E24 - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor ProductivityReturn

This paper empirically analyses the determining factors of the growth in the migration rate in the countries of the Western Balkans. The analysis is carried out with panel data over 17 years from 2005 to 2021. The purpose of this paper is to analyse social variables such as unemployment and standard of living, and political variables such as corruption, political stability, government effectiveness, rule of law and the level of corruption in the migration of citizens. For this purpose, we employ different econometric models and techniques such as OLS, OLS robust fixed and random effects models, and GMM (generalized method of moments). The study's findings demