainability becomes good business, while pollution means lost money.

Minimum wage, wage distribution, average wage, labour market

The minimum wage was first established in the former Czech and Slovak Federative Republic in 1991, currently the issue of minimum wage in the Czech Republic is stipulated by act number 262/2006 Coll., Labour Act. The aim of the submitted article is to identify the position of the minimum wage in the wage distribution of the entrepreneurial sector in the Czech Republic, the outline of the further development in wages with respect to average and median wages and the wages of the 1st and 9th deciles, as well as the outline of the development of the statutory minimum wage. Official sample survey data from the Information system on average salaries from the years 2001-2008 is used (quarterly-period frequency). This data is processed using the method of descriptive statistics. Conclusion can be reached based on an analysis of this statistical data that during the period of time in question all monitored wage categories saw wage rises. However the rise was not uniformly fast or balanced. The wages rose the most in case of the best-paid employees (9th decile wage) and in case of the minimum wage, whereas the 1st decile wage rose the least. The minimum wage amount was not adjusted since 1st July 2006, so the growth in question had been recorded only between the years 2001 and 2006. The development of the calculated indices of the decile ratio can lead us to the conclusion that certain increase in wage differentiation took place, even though this process was not uniform again.

petrol, diesel, bioethanol, biodiesel, production price, rate of excise duty, value of addition tax

Czech Republic as a member state of the European Union obliged to replace 10 % of the consumed fuels by biofuels, by the year 2020. It is impossible to realize this engagement by the contemporary low-percentage adding of biofuels into the fossil fuels. It is necessary to use also pure biofuels, eventually high-percentage mixtures of bio-fuels with fossil fuels. On the ground of higher production costs of the biofuels, it is necessary to set an optimal system of financial support, which shall motivate commercial sphere to produce these biofuels as well as vehicle users to use the biofuels. One of the means to support biofuel’s production is the tax alleviation. The article aims to answer the question, whether it is possible to make the pure biofuels, eventually their high-percentage mixtures, competitive by the tax deduction on the bio-component part.

Combined option payoff, FX rate risk, hedging strategies, quantile hedging, VaR

Financial risk management is an inherent part of each business activity. The analysis of available hedging strategies, theirs interconnection with efficient market and firm value theories, as well as various empirical studies are regular theme of scientific papers. In this study we focus on an alternative approach to hedging of financial risk of non-financial institutions – the partial hedging approach with shortfall acceptation. This approach initiates from Föllmer and Leukert (1999) method of quantile hedging. It is also related to cashflow at risk approach of Stein et al. (2001). The approach to hedging presented in this paper is based on a combined option position, so that a substantial decrease in initial capital needs can be achieved by accepting of some probability of shortfall. The strategy is studied under various circumstances given e.g. by risk neutral and real market probabilities. Simultaneously, it is compared to more standard strategies of hedging. Finally, we present two interesting findings: (i) real world probability of shortfall significantly differs from the risk neutral one, (ii) at first sight insignificant error in simulation results can have important influence on the interpretation of partial hedging strategies.

exchange rates, volatility, GARCH

This paper is focused on the historical development of selected exchange rates' volatility, that is: AUD, CAD, DEM, DKK, EUR, FRF, GBP, JPY, SEK and CHF against USD. The paper aims to show that current relatively large increment of foreign exchange markets' volatility is nothing special in the historical context considering the length and the extent of the volatility clusters during turbulent periods. Using various kinds of (G)ARCH models of volatility and subsequent graphical analysis we were able to empirically confirm this statement.

Utility functions, risk aversion, preference switching, portfolio selection problem

This paper deals with switched utility functions. The usual classification of utility functions is based on the signs of its derivatives representing a risk attitude of a decision maker. This approach leads to a stochastic dominance criteria for decision making. Especially, the positive second derivative of a utility function is a very common assumption and it corresponds to risk averse investors and second-order stochastic dominance relation. The switched utility functions present the alternative way to utility function characterisations. While stochastic dominance approach compare two given random variables (gambles) for all considered utility functions, switched utility functions analyze a given utility function for all considered gambles. This analysis is based on the number of switching preferences between two gambles due to changes in initial wealth. If we consider a portfolio selection problem as a maximizing expected utility problem, another approach to utility function characterizations can prefer the utility functions making this problem computationally less demanding. Especially, linear, piecewise linear and quadratic utility functions allow us to solve portfolio selection problem as a linear or quadratic programming problem. The aim of this paper is to compare these three ways of utility function classifications, mainly to analyze the switched properties of computationally attractive utility functions.

REA model, resource, event, agent, business process modeling

This paper deals with a problem of modeling of linked (chained) business processes using the REA system, the modern tool for modeling, which uses three main entities (resources, events and agents). The goal of the paper is to create a complex model of linked business processes, which will be the starting point for further research of even more complex models that will help us understand enterprises and business processes. Firstly, basics of the REA model are explained. Then, the REA model is used for individual modeling of selected basic business processes, particularly the process of acquisition of selected inputs, production (conversion) process and sales process. Subsequently, these particular processes are linked together and the resulting complex model of connected business processes at the operational level is presented.

Efficiency, Stochastic Frontier Approach, banks, Slovak Republic

This paper aims to estimate efficiency of the Slovak commercial banks in the period 2001–2005. The paper uses data obtained from annual reports of 13 Slovak banking institutions. For the practical estimation we applied the parametric Stochastic Frontier Approach and Cobb–Douglas production function. The results suggest that the initial hypothesis was confirmed as the average efficiency increased. This is also evident in results of individual banks as 11 banks recorded increase in efficiency. The results point out a better ability of Slovak banks to use the inputs in the production process.

The Swedish model, economic policy, welfare state, social democracy, trade unions

This paper provides a description of the Swedish model up to the 1970s. The Swedish model was established in the 1930s at the background of the world economic crisis. The basic ingredients of the Swedish model in its golden years, in the 1950s and 1960s, can be summarized in the following points: centralized wage negotiations between employers and employees, a wage solidarity policy, an active labour market policy, a restrictive aggregate demand, collective capital accumulation, a large public sector and a welfare state. In the 1970s, the performance of the Swedish economy deteriorated. A number of reasons for this deterioration can be found both within the Swedish model itself and in the external shocks in the World economy in the 1970s.

-

The article is concerned with solidarity and equivalence in the Czech pension system. First part outlines main types of pension systems. Second part describes the pension system in the Czech Republic. Third part analyzes the financial development of the Czech pension system. Forth part explicates the construction of Czech pensions. Fifth part interprets solidarity and equivalence in our pension system. Sixth part offers policy implications.

-

The author deals with rationing systems which he conceives as a regular part of economic life of many states. He defines some common features of rationing systems and according to the cause of their origin he divides these systems into three groups - general, social and restrictive. As a basic prerequisite for the origin of general rationing systems he sees economic problems that can lead up to the economic disintegration. In the conclusion there is a notion that rationing systems are not a mere product of the past but at present they can be found in a number of states.

-

The paper works with assumption, that the alternative social-economic approaches to the theory of economic growth offer more plausible explanations of the fundamental economic questions than the traditional views. The aim of this paper is to characterize one of these approaches, that author of the paper calls the growth theory of the new institutional economics based on the North’s path dependency concept. This approach is still less profiled. The authors really accept the conception of institutions of Douglas North: they consist of formally written rules as well as typically unwritten codes of conduct that underlie and supplement the formal rules. Accordingly there is the importance of formal institutions, informal institutions and their mutual compatibility emphasized. Specific role plays here path dependency that shapes outcomes. For this reason the authors usually question possibilities of institutional transfer (transplantation).

-

The paper focuses on historical development of the institutional theory of the firm. The institutional economics tries to analyze the firm behavior in the changed economic reality. There are discussed both evolutionary and contractual theories of the firm in the paper. In the contrary of the mainstream economics, contractual theories move the attention from the production of the goods and services to the distribution. The transaction costs analysis is the basic issue of the contractual approach. Weak points of this theory are both the comparative-static view, and the derogation of the economic equilibrium problem. The evolutionary approach brings the long run view, qualitative and quantitative changes, the non-equality situations and non-optimum behavior analyses into the theory of the firm.

-

The paper is focused on the origin and development of German ordoliberalism, its main representatives and theoretical conceptions. Thanks to the emphasis laid on the reconstruction of economic order and the significance of institutions, the ordoliberalism played a fundamental role in the restoration of Federal Republic Germany economy after the Second World War. Among Czech economists it was Zdislav Šulc's economic theory that was influenced by the ordoliberalism most of all. On its basis he also worked out suggestions for transformation of the Czech economy and society at the beginning of the nineties. The Czech transformation could have avoided the institutional failure caused by applying the transformation strategy worked out by Václav Klaus and his colleagues if Zdislav Šulc's suggestions had been used.

-

The article is concerned with the role of enterprise in the economic history. It deals with entrepreneurial structures in which during the historical development in addition to a group of entrepreneurs - firms' owners, also a group of managers appeared who ran their firms and were at the same time their employees. The issues of roles division in individual groups of management in relation to the enterprises' management gradually changed also in dependency on firms' size. In the final part of the article there is a survey of history of entrepreneurship in the Czech countries in the historical context of the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The survey also briefly includes prominent personalities in the field of business.

-

The interest of each enterprise existing in still changing external economic environment is its success and competitiveness. On single workers and especially managers at single enterprise´s management levels still greater requirements are laid, the managing of which is just one of presuppositions of successful competitiveness. These requirements and claims laid on managers are called managers´ competencies the base of which is the personal manager´s potential. And mathematical thinking is just one of the most important manager´s competences.

-

Work is one of the basic factors of production. Its forms and the whole labour are market rapidly changing currently. An application of new knowledge has led to a rise of qualitatively new information and communication technologies including Internet; these technologies recessively enable prompt knowledge spreading and knowledge sharing. In parallel, people’s value judgements change as well. An intersection of these phenomena results in a rise of new forms and ways of work, virtual labour market spreads and organizations change their sizes and structures. Teleworking spreads and a new category of self-employed workers – so called e-lancers – appears. The aims of this paper are an analysis of current changes in work and a prediction of further development in this area.

-

Small and middle companies have a pivotal position in national economics in the light of formation healthy entrepreneurial environment. Existences of small and middle companies stabilize society because each marked political insecurity and radical current situation could be for them recourse diversification. Small and middle companies form healthy entrepreneurial environment. Integration process of the Czech Republic into the European Union brings the changes of parameters of business environment which needs to be monitored and evaluated. The aim of this paper is engaged in the competitiveness of small and middle companies in the light of trends on market and using of soft factors as identity, integrity and majesty of company in the light.

-

European theory and practice have implemented new instruments “services of general economic interest” and “non-economic services” .The services of general interest cover a broad spectrum of activities (energy, transport, waste management, health and social services, ect.). These services play an important role in the life of citizens and enterprises. Services of general interest refer to the principles of internal market and principles of competition policy of the EU. The non- economic services (as justice, police, ect.) are not included into principles of internal market and principles of competition policy of the EU.

-

Not every country is the best candidate for the monetary union membership. The theory of optimum currency area (OCA) is devoted to questions of mutual fixing exchange rates and questions of monetary union. It results from the cost-benefit approach to OCA theory that the country is a good candidate for monetary union membership if the benefits from membership are greater than the costs. The OCA index makes considering the costs and benefits possible. In this article, the OCA index for the Czech Republic is counted. Then the author tries to answer the question if the Czech Republic is now a good candidate for the European Monetary Union membership.

-

The article focuses on humanitarian aid of the EU in the context of the global humanitarian aid. The complexity and character of both humanitarian emergencies and humanitarian aid has been changing, mainly during last two decades. These trends have brought new challenges to actors providing humanitarian aid, including increasing financial requirements. The article deals with analysis of the humanitarian aid trends of the EU Members States during the period 2000 – 2007. The European Union (ECHO and the Member States) is an important international donor of humanitarian aid (about 1/3 of global humanitarian aid during the period) and participates in financing of the global humanitarian aid mechanisms. The humanitarian aid of the Members States considerably increased during that period. The majority of the Member States humanitarian aid comes from 9 countries - Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The humanitarian aid of the new EU Member States is more volatile and slow, but slightly increasing.

-

Readers of this paper have got a possibility to plunge into the brief study concerning economy of entrepreneurial potential. The definitions and determination of the entrepreneurial potential are not discussed in this paper, but they can be found in my other publications and publications of other authors. Aim of the paper is to indicate several views of question of potentials, effects, economy of time etc. that are different than in current literature. It concerns the theory of spontaneous order. If we believe that the theory of spontaneous order is not a fault, than the following text means an attempt at finding order in contemporary spontaneity (turbulence) of the enterprise. But even now it is obvious that it is necessary to look for spontaneity connected with this attempt at finding order in cognition, spontaneity that breaks this order..., and that´s why let us look for conflicts in the following lines, so that we could make another step on our way to cognition..., and let us have humbleness to mistake. Fault is also dimensionality of the spontaneous order. If we did not consider the reality of the world (including this paper) in this way we would deny the essence of the theory of spontaneous order. I believe that following described views of contemporary business reality will inspire other authors or, possibly, managers and entrepreneurs.

-

The article deals with problems of an ever increasing number of cases of successful application of old combat strategies in business practice. Nevertheless, the author refuses the so called “direct conflict“ of firms, when it is really fought for victory on the market. His approach is based on the philosophy of “victory without fight“, in other words – of achieving the aim without a direct conflict with the rival firm. In this connection he defines the so called “investigative competition“ which he understands as a competitive firm strategy based on searching for new opportunities, demands and then subsequent successful meeting the demands. In the end he comes to the conclusion that combat philosophies are more and more often incorporated into a classical approach of strategic firm control and become its integral part.

-

The paper contains an attempt to finding main, characteristic (criterial) features for real defining the nature of international economic integration and individual steps (forms) of its development, and together with it an attempt to more precise defining and relevant exploiting of terms region, regionalization and regionalism in integration theory. The author aims to contribute to creating some basis or way out for unifying existing very different approaches of integration theoretics to these (and other derivated) issues.

-

The first four decades of the 20th century were of great importance in the course of American economic policy. Years of Progressivism, War Economy, Cooperative Individualism, and New Deal became landmarks on the way towards a social state. These modern social and economic concepts destroyed liberal grounds of American tradition of individualism, respect to private property. Federal authorities were given more power to interfere with the economic life than ever before. Income tax, Federal reserves system, Social security system etc. changed the economic system rapidly and led towards more interventionism and less freedom in the decades to come.

-

The aim of this paper is to estimate efficiency of the Slovak commercial banks in the period 2001-2005. The paper uses the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis and applies models allowing both constant and variable returns of scale. The results suggest that the average efficiency increased, however the increase was rather marginal. There are significant differences in the level efficiency and its increase among individual banks. The largest banks experienced the most substantial increase in efficiency.

-

The countries of European Union seek to have a better economic performance than USA. A knowledge based economy is an important condition to reach this goal in nowadays world. There are introduced various definitions of knowledge based economy in this text. Many of them use the words: innovation, information and communication technologies, research and development. The paper observes the fulfillment of two goals of The Lisbon Strategy – 3% real GDP growth rate and 3% gross domestic expenditure on research and development (percentage of GDP). Sweden and Finland get on well in both of the goals at the same time. This text monitors the structure of the expenditures and other characteristics of knowledge based economy as well – level of internet access (households) and broadband penetration rate. However The Lisbon Review 2006 enables the latest complex valuation of the performance. The Nordic countries Denmark, Finland and Sweden are on the top, while the south of Europe lags behind. There are mentioned two empirical studies and some examples of the possible existence of the knowledge based economy in Europe in the final part of the text.

-

Lisbon strategy is the instrument for development of the European economy and the contribution to a better European integration. One of the priorities of the Lisbon strategy is establishing the SEPA - Single Euro Payments Area. The SEPA is the euro area for retail payment services of the European Union member states and the European Economic Area. The aim of the SEPA is to establish a common market for payment services, which can bring more benefits for consumers and companies. This article analyses rules concerning the conditions for payment services and payment service’s providers in the context of the directive 2007/64/EC. In accordance with the directive there will not exist any differentiation between national and cross-border payments.

-

The article targets the municipalities’ budgets position within the Czech Republic budget system. The municipalities’ budgets make a significant part of public finance not only by their quantity but also by their sources capacity that come through the budgets. The regional and community budgets signify the most. By these budgets the tax revenues should be taken into account. Economy of the cohesion regions regional councils were included to the municipalities budgets, as a form of the EU financial sources distribution.

-

In the last twenty years foreign scientific institutions pay their attention to the concept of local economic development. The key role of the local government is to initiate the developing processes in the local region. The entrepreneurs could be seen as catalyser of economic development. This paper presents the outputs of a questionnaire survey focused on relation between public administration and small businesses. The small businesses are substantially influenced by the local economic factors. The research conclusions supported close dependence between development of small businesses and favourable local environment. The research also identified the opportunities how to improve business environment more effectively on the local government level.

-

The presented article deals with the problem of long-term unemployment. In media, we can see enthusiastic comments about lowering unemployment rate in the Czech Republic. There is no doubt that it is the positive trend in the economy. Moreover, the number of vacancies has risen significantly and the result is that the indicator of how many unemployed fall on one vacancy has significantly lowered. We tried to show that there is one more aspect which must be taken into account. This is the duration of unemployment, or more precisely, its structure. We analyzed the structure of unemployment by two indicators: i) duration of unemployment and ii) unemployment by the age groups. The conclusion of this article is that the rate of unemployment cannot show the situation on the labour market precisely. We conclude that if the structure of the unemployment does not change than the long-term unemployment might become the brake of economic growth of the Czech economy.

-

The paper „The Displaced People Integration into the Society“ presents some outcomes of the projects called “Back to the Society“, “Roof for Everyone“ and “New Jobs for Displaced People in Broumov“ that have been financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic. The activities implemented in the framework of these projects were focused on displaced people. The outcomes demonstrate that a good way of how to integrate the displaced people into the society is to join the activities aimed at reaching a housing and a job.

-

The article with the title: The Economist „behind glass“ and in History, is rather peculiar. Its introductory part provides information about graves of some famous economists. However, the article as a whole is devoted, above all, to Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the famous social thinker and to his Auto-icon. The Auto-icon is displayed at the lobby of the Main Building of the London University College. The Auto-icon is in its essence the skeleton of Bentham, dressed in his original suit, sitting in the chair behind glass in the wooden cabinet. The article contains particular information how to find Bentham’s Auto-icon in London and, in connection with it, Bloomsbury, the place where J. M. Keynes lived for a long time. But altogether the article is not a „tourist“ one, because the great attention is paid to utilitarianism and the influence it had on social sciences and social practice.

-

The article describes the impacts of US methods of manufacturing management spreading out in whole Europe. The Taylor-System and his conception with the example of the Henry-Ford-Motor Company, ideas of Henri Fayol for management and administration as well as of F.B. Gilbert proposals have been analysed. The concepts of rationalization of manufacturing processes are reflected in the companies of Czechoslovakia in the 20th and 30th of 20th century.

-

This contribution refers to the theoretical aspects of firm´s capital structure optimization. It describes in details the static and dynamic theories of capital structure, points out their fundamental negatives and interprets opinions of different experts in this area. Furthermore, it deals with the consideration if an optimal debt exists and if does, how to define it, what criteria should be concerned into an optimal debt definition and from what point of view (shareholders, mangers, creditors) to define an optimal debt. Moreover, it deals with the consideration if it is possible to generalize this optimization problem, if it is possible to transfer it onto another firm, and if other determinants influencing the optimal capital structure exist beside those taken into account in the static and dynamic theories of capital structure.

-

The authors speak about openness rate comparison of the European Union small and big size countries, it means within the group of highly developed countries of the world economy. On the basis of exploiting Kuznets – Woytinsky methodical approach, based on population criteria of the economy size, they come to a conclusion of higher openness rate of the Union small size economies than big size economies. But applying a given methodological approach with taking into account an economic criteria of economy size (with the help of GDP size) enables, according to the authors view, to formulate a thesis: it is valid, ceteris paribus, that the openness size of economies is probably higher in countries with a higher level of their economic development, without respect to their size, expressed by the number of their inhabitants.

-

The article is concerned with the analysis of the methods of the management of companies and its impact on accounting methods. To follow these methods in practice is difficult because the orientation of accounting law is on accounting cost, but we need its orientation on variable and fixed cost.

-

Despite some problems, the People’s Republic of China has shown a remarkable boom for nearly three decades. However, this fast economic expansion has adverse effects too. For example, the long-lasting upswing has caused a rapid growth in electricity consumption that led to an insufficient total capacity of power stations. The communist China has tried to solve this problem investing large sums in building new thermal, nuclear and other power stations. Hence, the Chinese market has been very interesting for foreign producers of power plant equipment. After long negotiations, the Czech company Skodaexport signed an agreement on large supplies for Shentou power station in December 1999. This contract brought significant orders to several Czech firms, however, it also became a very controversial issue, mainly because of the state support of the business. In this case, the Chinese customer got a very favorable loan from state Czech Export Bank and the Czech government was finally forced to save Skodaexport from bankruptcy.

-

The general principles of the EC Treaty limit the scope of Member States’ intervention in the market, unless this intervention is clearly authorised by Community provisions, either in the Treaty itself or in secondary legislation. The case law and regulatory developments on free movement of services stand to show that both the Commission and the ECJ will assess price regulating measures starting from the presumption that those measures will affect the functioning of the market, falling within the scope of EC Article 28. Should a Member State wish to avail itself of any of the derogations to the application of that provision, may these be one of the reasons enumerated by EC Article 30, or the mandatory requirements foreseen by the Cassis de Dijon ruling, it should be able to demonstrate that price regulation is, at the time, the most appropriate and less restrictive solution to protect the general interest or one of the values mentioned in EC Article 30. It has been considered that Community Law encompassed price regulation mechanisms for the coal market during the validity period of the ECSC Treaty. Such mechanisms were enacted at the Community level, excluding unilateral intervention of individual Member States. In addition, the margin left by EC Law to Member States to intervene in the energy markets (electricity and gas) is rather narrow, and subject to rather strict conditions. Furthermore, the Commission deems that the possibility for Member States of regulating the wholesale and retail market conditions should be removed: it appears therefore quite clearly that the acquis communautaire does not support and justify State intervention on prices. On the other hand, delegating that intervention to stakeholders would not be a viable solution, since EC Article 82, read in conjunction with EC Article 10, prevents Member States from enacting measures which may jeopardise the achievement of the goals of Competition Law. The foregoing should also be read in the light of the basic features of EC Law, such as the direct effect of Community provisions and their prevalence on national legislation, without regards to its ranking. The principles of direct effect and supremacy empower individuals, whose positions may be affected by State measures incompatible with EC Law, to activate judicial remedies against the said measures. National judges and public administrations are bound by the duty not to apply internal rules conflicting with EC Law.

-

The paper is devoted to the development of the financial performance measures. The conceptions and approaches of the performance application measures are introduced. The dominated approach is based on the shareholder value principle. Furthermore, the formulation of chosen measures on accounting, economic and market basis are presented and discussed. Special attention is devoted to the economic value measure (EVA) including several formulations approaches: operational profit, value spread, absolute, relative, entity, equity. Development of EVA measure in the Czech economy for last ten years is introduced including the graphical presentation. The general trend is positive and EVA is of positive value in chosen sectors. Comparison of the several performance measures from advantage and disadvantage aspects is analyzed and discussed as well.

-

The article elicits the Lisbon strategy, the main aim of which was to create new Europe with knowledge-based economy that would acquire dynamism and competitiveness with ambitions of matching the USA in the stated areas. The knowledge-based economy accelerators consider investments in research and development, however, Europe falls significantly behind the USA and Japan in these areas. The knowledge-based economy development in Slovakia has been organized in the framework of “the Minerva“ project. To the weaknesses of research, development and innovations in Slovakia belong the extraordinary low level of investments in these areas that significantly falls behind the average of the European Union.

-

The EU enlargement was one of the most discussed topics in the Czech Republic a few years ago. In this paper I focus on the impacts on real estate market after the enlargement three years ago. The questions what happened on this market how supply as well as demand side react nowadays, what to expect considering the real estate prices will discuss. This paper will deal with various aspects that influence the Czech real estate market in the context of EU enlargement in the first part. The Czech Republic is a small open economy with stable political and economic environment and moreover its geo-position makes it an attractive place for investment. The Czech Republic have economic grow nowadays. The other part of article describes causes of occurrences of bubble on the real estate market. The last part of the article is focused to real estate in Moravskoslezsky region.

-

Alignment between the business (users, executives) and information technologies in various organisations is one of top management concerns today. The discussion is based on MIS Triad model analysis and its extension reflecting the strategie issues ofIT implementations today. The understanding ofITs nature and perspectives should be an attribute of all three triaďs nodes representatives: users, executives and, ofeourse, IT staff. In such a čase the key question is to what degree the IT expertise should be shared by each player. Corresponding knowledge profiles and responsibilities for users and executives are defined. Specific attention is given to IS development (planning) process structure. The systém analysis approach and the strategie management one both offering the information systém development process structure are critically compared from the perspective what new the strategie conception (that is younger of cour se) brings. The comparison is summarised in conclusion that both structures well complement each other where the systém analysis approach is more focused on procedural aspects of IS development while the strategie management view underlines the

-

The article deals with chosen problems of regional development in the Czech Republic from alternativě perspective. As it is shown, the activities of the Department of Regional Economics at the Faculty of Economics, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava are of high relevance just for the saké of the distortíon of spatial developmental processes in our country. The re exists severe discordance between systém macrostructures inherited from the socialist period and rather popular modern neo-endogenous approaches to regional development, which are currently widely applied in the Czech Republic. It is also argued that psychosocial characteristics of the population represent internal basis of external activities occurring in given territories, which considerably shapes territorial developmental processes.

-

The article presents the concise review of the contemporary managerial challenges and dilemmas, and responses of the management. The paper concerns to the concept of the management as the organization overall steering and control in the context of the functioning, effectiveness and vitality of organizations in contemporary task and operational environment, which could be characterized by increasing complexity, dynamics, uncerntainty, and competitiveness. There is mentioned a shift from the taylorist to the post-taylorist managerial paradigm. Organizations are defined as the complex adaptive purposeful systems sui generis. The matching of environmental and organizational aspects with managerial approaches are discussed. The ways of the organizational adaptivity are emphasized. A need of the strategic organizational diagnostic activities on the axis potentials – processes – products and development of the new managerial approaches and methods is pointed out.

-

Specialized design pattern Brick-Box Model-View-Controller was designed and practically exploited in the area of the portal solution at the Faculty of Economics VŠB-Technical University of Ostrava especially for the purpose of the faculty portal environment presentation layer implementation. It is based on the Java portlet technology with the goal of the design and implementation unification in the thin and thick client environment. Java Virtual Machine computation environment allows concurrent or parallel running of the programming threads, which can be used for the Brick-Box Model-View-Controller design pattern generalization and for the efficiency increasing in the area of the presentation layer content creation in the Java EE technologies programming environment.

-

Competitive ability depends on many factors - for example: company size, technological level, intellectual potential, regional factors etc. In the contribution the comparisons of many measures expressing the competitive ability of the firms in the Czech Republic, EU and Moravian-Silesian Region. The article is concerned on development of industry and entrepreneurship in the Moravian-Silesian Region. In the latest part of the article author deals with governing relations - relations among the governing bodies and their subordinates mainly from the point of view of differences among small enterprises and large enterprises and corporations and some new approaches to the supply network performance measurement.

-

Five years ago the first theoretical works on industry clusters in regional development appeared in the Czech academic papers and conference proceedings. The research in this field, which was initiated at the Faculty of Economics at VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, was followed by other university research centres. The programme Klastry (clusters) announced by CzechInvest, the governmental agency for enterprise and FDI support in the Czech Republic, and financed by EU Structural funds in the period 2004-2006 opened a huge national-wide clustering movement. Several tens of cluster initiatives have been established in all regions by now and the idea of industry clusters has developed into the phase of implementation. This paper reviews and summarizes developments of cluster policies in the Czech Republic at both national and regional levels and presents achievements and a role of clusters in the transformation of traditional industrial region of Moravia and Silesia.

-

Across all manufacturing industries, we can observe a considerable and ever-growing complexity companies are facing, be it in terms of complex products, number of individual options, number of contractors etc. On the input side, there is a whole group of contractors, from primary providers to final suppliers, just like on the output side where there is a rather entangled complex of various sales channel levels formed by various sales agents to the end consumer/customer. The issue of a company’s success, i.e. its value-forming chain, is under the globalisation and company networking conditions becoming an issue of success of all participants involved in creating the final product value. Competition between individual companies is transforming into competition between whole chains.

-

This paper provides an introduction to set of tools supporting knowledge management. The tools are known as Business Intelligence tools and they are focused mainly on support of management activities. Wide area of Business Intelligence consists of a number of individual components, it has its own architecture and methodology and it is related to operational systems with many relations. Infrastructure of the whole area is based on OLAP technologies and Data Warehouse concept. The paper deals with and describes Business Intelligence application fields.

-

The paper deals with a brief review of the Czech Republic´s position at the Union´s labour market after three years since the accession. The Czech Republic considers free movement of persons and workers as one of the basic freedom within the EU and it respects it fully but it is not a case of some member countries. The paper presents a brief overview of possibilities and limits that are applied by some member states in the frame of transitional measures towards the new member states after three years since they became the EU members.

-

The real option methodology is one of the new conceptions used and verified in the corporate finance. The methodology is being applied in investment decision process, company valuation, financial decision-making, operational decision, energy sector decision- making etc. We can say that this approach presents the generalisation of well-known previous corporate finance approaches. The real options include time value of money, risk (probability), managerial flexibility (dynamical decision-making), cash-flow pay-off variability. Therefore, under the real option methodology, it is necessary to use and deal with more complex valuation models. These models are characterised as American, multi-factors, with greater number of option variants. There is in the paper described the generalised methodology based on multi-factor models application on the basis of the equivalence of the statistical moments. Described is single-factor and two-factor recombination binomial model, by virtue of the risk-neutral probability and generally solvable by the Bellman principle of optimality under risk. The simplified illustrative example concerning the valuation of the company is also presented.

-

The study focuses on evaluation of bureaucratic quality in EU countries. The text stems from the theoretical framework of new comparative economics and theory of bureacracy. The evaluation is based on the project of IMD, countries are compared according to the index of quality of bureacratic environment and considers convergence to different types of capitalism

-

The paper centers to point out the key macroeconomic aspects of the accession process in the Southeastern European (SEE) countries toward the EU. Most of the countries in the region are years away from the EU membership and need considerable progress to meet the key macroeconomic criteria - the establishment of a functioning market economy and the macroeconomic stability. Further progress in structural reforms is essential for the successful progress in the accession process. While the macroeconomic stability is essential through the whole accession process toward the EU, the importance of specific effects increases in the last stage of the accession, when the countries face the decisions to apply for the entry into the ERM2 and the Maastricht criteria (Bulgaria and Romania). The main aspects of establishing macroeconomic stability in other countries are related to the sustainability of their monetary frameworks, risks from the rapid financial deepening, and further fiscal consolidation to support growth and stabilization. Most of the SEE countries have potential to lower public spending and increase the share of the growth stimulating spending.

-

By using the term hedging the elimination of financial risks (stock price risk, foreign currency exchange rate risk, commodity price risk, interest rate risk, etc.) is commonly understood. Usually, it can be done by opening positions in financial derivatives, such as forwards, futures, swaps or options. In this paper we examine the simplest hedging strategies (forward and vanilla options). We suppose a producing-like company with exposition to the foreign currency exchange rate risk. We compare various strategies considering possible riskless rate differences (zero, positive, negative) and we also study the effect of true drifts.

-

To characterize successful management is or not very easy. The successful management is a complex of needs, possibilities, interests, qualities and so on. Criteria and standards can be various and often contradictory. For example, maximum profit, needs of customers, needs of workers, need to be useful for the others, the need of self-respect, humanitarian utility. The important imperative is ethics and responsibility of management and the managers and the workers too. The manager makes a decision for achievement of objectives. The manager is responsible for results of their decisions. A responsibility has its material and nonmaterial dimensions.

-

The article presents the issue of corporation taxes regulation in the Czech Republic and in Europe. The authors consider the problem from the ecomic and legal view. A comparative study is included. The main aim is to raise a discussion about the need of a such tax. The authors recommend to decrease marginal income tax of the corporations in the Czech Republic.

-

As far as the open door policy was concerned, the 1980s became a very pioneering stage in the People’s Republic of China. The communist China looked for the best reform strategy that would bring a sufficient amount of foreign capital. On the other hand, the foreign investors gradually surmounted general mistrust of Chinese communist regime. The new open door policy appeared to be very effectual and the annual inflow of foreign direct investment grew in the 1980s. The increasing inflow of FDI impacted changing Chinese economy in several ways. It accelerated the growth of GDP, improved export performance, helped to create competitive environment in the Chinese market etc. However, the increasing inflow of FDI had some controversial consequences as well. For example, the phenomenon actually intensified regional disparity (mainly the general difference between the inland and coastal provinces).

-

This article presents the relationship between inflation, inflation volatility and economic growth. We show that the volatility of inflation decreases the rate of growth. Theses results are supported by several empirical studies and econometric analysis concerning the relationship between inflation and economic growth as well as those devoted to the influence of inflation volatility on economic growth. Last chapter present recommendations for central authorities.

-

More and more economists during the last period are dealing with serious research of shadow economy. Even though the theme of economic structures standing „in the shade“ of an official economy it is not new it looks like that only since the end of the 70´s a proper attention is devoted to it. This interest is understandable. More and more researches, analyses and models realized during the last period are trying to prove that the shadow economy is in many countries the fastest developing sector considerably outpacing the growth of an official sector. In the Czech Republic only an infinitely small amount of more complex studies dealing with the shadow economy has been worked out. The core of the article, based upon almost twenty years long research of the author in the area of shadow economy and its subsystems, is an attempt at macroeconomic estimation of shadow economy in the Czech Republic through Kaufmann's “macroelectric” method and Gutmann' s method of currency ratio modified by the author. The main intention of the author is not to provide

-

This article covers the issue of the transformation pillows in the Czech Republic. We attempted to find answers to questions: what had been the reason of the formation of the transformation pillows, and when the policy of the transformation pillows finished.

-

In the first phase of the project’s life cycle, in a so-called pre-investment phase, managers have an option to choose among a number of project’s variants by the use of various methods. Their making decision is aimed at finding out whether the project is efficient, whether it is necessary to adjust it or, as the case may be, even to reject it. That is why this paper is focused on the description of methods enabling to find an optimum variant of the innovation project while the efficiency of particular variants are taken into consideration.

-

The author presents data from the 1st phase of the research project „Labour Market Changes and Education Perspectives in the Czech Republic“. Presented data are focused on organisational requirements applied in selection processes or within work activities. The research was conducted by theoretical consideration reflecting global aspects of organisational requirements. Semi-structured, in depth interviews were realised with 20 respondents. The respondents were representatives of HR departments, managers or owners. The research findings support a general trend of globalisation of organisations requirements.

-

The article deals with the tax development on motor vehicles in the Bohemian Lands and in Czechoslovakia within this period. It is focused not only on the establishment of this tax in 1927, but also on all previous efforts to enact it. Motor vehicles’s tax revenue was completely used for road mendings. This cannot be stated about further both direct and indirect taxation imposed during the first half of the 1930s. Direct taxes reached the top in the half of the 1930s. Since this time the slow decrease came into being, but all in all, the tax trend moved to the consumption tax area. The direct motor vehicle tax was abolished at the end of the year 1938. During the Protectorate existence, under the German pressure, the direct car tax came into force again. In the second half of the 1940s, the main tax burden laid on the consumption taxation, which affected both fuel and tyres.

-

The article deals with the EU external trade development in the nineties and its restructuralization during the following period. In 2004, the EU was one of the main players in world trade – one fifth of all imports and exports either arrived in or left the EU. Its only direct competitor was the US with the same proportion. The EU external trade has more than doubled in value over the last ten years. In 2004, the EU main trade partners were the US, Japan, China, Switzerland and Russia. At the end of the nineties the main suppliers into the EU became three countries from the Eastern Europe – Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. After European Union enlargement in 2004, the EU external trade has decreased because of its partial inclusion into internal trade.

-

The weapon production of the interwar Czechoslovakia has been very attractive subject to research. In the interwar period, the development of the Czechoslovak weapon production was rather interesting, since it was influenced by many political, military and economic factors. The weapon production was obviously a particular branch that together with arms exports represented a very delicate political matter as well. In the 1930s, the fast revitalisation of the armament industry played an important role in the Czechoslovak economy. The armament boom helped the Czechoslovak economy to reach better outcomes and improved the situation in many branches that were not directly engaged in the weapon production. Alike, the arms exports partly enhanced unfavourable records in the Czechoslovak export statistics.

-

The contribution deals with the new approaches to competition policy being valid from the date of the Slovak Republic entry to the European Union. They come out of competition rules at the higher quality level that secure to entrepreneurial subjects the possibility to be or not to be successful at the market on the basis of their ability to compete and meaningfully react to market failures and market imperfections. The objective of competitive policy is to stimulate the economic activity, protection of effective competition and formation of real unified market that will not interfere the competition. The current legislative in the area of protection of competition, is based on these principles and it is fully compatible with the current legislation of the ES (EU) as well as with the acqui communautaire.

-

The regions represent a significant force in the transition to the knowledge society and can play a part of an „engine“ in the whole context of economic growth based on research, technologies and innovations. The coefficients are divided into four groups to evaluate the innovation efficiency, mainly on the basis of the availability of the statistics data on the level of the regions in the Czech Republic. These groups form inputs in the research and development, scientific and technical efficiency, information society and the quality of human resources. This knowledge is essential for the posibility of more permanent existence of the innovation companies, science-technologic centres and other institutions supporting the development of the society based on knowledge.

-

There is no doubt that GDP belongs to the basic macroeconomic indices characterizing the development of economy. Development of GDP in constant prices is very carefully observed and analysed, and significant measures of economic policy are taken according to its development. For that reason it is obvious that all calculations concerning GDP should be as precise as possible. Nevertheless, on the other hand, the importance of GDP should not be overestimated either from the standpoint of contents determination or from the standpoint of problems associated with the very calculation of that index.

-

Security of information means more than the contents of information technology concept may suggest. Information is the basic and crucial key to the success and development of any society. Currently, the electronic information represents the main information share in the value of the society. Its confidence, completeness and availability are an inevitable prerequisite for a proper working of the society. Implementation of the system of information security management will help identify and decrease safety risks and help ensure and prevent its leakage, damage or a complete loss. The purpose of information security management is the ability to ensure a continuity of entrepreneurial activities and to eliminate harming those activities by protection and to minimize the impact of security incidents. The system of information security organization provides instruments for identification of decisive activities that need to be protected and thus it provides security certainty to employees, customers, owners, and to the whole society.

-

The European Union has been creating a knowledge based economy for several years to improve its competitive strength compared to its most important rivals, i.e. USA and Japan. In the Czech Republic, which is affected by this trend as well through its membership in the European Union, discussions about an insufficient rate of graduate population are held and steps to its increase are taken. As far as this process is concerned, term

-

International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently celebrated the 60th anniversary since its foundation during the conference in Bretton Woods in 1944. The world economy has undergone many changes in those 60 years and IMF’s role and activities evolved in response, but, like any large international organization, its ability to change has been limited by its own rules and mandate. This article deals with the reasons that lead to the foundation of this international financial institution, it explains key characteristics of IMF such as membership, quotas, goals and fund’s activities in the past and present times. Several controversies and critiques are pointed out and discussed. During the last decades IMF has responded to some of the criticised facts and moreover had to change due to deepening globalisation and significant changes in world economy. With respect to IMF history and present determination to adapt a new strategy and attitudes, it is quite obviouse that there will be more anniversaries to celebrate.

-

In the article the 135th anniversary of the stock exchange foundation in Prague is remembered. Also its predecessors, for example a so-called “Czech Market Hall” (Böhmische Industrie- und Produktenhalle in Prag) from 1856 are briefly mentioned there. Then the attention is paid to the very beginning of the Prague stock exchange in 1871. In the times of its foundation the Prague Stock Exchange was an institution in which both Czech and German entrepreneurial circles cooperated regardless ethnic quarrels already occurring in other places The attendance of the stock exchange and its further development towards the end of the Habsburg monarchy as well as in Czechoslovakia between the First and Second World War are described in the article. In that period the number of businessmen in its management was declining and representatives of financial institutions gradually became dominant. At the end of the thirties of the 20th century after more than six decades of its existence the Prague Stock Exchange finally got its own representative seat. The operation in the new building started in 1938 and it was just a historical paradox that hardly a year after that the stock exchange ceased to work properly due to German occupation of the Czech countries.

-

The article analyses the complex of influences affecting the mechanism of integration organization functioning, taken in a broad sense, and also of its efficiency. It valuates (with the application on the European Union) consequences with the institutional system and the level of integration, with the role of national interests, the number of integration members, it touches the problem of equity and inequity in the integration, the influence of the level of bureaucracy of organizational structures and consequences to cultural religious differences among member states or effects of globalization on behaviour and objectives in the conditions of regional integration.

-

This article deals with Coase theorem and valuation of its result in imaginary world of transaction costs being zero. It keeps on examining the same example as professor Coase did – a cattle raiser and a crop-farmer (both in neighbourhood) – and examines both cases – the cattle raiser is liable for damage and is not liable for damage. Furthermore there are considered four various events: nothing happens, who is “liable” moves away (and carry on doing his job under worse conditions where the costs are rising up and benefits decline), then negotiations are done and who is “liable” will pay the damage or he will build the hedge. There are considered both economic and account benefits and costs in each case. I argue that these both cases (as regards liability for damage) have not to end inevitably in the same result of Pareto efficiency and I emphasize that it depends on initial property rights distribution what the result will be. Thus I say, initial property rights distribution is crucial. The difference is emphasized when economic and accounting profit is thought apart. I try to return to the solution of professor Pigou and try to modify it regarding identification of the world with zero transaction costs and the real world we are living in. Moreover the article should emphasize the right interpretation of Coase theorem as it is mentioned wrong in many textbooks which refer to microeconomics and/or history of economic thought.

-

Foreign aid includes financial flows in conditional terms for recipient. The main declared motive of foreign aid is accelerating of economic growth in recipient country. This objective presumes that inflows of foreign aid are utilized as complementary resource of investment. The model presented in this article on the contrary shows that these inflows cause decrease of domestically financed investment.

-

Motivation is a major factor influencing workers’ performance. Knowledge of motivation factors that stimulate staff performance is not only vital for managers themselves but it is of the major importance for the society as a whole. This contribution informs on the results of the comparative investigation of performance motivation having been performed within the industries of mining and extraction and those of other national economy sectors. The contribution has primarily focused on the importance of the motivating factors, employee benefits, and problematic sectors of enterprise organisations.

-

-

-

Citation indexes as the information source and its role in accreditation and evaluation process at universities and research institutes. Problems of observation of citation of publications by scientific – educational and research staff. Terminological meaning of basic categories of bibliometrical research: citation, citation analysis, and citation index. Survey of citation indexes, published by Thomson ISI. Forms and types of access to Web of Science. The new European database – SCOPUS.

-

The authors employed the methodological approach of S. Kuznets and W. S. Woytinsky for the comparison of openess rate of individual size groups of economies and their development in the course time. Even if the comparison of the present state and the level of 50-ies of the 20-th century shows the general validity of the thesis of the higher openess rate of small size economies, at present this is not so unambiguous. The modification factors of this tendency are the consequences of enormous postwar population growth, parallel to a very vigorous fragmentation of the world economy to 191 today´s sovereign states and many other quite new phenomena coming from its contemporary globalization.

-

Motivation is a major factor influencing workers’ performance. Knowledge of motivation factors that stimulate staff performance is not only vital for managers themselves but it is of major importance for the society as a whole. Staff’s priorities reflect a civilisation level of the given society. This contribution informs on the results of investigation of motivation having been performed within the industries of mining and extraction that has primarily focused on the importance of motivating factors, employee benefits, and problematic sectors of enterprise organisations.

-

The development of managerial methods, the application of information and control technologies and the advancement of marketing and financial management offer a wide range of interesting, dynamically developing disciplines for students of universities of technical and economic orientations, and by that also a range of interesting positions. Our experience has shown that e.g. working in marketing section is the symbol of a prestigious presentational activity, which presumes not only knowledge, but also a certain appearance allied with social skills, which forms the self-confidence and the real manager. The work activities on financial markets, in the bank sector and on stock markets etc. are similar to that. On the contrary, the manufacturing control is considered to be the work hidden somewhere inside an enterprise. The issues of organization and control of manufacturing always belonged to one of the pillars of training schemes of economic-managerial study at technical universities, and also studies of economics oriented towards enterprises. The profound implementation of this subject is dwindling away from universities, and, regrettably, finding less understanding and sympathy from the part of students as well. There are several reasons which are partly general and partly specific.

-

The scholarly investigation of Islamic law is still in its beginnings. This comes partly from the infinite variety and complexity of the subject, partly from its position on the borderline between Islamic and legal studies, and partly from two unexpected developments which have occurred in the present generation, on one hand, our ideas concerning the early history of Islamic law have undergone a considerable change and whole new horizonts have been opened for research, and on the other, modern legaslation in a number of Islamic countries has added, after a long period of near-immutability, a new and, as yet, unfinished chapter to its more than millenary history.

-

Tourism on the territory of present-day Slovakia started to develop since about the second half of the 19th century. With the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 a new stage in the tourism development started. The stage culminated by the acceptation of the Tourism Law in June 1939, i.e. in the conditions of the Slovak State existence. The results of tourism development research up to 1948 have not been processed yet because of the lack of political and social interest in the topic despite the fact that archive sources confirm its development in the searched period. The purpose of the article is to provide an objective view of tourism development in Slovakia during World War II and in the first post-war years, or the years preceding the establishment of the Communist regime in February 1948. The research is based on the thorough study of archive, literature and journal sources.

-

Tourism has the main influence on the process of understanding the cultural differences and the adaptation of values existing in the particular region. In many countries, tourism is seen as an important part of patriotic education, the way of building self-confidence. Tourism is also the best way of understanding the other human being and destroying the barriers among people. Polish and Czech cross-border co-operation in the Euroregion Pradziad gives great opportunities to develop tourism in that region. Cross-border labor market can be activated by creating good conditions of agro tourism development. That is why the cross-border transportation should be established and improved. To attract new investors such instruments should be used: the lower taxes, subsidies and subventions because it brings the reduction of unemployment.

-

Development of the specific territorial whole, generally said within the region, is one of the dimensions of development and it concerns each of us. It is always in our interest that the pláce with its regional neighbourhood meets ours needs as well as ideas in comparison with by other (mostlyj prosperous localities. Thcrefore, it is necessary to use the possibility of cooperation both on one horizontál level (in a region) and towards a number of vertical levels. The article offers to discussion the chosen aspects of the generation of clusters. In this modern form of innovative cooperation shaping at the local level the significance of the factor of neighbourhood and transformation of the environment „culture

-

In recent years, the concept of Regional Innovation Systems has evolved into a widely used analytical framework generating the empirical foundation for innovation policy making. Yet, the approaches utilizing this framework remain ambiguous on such key issues as the territorial dimension of innovation, e.g., the region, and the apparently important role played by “institutions” or the institutional context in the emergence and sustenance of regional innovation systems. This paper reviews and summarizes the most important ideas and arguments of the recent theorizing on innovation systems approach, regional innovation systems and regional clusters to provide the basis for understanding these important tools for regional development policies.

-

The goal is to recognize the differences between cohesion regions in Czech Republic. During the last thirtyfour years we evaluate the significant changes in spatial behaviour of the population caused by reproduction and migration behaviour. We have eight cohesion regions in the Czech Republic. They have approximately the same population size and therefore we are able to analyze the changes of measures of the population development. We can also compare variances of the crude natural increase rate and crude migration rate. The paper describes new trends in changes of natural and mechanical movement of population between Moravia – Silesia region and the other cohesion regions in the Czech Republic (level NUTS 2).

-

The article deals with the evolution of conceptions of regional development that formed wider framework for current situation in regional development in the Czech Republic. As it is argued the main problem of contemporary spatial development in our country consists in sharp discordance between system macrostructures inherited from socialist period and vogue neo-endogenous paradigm of regional development that is currently utilized in both developed and transitional countries.

-

In the article the author summarizes the reasons causing that socially orientated regional policy will be hardly maintainable in the EU. Impacts of economic processes globalisation on regional development the author sees as the main causes of arising situation.Attention is paid to a rising global competition and the emergency of competition new forms. The attention is furthermore paid to the consequences resulting from new states entering the global market since they offered traditional products at considerably lower prices, which has caused a new international labour division. The author also explains a change in localization requirements of economic activities different from those required by the former source-demanding economy and gives reasons why from the standpoint of regional processes the new mechanisms of economy working produce metropolisation. In the conclusion the author points out that as long as the mechanisms shaping the principles of world economy do not change, the regional polarisation will be growing.

-

Public participation is one of the most discussed themes in recent years, especially in the context of the landscape conservation and water management. The process of public involvement into decision-making process is long and difficult because of different conditions of regions or countries. Especially in the Czech Republic public participation is the issue often omitted. This paper mentions sense and advantages of public participation and argues that the active participation in water management affairs presents new challenge to the ongoing socioeconomic and environmental development.

-

The European Parliament and the Council adopted new legal amendment on investment services with the aim to establish complete and well functioning system for the operations with the financial instruments without reference to the trade methods. The legal amendment should also secure the high quality and the overall effectiveness of the European Financial System. This Directive signifies a turning point in the area of investment banking and services and symbolizes a new generation of organised trade systems. The aim of Directive is the creation of integrated financial market on which the investors are effectively protected and the establishment of common regulation requirements concerning the investment companies. Above all this Directive should secure the transparency in the financial relations and proper functioning of the European Financial System as a whole. This Directive refers to the investment companies and regulated markets. Onwards it relates to the credit institutions, with an approval in the meaning of the Directive 2000/12/EC and which provide investment services or execute investment activities.

-

This part of paper continues in the history of inflation. It deals with the process of inflation in the second half of the 20th century. Whereas the 19th century went through periods of moderate inflation and deflation, the second half of 20th century was a period of general continual inflation with some periods worse than others. In 1973 the OPEC Oil Crisis hit, producing an inflation-inducing supply shock that lasted for the rest of the decade. The second oil shock hit in 1979. Inflation in developed countries reached double-digits, and inflation in developing countries often achieved triple digits. Among transition countries, almost all experienced a sharp burst of inflation in the early 1990s, reflecting price liberalization, the existence of the monetary overhang and fiscal pressures caused by the collapse of central planning. Most of these inflations were reduced in the 1990s.

-

The paper deals with wider view on the territorial determination of the European Union, which opens the problem of contemporary position of two groups of former colonial (respectively autonomous) territories, which did not reach independence. There is the status and specific ways of seven so called overseas territories integration characterized. These territories are the part of some EU member states. Besides that the EU defined the group of 21 associated overseas countries and territories, to which the integration measures are applied in a different way.

-

In recent years the Human Resources Management specialists or Human Capital Management specialists have tried to persuade senior managements in organizations of added value, which Human Capital Management produces. This discussion ends in idea that Human Capital managers should be strategic partners of senior management. It means Human Capital mangers will participate in business strategy development, support its implementation and they will prepare appropriate Human Capital Management processes. However, there are not enough proofs for significance of Human Capital Management for business performance and it keeps off the realization of this easy and natural idea. If Human Capital Management wants to play a strategic role in organizations, it needs to develop its ability to measure and to model how Human Capital affects the business strategy realization. The results of several significant studies can be a good inspiration for business use. However, a lot of questions to discuss still remain in this area.

-

For decision making about claims it is necessary to take into consideration not only risks of not paying but also costs arising in the process of claims proceedings (including costs of preventive reinsurance or recovery). To follow these costs in practice is generally more difficult because of the orientation of information systems and controlling quantity to line management. It is suitable to use for decision-making also claims actual value criteria.

-

The article is concerned with the analysis of the amendatory act of voting rights of the Governing Council of ECB. The rate of independence of national central banks of the EU member-states within the framework of the ESCB as well as the independence and responsibility of the ECB are analysed and widely discussed. Finally, several crucial problems are identified and an alternative institutional structure of ESCB is suggested.

-

Restructuralization of the Czech and Slovak nankiny system ad the secondary market non valuation asset. The paper deals with problems of restructuralization the banking system in the CR and SR on the ground of crescendo non valuation assets and privatisation of banks. The CR and SR accost to solving non valuation assets in the same way as in other countries creation of workout institutions which from the bank’s surrender non valuatin assets and transaction restructuring banks and firms. At present happen on the Czech and Slovak market to sale non valuation assets. With the CR and SR entrance to the EC will have to be solved pertinent problems of banks and firms under the rule determined by the European Commission.

-

The article offers a chronological survey of Slovak economy’s macroeconomic development with regard to several stages compiled as a result of specific macroecomic phenomena and great conceptional changes since 1993. Previous decade was a period of independent Slovak economy establishing as well as seeking for adequate economic policy. Economic policy concept was changed quite often despite a short time period. It is one of the reasons why the results are so controversial. That is because we paid attention not only to key macroeconomic indicators but also to macroeconomic development evaluation which was the result of applying different economic policy concepts in the previous years.

-

In the article the role of technical harmonization, standardization and the rate of regulation is described. Recently, in the context with Czech Republic’s entering the EU they have significantly affected the Czech legislation framework and they considerably influence the competitiveness and position of Czech business entities on the EU common market. The impulse to its publication is as well managed by the experience from their unsatisfactory comprehension not only by the entrepreneurial sphere but also by a wide academic community.

-

There are a variety of definitions of inflation current in economic literature, the differences between them are often associated with implicit theories of cause of inflation. So, inflation occurs when the supply of money grows faster than total output. Understanding the historical experience of inflation involves explaining the process which gives rise to the fall in the value of money. Inflation is not a new problem. One of the earliest recorded periods of a rapid rise in the price level was in ancient Greece around 330 BC. To the 1930s there were three periods of relatively rapid price change: a) the period associated with the so-called Price Revolution of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, b) the latter part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – particularly the period associated with Napoleonic Wars and c) the period of the First World War and its post-war hyperinflation. Over the whole period for which price records exist, accelerated inflation has been a side-effect of every major war and indeed of every substantial government intervention in economic life.

-

Digital options are financial derivatives allowing the trader to decompose the payoff of more complicated derivatives. The payoff of these contracts is all or nothing. Therefore, contracts of this type are suitable especially to hedge exotic derivatives with any discontinuity in the payoff function. The paper provides the two most common ways to replicate the payoff of these contracts – static and dynamic replication. Both methods are compared in discrete environment and subsequently studied for the case of incomplete model. To be more exact, we suppose (i) stochastic volatility of underlying asset returns and (ii) the negative skewness plus positive excess kurtosis of underlying returns.

-

In this paper are characterized reproduktive trends in Slovakia for time period (1950 – 2003). With the help of demographic characteristic, the author describes in main features demographic indicators – wedding rate, divorce rate, childbirth rate, abortion rate and mortality rate. Each demographic phenomenon is supplemented with its own graph and table of contents.

-

The paper characterizes basic development trends in the Slovak Republic in the year 2004. It deals with the development trends in the field of macroeconomic policy, the creation of business environment, labour market policy, social policy and the conduct of privatization in this year. In the concluding part current economic and social reforms are briefly characterized.

-

The author focuses on the importance of services from the macroeconomic point of view. The importance of this sector of the national economy has been growing rapidly over the past decades. Its importance is much greater in market economies and that is why we can expect further growth of their share of GPD in Slovakia, as the transformation of the Slovak economy is closely linked with the increase of their production. Its share of the overall country’s production does not reach the level common in the western economies, so there is still a lot of work ahead of us to catch up with them.

-

The economic standing and targets of an enterprise require that the creation of utility value for a customer should be accompanied by gaining the competitive edge on the market. It is the only way how an enterprise can gain and maintain position on the market and continue in prosperous developing its entrepreneurial activities. The readiness of an enterprise to create competitive advantage can be recognized only by the in-depth analysis of individual activities performed by the enterprise. At the same time, the interactions of these activities have to be transparent for us. An enterprise is a complex organism, formed by the succession of linked-up and mutually conditional activities, the joint efforts of which reflect in the resultant, synergic comprehension of the effect. Each partial activity, which is in the overall comprehension essential and necessary, contributes by a certain amount to the total efficiency, creation of competitive advantage and building up the desired position on the market.

-

The current society has come to a stage of development where knowledge acquired in the process of life long learning becomes the main part of next development. It is difficult to determine exactly all public and private revenues from education. In the article we document that higher education correlates with higher incomes, higher rate of economic activity and lower rate of unemployment. People with higher education abide at the labour market till higher age which is important, considering the process of aging of the population. Entrepreneurs with higher education participate more in creating working places. Acquired education provably implicates attitudes and behaviour of individuals. People with lower education are more often dissatisfied and pessimistic. They expect the state to solve their situation. People with higher education are more satisfied, optimistic and active. They feel responsibility for their own life situation and are ready to make steps leading to its improvement, which also has a corporate contribution. Strong public support of life long learning system is an all-society interest. In the Czech Republic this support has still rather verbal character, although there is a low share of graduates in the population and a sophisticated system of life long learning is absent.

-

This paper is focused on the discounted methods for firm valuation. Discounted cash flow methods and fundamental problems with their correct application are described, i.e. methods selection, cash flow type and discount rate calculation. Moreover, multiphase methods are described and analysed. In the paper, the calculation of costs of capital is also discussed. It is based on market and accounting approaches for the case of emerging markets. Finally, selected problems of discounted methods for firm valuation are mentioned.

-

The level of social benefits for staying at home in case of unemployment in Germany has reached a level where the private sector can not compete with. That is the reason why the unemployment is concentrating especially among people with no or low education. There is basically no free space between the lowest wage treshold and the state social benefit income. In consequence, it is nowadays more profitable for unemployed people not to work at all than to accept even a „worse“ paid job. As a answer to high wages in the low education job sector, the German industry offshored a lot of jobs abroad, especially to Asia and Eastern Europe. If the methodology of social benefit income is not to be changed in the future, a further outflow of German based jobs can be expected. Only a reduction in the fixed social benefit income in connection with incentives strenghtening the need to accept lower paid jobs may solve the present problem.

-

A potential insured person should be concerned by the financial strength of the company in which he will place his money. A lay person will, however, not be able to assess this directly himself. This paper therefore considers the sources of information that can help him. One of the main sources are rating agencies whose activities relate not only to insurance companies but also other institutions. The first part of the paper covers the methodologies used by the four largest of these agencies. The paper then goes on to consider other sources of information, such as insurance supervisory authorities, insurance company associations, specialist publications and insurance brokers. Finally the paper looks at various indicators that might be used to indicate the financial strength of an insurance company.

-

The article describes using of exact methods and mathematical models at present economics. The results of the research focused on the usage of the exact methods both in the EU countries and in the Czech Republic are presented and the different results of the research are explained. The authors consider exact methods to be a tool how to gain a competitive advantage in the market. The example of using Monte Carlo simulation method for stochastic processes modeling is used to demonstrate this method to be relatively simple to utilize, especially if suitable computer software is available. A new university course named “Realization of numerical methods using computers” is also presented as an example of integrating these methods into educational programs at economical faculties.

-

The article deals with corporate social responsibility as a mean of economic development of the country. It gives basic concepts of the topic, brings a lot of aspects of it with references and shows chcharacteristic features of socially responsible behaviour of firms. Especially multinational companies can affect the society with their investment, localization strategies and the relation to employees.

-

In the business life the generally recognized precondition exists that effective corporate governance is in positive causal context with the performance indicators of the company. On the other hand the review of research about corporate governance´s contribution to corporate performance reveals that the evidence of contribution is not clear and systematic. The article summarizes the outcomes of some studies among firms in developing and developed markets and emphasizes the importance of the practical adoption of good governance principles for the image of the company. Very important issue is the calibration the governance standards of companies on equal basis. The firm Standard and Poor´s launched in 2001 a new service for investors and companies Corporate Governance Score (CGS), which reflects assessment of a company´s corporate governance practices and policies. In the article is this approach shortly presented. In conclusion the situation in the Czech Republic is analysed and the hypothesis for the Czech companies is expressed based on the necessity of the strong legal protection of investors, contract enforcement and the rule of law as complementary aspects of a strong corporate governance system.

-

Following paper deals with mechanism of allocation of non market goods. The first part of paper describes the polemic about definition of one of non market goods – social housing. The second main part describes the mechanism of allocation of social housing, its advantages and disadvantages.

-

The paper discribe basic features of mortgages, their different types and calculation, fixing of interest rate and mortgage securities. All this theoretical information is complemented by practical knowledge won from experience in mortgage extensions by Česká spořitelna, a.s. The term „American mortgage“ is also described paper. The final part od presented article dedicated to Česká spořitelna, a.s. itself and its success in the area of mortgages.

-

Ostrava agglomeration undergoes considerably complicated process of restructuring. The article concentrates on the chosen institutional-program aspects of this restructuring between 1989-1999, which was far from perfect. It is argued that unlike the foreign experience, restructuring of Ostrava agglomeration ran too quickly and spontaneously, which is confirmed also by current socio-economic problems of the region.

-

The convergence process of East Germany´s economy stagnates since the mid 90´s. The gap to West Germany began even to grow in the last five years again due to slow economic growth. Nowadays the productivity in the East reaches some 64 per cent of adequate values in the West. The reasons for that process are above all still the lower capital stock endowment per workplace and lower level of infrastructure development. There are sciccors between the present level of productivity and wage level in East Germany making the given region the one of the least competitive areas in the European Union. The difference between the aggregate demand and output in East Germany is heavily supported by transfer payments from the West. Present economic data indicate the transfer system is needed also in the future.

-

An enterprise that has to withstand in competition will not get around a change towards a flexible, customer-oriented structure, which follows business processes. The control of the changes which have occurred and the critical questioning of the existing or achieved in the whole enterprise make it necessary to reengineer. A successful enterprise leadership won’t get around the fact of rejuvenating the entire enterprise. The system-oriented approach finds usage with cost reducing as well as growth driven companies. To organize growth and with this the establishing of a ‚Growth-Organisation‘ is at minimum as cumbersome as a cost reducing organisation design. The process-oriented thinking results from emerging views. Value increasing activities have to be operationalized in the enterprise via core competencies and finally in business processes. With this the emerging restrictions for the process and build-up organisation are shown. These institutionalized structures have to be optimized in the frame of a reorganisation project. The skill to design a fast enterprise-wide change with limited contraints in a professional manner makes-up the core competency of an enterprise and opens many chances. This skill also can’t be copied easily by potential competitors and therefore forms a unique advantage.

-

The paper deals with the process of procurement, brings the short review of legislation development and on the case study of chosen firm it show the principal problems of the process. The author argues that there was a good intention of representatives to give basic legislative framework for this field of activity, but the legislative works in the logic of actual economic system and so it has the same imperfections.

-

In the late 1930s Czechoslovakia became increasingly dependant on Germany in its transport policy. Unlike in the previous decade, Germany made full use of its dominant position to enforce its foreign political ambitions. While after 1933 issues of transport infrastructure were not an instrument of German foreign policy, the situation changed dramatically from late September 1938 and especially during the following negotiations in Berlin. The occupation of Czech territory and the creation of the Protectorate completed German efforts to control transport in the area.

-

The paper synthetically investigates selected issues concerning institutional aspects of social policy in the CR in connection with its accession to the EU. It includes mainly the issues of the social benefit system, pension insurance and labour market policy. It endeavours to assess how the systemic changes in those areas will affect the economic environment in the Czech Republic and tries to capture the principal development trends in those areas.

-

The economic trend research is one of the most important information sources for the market economics. In general use of such research there is a long-time tradition – the economic trend research is indispensable source of information for strategic and/or tactical decision-making in mentioned conditions. In the Czech Republic conjunctural research has found its own place too. The information service of the Czech Statistic Bureau, an EU institutions, the Czech companies and institutions participated in given research, and also a business management are frequently the users of economic trend research outputs.

-

High level of corporate governance becomes an important issue of further development of companies. A number of empirical analyses confirm the hypothesis about positive correlation between effective corporate governance and performance of the company. The basic governance issues concern the effectiveness and accountability of boards of directors. The main recommendations for good practice of corporate governance deal with such issues like clear board responsibilities, board composition and selection, board size, independence, chairman's role, board leadership and control, board committees, financial controls, board appraisal and training. The article deals with the practical approach which could provide the effective corporate governance in the company. It is based on ongoing processes of changes in plans and operations of the company. Special attention is devoted to relations with stakeholders. It is recommended reporting on corporate governance in the annual report of the company.

-

Integration processes and globalization trends create new possibilities for enterprises. On the other side these phenomena impose new demands in terms of flexibility and ability to respond to changes. From this point of view new demands on attributes and quality of business information systems are imposed too. New economics alters the way of “doing business” on the market. Electronic advertisement, products presentation, marketing as well as value exchange (goods, money, services and information) among enterprises, enterprises and customers or among enterprises, suppliers and financial institutions via internet highly shortens expedition of goods to customer. It is essential to apply an integrated approach to the use of business information, individual approach to the orders and flexible respond to the system changes if somebody wants to become successful in the global economic space. The key factor in the new economics is the internet. The internet caused great changes in the way how specialists and also wide community see information technologies. User-friendly environment, services provided and global aspect of communication are preferred more than anything else before. The key to the success of the internet can be seen in applications which are available on the internet and also in the globalization of public problems and informatization of the community. Several factors affected great internet boom: the most important is global orientation of the internet leading to world-wide coverage. Other factors considered are available services, speed and effectiveness of spreading of ideas, simple hypertext publishing and accessibility. Very interesting is symbiosis and cooperation of the internet as distributing channel of information resources and business information systems which allows to meet information needs of users in effective and particular way.

-

Bank credits influenced the industrial production in the Czech Republic between the First and the Second World War and thus also the level of the national economy as a whole. Without credits the industrial firms would have hardly been able to ensure the needy investments and sometimes even their entire operation. The way of crediting in Czechoslovakia and especially its practical implementation had to cope with a number of critiques as well as with unfavourable response from industrialists who attacked mainly the Trade Bank (Živnostenská) as a model example of banking institution wrecking both entrepreneurs and enterprise. From the national economy point of view the banks might be accused of not having enough willingness to provide the most significant industrial companies with higher credits. As a consequence they had to put off modernization of their plants and equipment that became obsolete and their products were costlier and less marketable. In their defence, however, it should be pointed out that even the biggest banks did not have enough idle capital sources. Incapability to provide massive long-term credits for investments to the leading branches of industry was considered a week point of the whole Czechoslovak credit system over the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic.

-

There are new trends in a modern economy opened to exploitation of hedging financial instruments. One of the most important hedging instruments is option. Using simulation is a new approach for option pricing and pricing of other derivatives. Simulation methods, also known, as Monte-Carlo methods, are an alternative approaches to analytical pricing models (Black-Scholes model). This paper deals with basic analysis of the Monte-Carlo approach and its extensions for option pricing with using antithetic variables technique and Quasi Monte-Carlo. In this paper Monte-Carlo and Quasi Monte-Carlo option pricing process is described. Theoretical results are confirmed by application of evaluating European call options and simulations results are compared with analytical results. Convergence of Monte-Carlo and Quasi Monte-Carlo prices results to analytical Black-Scholes price are graphically presented.

-

Transition economical process of small opened economy is important and shows specific features. One category of the financial indicators of the companies and industries are performance measures. Company or industry performance could be defined in several ways. The application of EVA measure in financial decision-making of transitional economy brings new aspects, managerial directions and orientation of companies and industries in comparing with traditional return on equity ROE measure. Czech economy performance measured by EVA indices is described and discussed. Input data determinations derived from short-term input data, non-liquid capital market, small companies etc. are discussed. Several conclusions are significant, for instance there is difference in the level of EVA indices of the foreign affiliate companies and domestic companies. Absolute level of EVA is in many companies negative, however, the trend of EVA indices is positive.

-

The subject of claims proceedings is their volume and development, structure according to various criteria, profitability (yield to net profit), evenness or unevenness, payback period (collection period of claims), liquidity (current, with expired term of maturity, disputable, dubious, irrecoverable), subject of claims (selection of customers, or debtors as the case may be), risks associated with claims (drop in sales, in demand, financial insolvency, unwillingness of customers, speculation, fraud etc.). Basic presumption for decision making about claims rise is getting information about the prospective partner. His position on the market, financial situation, credibility and reliability should have the main influence on the quality and rigorosity of trading terms. For decision making about claims it is necessary to take into consideration not only risks of not paying but also costs arising in the process of claims proceedings (including costs of preventive reinsurance or recovery).

-

The article deals with the impacts of the second stage of administrative reform on Moravian-Silesian region. Public administration represents one of the major problems of societal transformation in the Czech Republic. The administrative system turns out to be badly structured, inefficient and quite bureaucratic. Moreover, self-governing structures are developing rather slowly and painfully. The incidence of the reform of public administration on Moravian-Silesian region essentially epitomises all above-mentioned issues.

-

The content of the paper is a brief evaluation of the genesis of a Czech Republic and Poland’s joint path to the European structures. Some steps of the Czech Republic and Poland in the stage of pre-entering strategy, the use of pre-structural funds (Phare and others), circumstances of so-called temporary periods as well as the volume of finance to be obtained by both countries from the EU structural funds and cohesion funds are described there. Also the fear of unification resulting from the lack of information and the different economic and social level of the EU states and those to be newly joined are mentioned in the paper.

-

The article deals with human resource management in small and medium organisations. It is based on the results of sociological research, on which participated 138 small and medium firms from Moravian-Silesian region. The information refer to description and characterisation of researched firms from the point of view of their development, actual level of human resource management and konowledge of management as for the needs of their employees. Despite the fact that low level of human management in small and medium firms was found out, only every third firm´s businessman is interested in education in the area of human management.

-

Preparation for the accession to the European Union makes a fundamental challenge for the Czech enterprises. Stressing the significance of the Czech enterprises’ competitiveness has not only national dimension but also European. It is not only a question of achievement in the Single European Market but also a question of how the Czech enterprises will contribute to the enhancement of the European Union competitiveness with regard to non-European economies, in particular American and Japanese. Competitiveness of enterprises is conditioned not only by their adaptability but also by entrepreneurial atmosphere in which these enterprises are operating. Following paper summarizes views of the enterprises on their condition and expected development of their competitiveness in connection with the accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union.

-

The author examines consequences of the new legislative edits of economic competition on the basis of law No. 241/2001. He pays attention to changes resulting for UHOS’s (Office for the Protection of Competition) activity from the new law edits. There are especially described consequences for judging settlements among competitors abusing their dominant position and competitors merging.

-

Partners are a group of persons without whose existence and participation any business company could not arise. It does not mean, however, that they have to act only in the role of founders whose main activity rests in providing some form of deposit and, consequently, in expecting a profit resulting from it. Being partners of the company they may take an active part in its working by occupying various positions, they can act as representatives, employees, members of supervisory board and the like. Such joining the company activities at various levels can have from the company point of view a different impact in terms of accounting and taxes.

-

Competition of enterprises for customers represents an inseparable part of market economy. Today’s market environment is very dynamic. Consumer strength and intensity of competition are still growing. Under these circumstances, it is very difficult to succeed. Therefore, enterprises use number of tools, which help them to gain a competitive advantage in „fight” for customers and thus full their goals, mission and visions. Among these tools, the marketing ones have a key position. The contribution is concentrated on one of them, which is advertising. The advertising has many forms and it addresses millions of customers. Many customers’ purchasing decisions are based on advertisements. Still, are products advertised truthfully and in agreement with valid legislation and advertising ethics? The aim of our contribution is to answer this question.

-

Accountancy is one of the basic branches of the information economic system and the knowledge of its history is an important prerequisite for economy working in particular historical epochs. The contribution is concerned with the development of accounting forms (it analyses the essentials of Italian accounting, but also French and German schools of accounting), accounting systems and it also outlines briefly the development of the Czech accounting systems from 1945 to the present.

-

The author analyses one of the methods measuring competition on the market, COMP method. First of all he examines this method as an instrument for practical competitive policy. In the introductory part there is described the application method in conditions of the Czech Republic. The author highlights problems of application and appreciation in specific conditions of the transitive economy. In the final part there are stated fundamentals of legislative form changes.

-

The duty as well as the right to pay taxes had has a dominant position in general rights and duties since time. Essential for a citizen is not to pay either a crown more or less than is given by the valid laws. Another factor is a capability of a taxpayer to tolerate tax burden in link with tax avoidance in case of imposing too high taxes and from that arising consequences for a tax-duty payer. Another infringement of the tax duty may origin from poor knowledge of legislation determining tax payment. With those facts is associated a psychological and economic limit of taxation, which taxpayers bear in mind all the time and which has an impact on them. The need to put theory and practice in harmony lies in securing following up regulations adjustments and changes and it depends on smaller or bigger amendments to the tax laws. Part of tax laws updating is also a gradual decreasing of tax burden both for legal entities and natural persons.

-

Our paper deals with various aspects that influence the real estate market. We concentrate on predicting the situation on the Czech real estate market in the context of EU enlargement. After the analysis we consider the Czech real estate market to feature all aspects of developed European real estate markets. Prices are not expected to shake too much. After the accession to the EU we assume higher concern especially of conservative real estate investors who have been hesitating in coming on the Czech real estate market so far. The membership of the Czech Republic in the EU should confirm our assumptions.

-

The submitted paper describes socially responsible restructuralisation of heavy industry in the Czech Republic, especially in the Moravian-Silesian region. The aim of the paper is to specify microeconomic and macroeconomic conditions for restructuralisation of enterprises, impacts of restructuralisation on this region and methods of solutions in private enterprises and in public organisation. Position of state institutions on all levels is also analysed.

-

The paper presents the results of the research realized in the last year. This research was focused particularly on small and medium-sized consultancy firms but it has also dealt with enterprises that use the consultancy services. Based on the research, the key negative factors influencing the opening phase of the consultancy process have been identified as well as the suggestions of their improvement or elimination.

-

Organizational support of the logistical management is one of the factors which can create a responsible milieu for successful implementation of modern management methods. To establish a logistical system represents a radical turn is the enterprising management, which must appear also in organisational arrangement of this enterprise. Decision subsequently concetrates on line versus staff structures, logistics like a function, logistics like a platform, let us say like a matrix organisation.

-

The article deals with the issue of ownership control of Czech privatized companies and moral hazard in the context of ownership control. In the Czech Republic was adopted the short way of privatization and the Czech model of ownership control was evolved in the privatization process. The Czech model follows formally the German model of join stock company in the sense of dual structure of board model. The article depicts the basic features of the Czech model of corporate control, analyses the real structures of Czech joint stock companies and discusses the present and the future of the Czech model of corporate control. Finally the moral hazard in the process of the Czech way of privatization is examined.

-

Offset agreeements usually cover government acquisitions concerning military and major civil procurements. In the civil sector, commercial-aircraft, telecommunications and power stations deals frequently involve offset trading. Offset agreements are demanded in case where countries are seeking to squeeze maximum benefits from their investments in high-value areas. Purchases are frequently tied to demands relating to the domestic requirements of the importing country (co-production arrangements involving the transfer of advanced skills and technology; investments in manufacturing plant; and undertakings to train and employ local technicians and other presonnel; counterpurchase arrangements). Such deals are used by the importing state as a tool for industrial development, employment, financing of payment balances and for implementation of modern technology.

-

Environmental management is the part of corporate management, which is focused on environment protection. Environmental systems of management are to lead enterprises toward sustained improvement of corporate environment protection and conservation and toward public environmental policy and activities. From the viewpoint of environmental system, there are the following fields that have to be taken into account: quality management, health and labour safety management, environmental management. A decisive element of any complex system of environment protection and conservation is prevention – the EIA system. Other voluntary tools of environmental management are the EMAS or EMS systems to CSN ISO 14 001 and the environmental audit in particular.

-

Each year published TOP 10 products and brands indicate the amount of money invested into the Slovak advertisement market. When we compare the foreign company advertisement with the domestic companies, the foreign companies dispose the highest financial power, which enables them to speak to consumers in different communication channels, i.e. realizing products or brands propagation through media mix. Since the Slovak companies have the financial limitation they do not have such possibility to communicate to the consumers, therefore they have to precisely decide for suitable and most effective media selection that intermediate the advertisement message.

-

This article is based on the premise that the systems aproach is the most effective method to develop solutions to complex problems. Discussed in the paper are both the general mathematical aproaches to neural network. The original neural network was based on work by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts published in 1943. The most important issue in investigating neural networks is to consider how they may learn.

-

The basic problem of every businessman is problem of financing. One of his facility to finance his business is to use a support from state. This report is talking about individual forms of support detailed. It informs about some of systems of support in Slovak Republic.

-

The study is concerned with the economic and political factors that led to splitting-up of Czechoslovakia in 1933. Attention is paid to some specific features of both parts of the Czech Republic, technology and consequences of both states separation.

-

The contribution is devoted to the psycho-social and socio-cultural aspects of the economic revitalization of the Ostrava´s region. Main attention is paid to relationships between the traditional „heavy“ structure of production and the psycho-social atmosphere in this region. The author asks the question if there may be some connection between typical economic activities and „mental model“ that has been created here. The institutional phenomenon „path – dependence“ is considered in the context of the regional process of restructuring. The institutional heritage of the „old“ economy may have both positive and negative effects on the process of economic revitalization of the region.

-

Enterprise managerial diagnostics is a young branch which belongs to the field of enterprise economics and management. Analogically with medicine diagnosis it is a wider and deeper term than analysis, and well done diagnosis of the enterprise is the significant component of its therapy. The basic principles and parts of the enterprise diagnostics (system, value, competition, crisis and potential) are exploitable also in all kinds of organisations. Important aspect of the right decision-making process for every person is his thinking. The article pays attention to the diagnostic thinking of manager and deals with its five parts, which correspond with the theory of enterprise diagnostics. Briefly defined pairs of questions enable the manager a running autodiagnostics of his thinking.

-

The article deals with the basic principles on which the subject Strategy of Competitive Conflicts is based. The subject is taught at the Business and Management Faculty of the University of Technology in Brno in the last semester of master study of the specialisation Control and Economy of a Firm. At all economic faculties of the Czech Republic teaching of marketing, management, management policy and other subjects, having the aim to prepare the graduates as best as possible for enterprise practice, is secured to a certain extent.

-

The paper is made by characteristic of the traditional indicators by determination of the concentration measure at the market, the partial relations and continuity between the specific market share of the producer and the development of its internal characteristic and its innovations, then barriers of entrance into the branch or market and exit out of the branch or market. The paper describes also factors, which enable to characterise the specific branch as „natural monopoly“ and coherence of the innovation activity and specific market structure, which characterises the market or branch.

-

Consumer protection in the Czech Republic is the area that is becoming fully comparable with the European Union countries. A number of directives were implemented into the Czech legislation that led to the improvement of consumer rights in the Czech Republic. Some parts of Directive 1999/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on certain aspects of the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees are quoted in the paper. Furthermore, it deals with the selected areas concerning a two-year guarantee period and its implementation and impacts in practice.

-

Social policy became an integral part of entrepreneurial activity at the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th century. This policy was realized by many Czech enterprises. Tomas Bata in Zlín was the entrepreneur who realized social policy in the best way. The author analyses conditions of emloyees rewarding, their board and lodging, health sevices insurance and education. At the same time, Tomas Bata was also a significant town maker.

-

Josef Bejček deals first with the limiting of freedom of competition. He summarizes four basic practical attitudes of economic policy to competition – laissez-faire approach, - structure approach, - regulation approach and - ownership approach and concludes that Czech competition policy is based – similarly to the EU approach - on the combination of structure and regulation approach. Then the main principles of European competition law are mentioned and compared with the content of the new Czech Competition Act Nr. 243/2001 Coll. The author´s final conclusion emphasizes full harmony of Czech competition law with the European one and draws reader´s attention not only to the conformity of written law but to the necessity of full compatible interpretation and decision making of the antitrust authority and the courts as well.

-

The submitted paper describes the contents and problems regarding the balance of the books drawing aimed at businessmen in the full extent. The balance of the books is according to the law of accounting No 563/1991 Coll. created by balance, profit and loss statement, and by an amendment. Contents of balance of books amendment is adjusted by MF measure No 281/97 417/2001.

-

This paper summarizes some conclusions arised from the first stage of the three year’s project „Application of Artificial Intelligence in Logistics of Metallurgical Enterprises of the North-Moravian and Silesian Region“ (the project of Grant Agency of the Czech Republic No 106/02/0487). The aim of the paper is to specify the changes in the logistics management goals, discuss the features of the selected artificial intelligence tools and determine the logistic problems for which these tools can be helpful.

-

The idea „organizational culture“ or „Corporate Identity“ is very important on the one hand in the multinational companies with the entrepreneurial activity in the international environment as well as on the other hand in the entrepreneurial subjects with the entrepreneurial activity in the domestic environment. This article presents some theoretical and practical results and explains what the organizational structure is and how to achieve its applying in the business entities. Basic characteristics of this one is in connection with the style of managing of people, the authority of leader`s functions and communication.

-

The main topic of this article are the interest groups and the approach of economics to this phenomenon There are different approaches to be used. The first one is empirical applied mostly by the political science and focusing on the description of interest groups in a certain country. The second approach applied by economics is more theoretical using formal logic and often also mathematical modelling. Problems of the policy formation and the representation of individual and group interests in a modern society are mentioned there. Hereinafter I touch the interest groups themselves and their miscellaneous features. The following deals with economic theories of interest groups. The main part is dedicated to the work of Mancur Olson as one of the first and the most influentional economist who set up an economic theory of interest groups. The alternative views to this point are further demonstrated by the Chicago School, Public Choice Theory and equilibrium models of the policy process. This part does not concern only groups themselves but also consequences of their existence to the macroeconomic performance of a country.

-

Existence of corruption is not the problem of few recent decades. Because of different types of corruption prevailing around the world, this analysis focuses on main and large group of factors. Identification of some causes of corruption is sometimes very difficult, because corruption can be a product of several interlaced factors. This article focuses on the economic factors supporting growth of corruption. The following text demonstrates that the majority of factors flourishes from the public sector, which generates a lot of opportunities for corruption.

-

The article describes the destiny of Austrian and Hungarian government debts and liabilities after the First World War. Legal successors of Austria-Hungary were only new Austria and Hungary. But new Austria and Hungary due to breaking up Austria-Hungary lost a part of their original territory. This was the reason why other successor states – Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, Romania and Yugoslavia – under Treaties of Peace had to assume responsibility for pre-war Austrian and Hungarian government debts and liabilities. Responsibility for other debts and liabilities of the former Austria-Hungary was placed by Treaties of Peace only on new Austria and Hungary – except parts of war bonds and civil and military pension payments. But new Austria and Hungary did not accept a responsibility for these other debts and liabilities, so some other successor states made own decision partly to assume responsibility for them (for economical and social reasons).

-

The paper is dealing with main causes of the difficult present financial situation of large Ostrava´s steel companies and expected consequences of the recent governmental decision about sale of the Nová huť to a large global company LNM. The future of the region is discussed in the frame of the conclusions of conference Life After Steel held in Scotland in May 2002.

-

The main aim of this paper is to describe databases for mobility investigation on national level in relation to CZ. Databases differ in many parameters such as observation frequency, data detail etc. and that is why we will only concentrate in detail on those enabling or being about to enable the human mobility investigation. We will put a special stress on mobility of highly educated and qualified labour force. The critical analyses of data from databases were made in this paper in view of investigation of domestic mobility. We outlined improving of structure and size of data sources about mobility. Other databases sources are not suitable for monitoring of mobility.

-

The article deals with the issue of Czech companies strategy in the period of preparation the Czech Republic joining the EU. The present standard of creation of Czech companies strategy is very low. Czech companies will have to change their behaviour in business with using new managerial approaches and methods. The new situation after Czech Republic joining the EU represents a changed macro and micro – environment for Czech companies characterized by impact of European single market, changes on global markets, harmonization of regulations with the EU, changed business environment and research and development claims. If the Czech companies want to win recognition on the European single market, they have to undertake the suitable strategic orientation. The main components of such strategic orientation are correctness in corporate governance, gaining of competitive advantage, achieving of adequate costs, increase of productivity, orientation on a client, information support of business and human resources development.

-

The paper is concerned with the problems of Czechoslovak-West German transport relations from the point of view of Hamburg. Although the CSR and FRG after 1948/49 belonged to different power political groups, there was a bilateral Czechoslovak - Germany transport on the Elbe, esp. a connection between Prague und Hamburg without major problems. In view of treaty less state (until 1988) based the conditions of shipping in observance of freedom of shipping. The Czechoslovak transit via Hamburg increased in periods at the end of 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. After 1949 the Czechoslovak rent site in Hamburg was kept. Hamburg held the first place among West European seaports (after Rijeka) for Czechoslovak foreign trade. The weight of Hamburg for the Czechoslovak transit consisted not only in geographical near, render qualitative services and offer of trade connection, but also the Elbe represented for the Czechoslovakia an important factor of foreign currency saving.

-

Purchase costingness abides nowadays an actual problem of managers in all kinds of enterprises, because the costingness of enterprise inputs predestinates the costingness of all factory processes and in final consequence affects a highness of economic result. From the long-term point of view the low costs (together with abidance by required qualitative parameters) are by input a presumption for an acceptable price of the output required by customers that could signify for the company obtaining of the competitor’s privilege at the selling market. For a long-term success the company need have established its inner system of effective costingness pursuance. The costingness represents then a practical logistic problem which, among others, lies in delimitation of basic indicators in the company purchase that way so as to be able to fill them by concrete numbers.

-

Should the Czech Republic joint the EU ( EC and the countries of EC), the domestic Economy will become open to the foreign useges and the foreign judgments will become enforcable in the most business cases in the Czech Republic as well. The buginess usages will become a part of judgements, enforcable in the Czech Republic. This will be a result of so called Bruxelles Convention as well as Lugano Convention. The business people will look much more for Alternative Dispute Resolutions, first of all for Arbitration.

-

The paper presents an analysis describing to what extent the Czech monetary policy interest rate evolves with an interest rate corresponding to the Taylor rule which is an important part of empirical models of inflation targeting. The paper consists of discussion of the basic ingredients of inflation targeting, structure of Taylor rule and calculations of interest rate consistent with Taylor rule. Generally speaking, the rule seems to be relatively proper description of behaviour of monetary policy interest rates in the Czech Republic, and a difference between actual interest rate and Taylor-rule interest rate corresponds to a general understanding of monetary policy history in the Czech economy.

-

This contribution is devoted to the four years stay of the Czech economist F. L. Chleborad in the North–Moravian and Silesian region. Chleborad was one of the most famous and educated Czechs at the end of the 19th century. His name is closely related to the cooperative movement in the Czech Lands and to the Czech economic emancipation. His book “The System of the National Economy” (1869) represents the first systematic interpretation of economics in the Czech language. As far as his socio–economic philosophy is concerned – he was a proponent of reformatory way of improving society. The contribution itself outlines the main Chleborad´s activities in the Ostrava´s region. They are concentrated on the stimulation of the Czech enterprise in the region governed by foreign (mainly German) capital and the promotion of the “Czechness” in the region.

-

Economic growth is accompanied with structural changes, which rise either on supply or demand side. Structural changes of Czech economy on macroeconomic level have already been racing. At present structural changes proceed also on microeconomics level, how it is also presented in this article.

-

This article presents the Phillips curve as the relationship between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates or the rate of change of price. There are several approaches to the Phillips curve. The paper describes monetary, neo-classic and new-keynesian approach in short and long-term period. Last part presents empirical evidence of the Phillips curve in the emerging and in the industry countries.

-

The concept of „Industry Clusters“ has become very popular in the vocabulary of regional planners and researchers throughout the world in the last decade, namely in the United States, European Union and generally in OECD countries. The paper aims to introduce the industry cluster concept and definition, the ways of cluster identification, the factors affecting cluster development and their contribution to regional development policies. The example of preliminary industry cluster analysis in Moravia Silesia region is presented in the conclusion.

-

The paper

-

The paper describes six types of fuzzy-stochastic model. Application of models approaches is explained and described on the firm value apprising example. The results are presented as fuzzy sets of fuzzy number type and graphical presentation is not missing as well. Conclusions from case study are summed up in three aspects: (1) effects of applikation, (2) conditions and environment of financial decision-making, (3) computation and interpretation aspects.

-

Product is both a symbol and a real outcome of a firm integrated management. In the product individual market claims are confronted with ability and capability of the firm. The solution leads to the market successful product accepted by the market which enables the firm further development. The utility of the product assessed by the consumer is interconnected with utility components or quality features of it. The necessary precondition is the transformation of attributes which are relevant to consumer behavior into technical preparation, organization and management of production.

-

Cooperative movement both worldwide and in the Czech countries had a long tradition. The author deals with its history and gives a number of basic examples of its working in the past. In the conclusion of her paper the author analyses various cooperative theories and divides them into groups. She also mentions a few personalities associated with the Czech cooperative movement (Šimáček, Lustig, Feierabend) and briefly outlines the future development of cooperative movement.

-

This paper formulates the starting points for its solution through a graduated approach to the term “the competitive ability/ies of an industrial manufacturer, as follows Recognition of the key elements and make-up of “the competitive ability of a manufacturer”. Delimitation and definition of the factors influencing the competitive abilities of Czech industrial manufacturers. Formulation of a theoretical viewpoint for the determining of the criteria required for the measurement of the competitive ability/ies of manufacturers.

-

The term human capital perceived as one of most important factors of economic growth is a part of the standard economic theory. Latest empirical studies have shown that education, scientific and technological knowledge, i.e. human capital influences the overall growth of GDP in a determining way. This fact is depicted also in endogenous theories of economic growth. According to these theories economic growth is an endogenous product of the functioning of the economic system. The investment into human capital builds up specialized and professional knowledge of individuals and this way increases the labour productivity and overall performance of the economy. The creation of human capital is closely related to processes, which are going on in the family, e.g. marriage, number of children, professional carriers of men and women, the volume of investment in the creation of human capital of children.

-

Cooperative movement both worldwide and in the Czech countries had a long tradition. The author deals with its history and gives a number of basic examples of its working in the past. In the conclusion of her páper the author analyses various cooperative theories and divides them into groups. She also mentions a few personalities associated with the Czech cooperative movement (Simáček, Lustig, Feierabend) and briefly outlines the future development of cooperative movement.

-

In recent days we see the Internet becoming a communication medium ever more and more for corporate entities as well. The extent to which corporate entities are connected and using the internet has been approaching its maximum. In future we can expect shifts in structure of services consumed by companies already connected to the internet and in the way these companies percieve the internet as a medium. By using the internet in their distribution process companies turn internet into a complementary distribution channel with certain advantages to its users. These advantages reach from more efficient logistics over cheaper realization of business transactions to ability to react more promptly to changed market conditions.

-

Considering that competition in the world is increasing firms are begining to concentrate on consumers. Because getting new consumers is more and more difficult firms are concentrating on preserving current consumers and building a long-term relations. In the bussines world are loyalty programs still more used. The main condition of their success is different approach to consumers in addition of their importance. There are very important the CRM systems there. They enable gaining of data about consumers, their analysis, transformation in knowledge about consumer. This data anable create individual offer for consumers, which increases effectivness of firms activities.

-

The article analyse a political – business cycle (PBC) in the Czech Republic since the year 1990. The paper is using a classical macroeconomics models. These models are based on the Phillips curve and a possibility of institutions to affect economy. Models are tested for both types of policies (etc. fiscal and monetary policy) for last decade. The institution responsible for fiscal policy in the models is a government and monetary policy affect decisions of central bank. The conclusion of the article is a non-existence of PBC in the Czech Republic during last ten years.

-

This paper is a selective survey of the business cycle theory and evidence. It is focused on the evolution of the mainstream economic doctrines from the nineteenth century until the beginning of the 1970´s and contains a discussion of their approach to the macroeconomic fluctuations. An introductory part of the paper deals with a general business cycle theory and pays attention to the alternative definitions of the business cycle, as well as to the „business cycle versus macroeconomic fluctuations“ problem. Further, a traditional approach to extracting business cycles from the macroeconomic time-series and the „random walk with drift“ approach are discussed at the same place. First section contains a discussion of the origins of the business cycle theory and higlights the doctrines of D. Ricardo, K. Marx, T. Malthus and the so-called natural theory of business cycle by W. Jevons and H. Moore. Second section sketches a development of the statistical evidence on business cycles and points out the contributions of C. Juglar, J. Kitchin, N. Kondratiev, J. Schumpeter and Burns & Mitchell. Third section is a brief survey of various neoclassical theories as discussed by Haberler (1937); fourth section deals with the theories of J. M. Keynes and his neokeynesian adherents. The aim of the fifth section is to decribe several relevant features of the monetarist approach to business cycles. A concluding part of the paper refers to the new classical and the new keynesian schools of economic thought.

-

The new Keynesian economics became an important alternative to the new classical macroeconomics in the last century eighties. Although these approaches have some common attributes, the give differnt recommendation for the macroeconomic policy. The goal of this paper is to show how could the fiscal expansion affect output in the economy with imperfect competition.

-

The article presents model of strategy change and sumarized my experiences from succesful implementation of strategy change real project. This model I worked out for the subject of staff department reclassification and personal work style reclassification in czech organization. The model works out reclassification from strategy changes stimulation to implementation. Model includes several parts - set objectives, operation audit, analysis of energy field, creation design, identification of intervention areas, strategy planing with time dimension chart, implementation and ways to new break- even status and verification.

-

Corporate finance in Czech Republic is linked with a lot of defects, problems, anomalies and abnormalities. Present situation of the capital market is unbearable, an environment where companies found themselves from the standpoint of the sources to the finance demand is not the market environment. And at the same time the capital markets offer wide range of special debt or equity commercial papers, so that companies´ possibilities of finance obtaining considerably extend also by other ways than only by most often used bank credit.

-

Globalization and the development towards democracies, and human rights and freedom observing is conditioned by balancing the chances mainly in the economic sphere. The Czechoslovak experiment in the period between fifthies and eighties of the 20th century shows that this way is realistic especially from the social and economic point of view. Yet, it is necessary to create a political subject that would serve this objective.

-

According to economic theory, the policy of a government and a central bank is judged in the context of fulfilment of basic macroeconomic goals - economic growth, employment, price stability and external balance. Indexes, which measure the economic policy performance (misery index, unpopularity index and stabilisation policy index), are based on the macroeconomic indicators and well-known links among them. These performance indexes enable to perform not only a time analysis but also a cross-country comparison as the presented analysis of the Czech economic policy performance in the 90s’ demonstrates.

-

The paper deals with an analysis of inflation influence on the long-term economic growth. At first there are described growth theories. In principle, advanced economics recognize and investigate two approaches. The first of them, neo-classical, is often accompanied by the names of R. Solow and T. Swan, and it is a base frame for economic growth analysis. They are especially the technical progress, accumulation of capital, and labour growth, which are considered to be the most important sources of economic growth. When analysing inflation in economy and role of central authorities in its influencing, we face two problems. We have to examine the influence of inflation to the economic growth both in a short-term period and long-term period. The inflation is harmful in long-term point of view, because it is a barrier of the economic growth. This is due to the costs of a high and not stable inflation

-

In the mid seventies the international system of fixed foreign exchange rates (Bretton-Woods) has been replaced in most was countries by a so-called floating foreign exchange system. The result of this change was a sharp increase of exchange rate movements and a consequent increase of potential profits as well as potential losses from the international transactions on the foreign exchange markets. The foreign exchange volatilities, capital flows, expectations and portfolio balances are at present the factors, which considerably influence the floating exchange rate system. In theory there are many models used for foreign exchange development forecast. Neither of them yet has proved a perfect forecast reliability, probably due to the fact that financial markets and processes in these markets are the consequence of complicated interdependent market, macroeconomic and psychological relations. The article is focused on the problemacy of the most used models in practice concerning the foreign exchange development forecast.

-

The topic described in this article concerns new possibilities and innovations for Documentary Letter of Credit (L/C) within the system of electronisation and telecommunication links. We focus on the future of L/C in the process of globalisation of foreign markets. The exchange of goods and services across national boundaries brings greater problems to both a buyer and seller than domestic business does. These problems arise from the diversity of customs, standards, currencies, local regulations, languages and legal systems that are spread across the world. To a certain extent, the globalisation of the past half century reduced the barriers and anomalies, but the great majority persists. Any further progresses in the field of information technologies will indisputably result in facilitation and acceleration and transformation of the classical trade and payment procedures into their electronic equivalence.

-

In 1989, the structure of the Czech economy was characterized by the industrialization structure of GDP or Employment. During the phase of transformation, Czech economy recorded a rapid modification from the industrialization structure into the services sector oriented one. Restructuring process on the macroeconomics level is realized as an alteration in the branch structure and in the sector structure. Those alterations are foundations for economics growth. The paper deals with structural alterations on the macroeconomics level and compares them with alterations on the regional level.

-

-

-

This article presents theoretical issues of the corporate control, based on the new institutional economics and its important part – transaction costs economics. New institutional economics argues that institutional environment /laws, politics/ and institutions of governance /markets, hierarchy, hybrids/ are for the functioning of the economic system, economic development, multinational business as well as for the corporate funding, essential. In the article the key concepts, like institution, organisation, transaction, transaction costs, are clarified, the relations of the transaction cost economics to economics, law and organisation theory are discussed and the agency problem, e. g. relation between principal and agent, is explained.

-

Technology change is considered a key factor of a long-term growth and export performance of a national economy, based on quality competitiveness. The mechanisms of technology diffusion characterize and influence technology base, its capacity to initiate and develop innovative activities of economic agents. At the same time, the intensity of technology change becomes inter-firm and inter-industry specific, that means, individual industries in a national economy can be specified according to their capacity of creating and diffusing technology. The industry classification (i.e. science-based, specialized suppliers, scale intensive, traditional, resource-based industries) is applied to the structural developments of transition economies and their international comparison in the period 1980-99, including the specification of the importance of high-level technology and leading-edge industries. The structural characteristics of manufacturing exports of transition economies and their developments reflect the capacity of national economic agents to make use of technology opportunities opened by transition process, and the prospects of technology based growth dynamics and competitiveness of individual countries.

-

The aim of the article is to explain basic methodological consequences of institutional thinking development. Not the analysis of individual propositions, but philosophical premises of this economic school are stressed. Interpretation conception is based on evolutionary approach, it means interpretation of individual authors´ contribution from T. Veblen to contemporary institutionalists. The purpose is to show both the weaknesses of this thinking (not clear philosophically logical premises) and strong aspects (institutional approach, organic understanding of the present).

-

This paper presents main approaches to analysis of current account sustainability. The first approach models a long-run state of current account deficit that is fundamentally sustainable. The second one applied intertemporal approach of real business cycles to model sustainability of current account deficits. Finally, the last one is an alternative to both above presented rigid (econometric) approaches and is based on monitoring development of chosen indicators. These are mainly structure of current account, political instability and uncertainty, stability of financial system, foreign debt burden and foreign reserves, appreciation of real exchange rate, size and structure of capital inflow. Further this paper applied some of these chosen indicators on Czech economy.

-

The aim of this brief study is to consider the level of managers – top executives´ competence development in the Czech companies, the causes of their unwillingness to invest into the improvement of the current state and to assess one of the possibilities how to solve this situation by the metod called the assessment centre. Successful firms realize that there should be means enabling them to become better than a rival firm which is professional competence of the management. That is why firms lay great emphasis on the development of their top executives. Unfortunately, a number of firms have to cope with serious economic difficulties, while the state of their economy allows them just “to survive”, but neither to invest into managers´ competence further development, or to see how it goes on it the near future. It is relevant, however, to know methods and procedures that might, under more favourable financial conditions, contribute to the solution of these particural problems. One of possibilities aimed at managers´ skills further development is just the above mentioned method of assessment centre. There is no doubt that the implementation of such method is very advantegous, but on the other hand there are barriers impeding that procedure broader use. As it has already been said, it is caused by lack of funds in the Czech socio-economic environment. It is my great hope that such a fine, widely used and by the international practice verified procedure will be more used in the Czech Republic.

-

The increased importance of changes and complexity of external environment, heightened emphasis on competitiveness and the groving demands of employees all contribute to the need for organization to change or at least to be flexible, in order to survive. This article describes a basic framework for organizational change - the substance of change and forces causing its need. Successful manager as a change agent has to recognize not only these forces but also sources of resistance to a change and then to choose the appropriate method for coping with them. Selection of method depends on situation (characteristics of people and groups, time, money etc.) and preferred style of management.

-

Consumer protection is considered to be a meaningful area which has acquired a great attention in advanced democratic countries. The article itself deals with the impact on consumer protection, legislative and the position of civic organizations. Civic organizations are a subject, which protects interests of consumers and consolidates the position of consumers in the market.

-

The subject of the article is the assessment of selected aspects of the Slovak Republic´s economic policy during the period of transformation. The article is aimed at fundamental macroeconomic problems of the Slovak economy from the angle of instruments and measures of the economic policy´s particular segments and evaluation of reached level of basic economic-political objectives. The author also analyses the reasons of macroeconomic unstability, limits its extent, demonstrations and incidences. She highlights the measures taken in order to reduce this unstability and its consequences. In the article there can be found analyses of stabilisating and developing measures as well, which should provide conditions for supportable continuous economic development through revitalisation of business sector, formation of perspective economic structures and increase of competitive ability of the economy.

-

The small and medium sized enterprises (SME´s) in the developed countries represent the most dynamic and innovative sector. That is why, it is necessary to support the further development of SME´s in the economy. Anyway, although there is actually a very systematic governmental support toward the SME´s, it is necessary to start the support process at the beginning of the SME´s development, i.e. where the management is being prepared and educated. Such place is the high school and universities. These institutions are not involved in the co-operation with SME´s as they could be.

-

Tomas Bata [1876-1932] is the most famous Czech manager He created the new system of management in firms in according to Taylor's Scientific Management and Ford's pragmatic Advances. This Bata's system is enriched by social policy, the article shows a detailed analysis of his managing methods. There is an analysis of his social policy and mutual relation between the development of the firm and the development of residential locality (town).

-

Businessmen who in many cases acted like „motor“ of successful development of the economy, played an important role. The author pays attention to some characteristic types of businessmen in the first Czechoslovak Republic.

-

In the period of recession, when many firms aim to survive, it is necessary to follow the flow of economic processes crucial not only for the survival but also for the future prosperity and competitiveness of firms. Important role in that field is played by control as one of managerial activities. The article shows, how this activity is undervaluated, or more to say, omitted, which has far–reaching consequences not only for economic situation of individual firms and the whole Czech economy, but also for realization of ownership rights and fulfilling the objectives and interests of owners.

-

Financial control and decision-making represent a dominant component of corporate economic activities, because they deal with money and capital movements. For one thing they result from general corporate strategy and for another they are affecting it in the fundamental way. Corporate managers have to have knowledge of financial analysis and further financial methods. Article is designed in the way to present important resources and relevant parts of financial control and decision-making with later sequence of formalized methods of financial decision-making.

-

The contribution is focused on the concept of firm’s management system that suits a lot of interested parties requests. The main problem of the management systems in companies in the Czech Republic is their one-sided orientation on quality dimension according to the ISO 9000 model. The authors specify new elements among both the internal and external requests on management systems. Key idea of the contribution is that the management system of the firm should have its inherent integrity and it should serve as a support for performance and effectiveness improvement. The conclusions about the process concept of a such system with many aspects are formulated. Special conclusions concern the small and medium sized firms.

-

Up-to-date enterprise cannot survive and be successful without a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is complicated, deeply and widely structured phenomenon, which can be demonstrated like a bundle of resources and capabilities. Its uprise is determined by internal and external conditions. Competitive advantage can come into existence in conditions of changes only. It can go through several evolutional stages.Competitive advantage is described and analysed in business, corporation and national design.

-

It is obvious that there are different views on the topic of decision-making processes and different approaches to their carrying out that can be analyzed. Furthermore, their level and efficiency can also be evaluated. In this contributed paper four essential issues will be raised. These issues have to be judged and answered from the view of a decision-maker (decision-making position) taking into consideration rationality and efficiency of running a decision-making process aimed at finding solution to the problems in a company. Decision-making processes relate both to the solution of problems that can occur in the future (potential problems) and which are associated with entrepreneurial process risks, and to the solution of apparent problems already existing (situational problems). A special attention is then paid to harmonization of views on coping with problems occurring in a company by the application of decision-making processes. This is associated with quality of a decision-making process itself.

-

At present, managers in all levels of company management, as well as entrepreneurs more and more consider the inter-enterprise communication and its tools to be the one the most important issues being used in the company and having impact on its profits. In many companies, badly performing inter-enterprise communication and also inappropriate selection and practicing of communication tools became a very big obstacle in their endeavour at increasing the quality of labour productivity and also the effort to the decrease the cost rate, expenses and possible losses. In this article, therefore, we tried to analyse the communication process being used in Slovak companies, but acording to the research we tried to explain the use of different communication tools in companies. This article includes also results of the research aimed at finding out the effectivity of communication tools being used in medium sized companies in Slovakia in the Years 1997 - 2000.

-

The Czech Republic undergoes deep changes in the 90 - ies in the process of transition and seeking its position in the globalized world. There is an important factor helping the changes - foreign capital. The article deals with foreign direct investment and its impact on the Czech economy. There are many investment incentives applied to attract foreign investors and especially multinational corporations are a significant elemet affecting economic life of host countries either in good or bad sense. Chosen data can illustrate the process of foreign capital inflows to the country and main development tendencies in that field.

-

Among many analytical tools appropriate for the analyses of the small open economies, the Australian model plays a crucial part. It enables to incorporate both internal and external equilibrium analyses using one set of variables. The paper introduces the theoretical background behind the model and provides a review of the Czech economy development using the Swan diagram. We conclude by discussing some future development issues and policy implications.

-

In this contribution the history of the accounting audit from the year 1918 till the present Ume is described, inclusive legal form of audit activity in the Czech Republic and the position of the Chamber of Auditors of the Czech Republic as an independent self-governing professional organization which associates all auditors and auditors' assistants who are registered in the list which is kept by the Chamber.

-

Analyses of the current state and development of labour market taking into account a spatial view can play a significant role at mitigating social impacts resulting from economic transformation. They represent the area of geoinformation technologies utilization and can contribute to the solution of serious topical problems. Possibilities of applying geographical information systems to the activities of labour Office are considerably extensive. They include visualisation methods, research methods and modelling. Examples of applying some of these methods can be found in the contribution. Among them there is an analysis of transport feasibility relating either to the individual transport or to the public mass transport. This analysis facilitates verification and estimation of actual transport Connections, the use of traffic options knowledge to provide unemployed people with efficient recommendations, monitoring the situation and paying attention to the public interest at ensuring transport services.

-

This article presents information about territorial administrative development of the City of Ostrava and Ostrava region. This territory has many specifics the origin of which dates back to the period of industrial revolution and can also be derived from the geographical position of the city. The main problems of the contemporary times are big differences among particular town districts and untypical administrative organisation of Ostrava region

-

The paper describes the result of the 4th research field which is the part of the institutional research being done by the Faculty of Economics, VSB-TU Ostrava. It evaluates the significance of strategic management in organizations and by implementing the competitive model it enables to managers to diagnostic their current structures and processes.

-

The paper deals with the issue of the tax revenues of regional budgets in the Czech Republic. In 2001 new regions will be established and their financing will be based on subsidies, and a model of allocation that would provide for the financial needs of the regions is being looked for. It should react to the contemporary system of the allocation of taxes. The paper analyses some selected taxes, belonging now to the regional budgets, in terms of the future regions.

-

There exist several types of cancellation and extinction of companies without their liquidation and a specific legal framework corresponds to every type both from the view of accounting and taxes. In this article I put down the essential present differences between transformations of business companies carried out according to the European Union regulations and international accounting standards, and transformations performed by the Czech Republic according to the present business code and the accounting act. In order to be admitted to the European Union, the Czech law, tax and accounting system has to undergo the process of harmonization with the European Union standards and therefore several amendments to the appropriate laws are inevitable because the present legislation is not fully satisfactory.

-

The author is trying to remind the personality of the Czech economist Karel Engliš in a rather non-traditional way. He does not deal with the professional side of his activity. Instead he is aiming to describe some features of K. Engliš personality on the basis of testimonies of those who had the opportunity to observe his acting and behaviour directly. Often he uses the method of interpersonal comparison that enables to present K. Engliš through the comparison of him to some other wellknown personalities of modem Czech history.

-

Engliš`s theoretical conception of economic policy could be also applied in practice. Between 1920 and 1931 Engliš was appointed six times the Ministry of Finance and from 1934 to 1939 the Governor of the National Bank of Czechoslovakia. The paper deals with Engliš`s concrete steps taken in the field of financial and monetary policy.

-

The paper is composed of two main parts. The first part deals with the teleological, ontological and normological conception of thinking. A special n is dedicated to the teleological conception. The second part is engaged in application of teleological conception aimed at understanding an economic system. A result of this application is a three-pattern typology of the economic system: individualistic, solidarity and co-operative economic system

-

Karel Engliš belonged to those experts in the field of national economy who considered the introduction of monetary system based on the golden standard not only rather obsolete as far as the development was concerned, but even harmful in the conditions of Czechoslovakia. He was a resolute opposer of the deflation monetary policy that led to revaluation of credits provided by the bank and consequently to „the crisis of debtors

-

The economic crisis in the thirties made all apologists of capitalism face with task of finding a way out of that complex economic as well as political situation. The central personality involved in the discussion concerning the economic crisis in Czechoslovakia was Karel Engliš mainly because of his direct theoretical influence towards the active economic policy of the state. His conception of overcoming the economic crisis assured him quite a prominent place history of the Czech economic thinking.

-

The paper is concerned with the Karel Engliš

-

The paper sets forth a reasonable use of recommended Keynesian and Neo-Keynesian theory to be applied in the process of shaping economic policy of transitional economies. It puts emphasis on the complexity of conceiving economics as inherently (internally) stable or totally instable. In this connection the possibilities resulting from the application of the new Keynesian macroeconomics in the creation of economic policy are pointed out.

-

In the paper a decision making criterion is given together with the method of its application, and also information inputs are provided on the basis of which it is possible to determine whether it is efficient to initiate the implementation of investment objective under certain entry conditions (mainly financial and capital, and operation and economic) of this objective. Actually, with regard to the sources aimed at funding the intended investment activity, it would concern the evaluation of situation in which own or outside sources of investment would be used, or investments involving combination of both types of financial sources.

-

Accelerating economic, technical, social and environmental changes challenge managers to learn at increasing rates. And we must increasingly learn how to design and manage complex systems with multiple feedback effects, long time delays, and nonlinear responses to our decisions. We must use suitable methods, simulation models and software for computer simulation and gaming. The paper presents the approaches and methods of the Systems Thinking or System Dynamics and procedure of design and implementation the simulation model „cash flow

-

Marketing of Services represents a modified marketing concept which is focused on a services environment. However, an aplication of marketing theory brings differences to the content of service marketing elements. In the Czech Republic, there is a consireable delay in the enforcement of a considerable marketing to the service markets. The contribution puts the accent on the identification of the main directions for service marketing development in Czech firms. The variety of analyses and/or determination of influential factors were made as a base of offered solution.

-

The article presented discusses an internet incorporation as a global information network for marketing. The introduction handles selected reasons for exploitation of the Internet in marketing. The following sections briefly describe the principal characteristics of the marketing mix and its changes induced by the Utilization of the Internet in marketing.

-

The contribution is trying to solve various approaches to using the Internet in the Czech Republic. Attention is aimed especially at problems of electronic business. The segmentation of contemporary Czech customers is showed at the end of the article.

-

Growing competition in the sector faces the financial institutions into the searching of new organizational and system solutions. The researches done by International banks have approved the necessity of orientation on the quality of services and the quality of the employees in the banking sector. In the light of the western competition and growing aspirations of our country to become the EU member, the possible opportunity of our banks can be seen only in the high grade

-

Keen foreign and/or domestic competition, lack of capital, low market growth are the most important signs of the present economic situation in the Czech Republic. The condition of company surviving is the development and improvement of its products offer. A product development always brings a growth of costs and risks - there are the reasons for paying attention to each of the development stages. The application of product tests is one of the ways for loss elimination during the product development process. The product tests enable the product to be adapted for a consumer expectations. The most frequent methods of product tests are the test of product concept, marketing test, and market test.

-

This article refers to the basic possibilities of application of quantitative methods for locating of shopping centres and using of some simple quantitative forecasting methods for trend projections at estimating the results of commercial activities.

-

Travelling in the Czech Republic has a long tradition. Nowadays its importance is rapidly growing, because it is taking role in creating GDP by 7% and 17% of export. The article explains the basic expectations of travelling in the future.

-

Despite the post-war problems, after the establishing of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 more favourable conditions for the development of many social activities were expected in Slovakia. Within the social activities some single events appeared even in the years of the ethnic oppression. Tourism belonged to such social activities. Relatively a dynamic development of tourism in Slovakia in the years 1918 - 1938, when Slovakia was a part of the Czechoslovak Republic, as well as in the years 1939 - 1945, when Slovakia was an independent state, is recorded in numerous articles and papers deposited in archives. In our article information about the process of the legislative adjustment in tourism is elaborated. The process of adjustment wax wrapped up after the tourism law had been approved in 1939. More than half a century has passed since the years 1918 - 1945 when the legislative adjustment process in tourism went on. The conditions for the development of tourism have changed significantly since then. Our article tries to prove that the level of organisation and the procedures in the creation of the legislative background in Slovak tourism were both on a higher level at that time than they are nowadays. The presented knowledge and experience may become one of the theoretical sources for the formation of the organisational structure and the legislative background of tourism in Slovakia after 1989.

-

In this country the beginning of the McDonalďs firm is often associated with the history of Ray Kroc, a successful businessman (a nephew of a Czech emigrant) who bought a licence of the McDonalďs firm system to have become a famous „hamburger King

-

The principial tendency in the Czech economic thought was represented by Karel Engliš (1880 - 1961), the autor of the original economic theory based of the teleological (Greek

-

It is sufficiently known that the system of institutions, within which an economy functions, affects its outcomes. Therefore it could be expected that the science of economics pays an adequate attention to institutions. However, this is not the case in mainstream economics. That is why the results of neoclassical analysis should be supplemented, not replaced, by the institutional approach. The article stresses the advantage of institutional economics - its holism; simultaneously the article shows how this advantage is a handicap at the same time. All-round analysis, taking into account too many factors, cannot be readily operationalized and becomes less attractive for practical usage.

-

The article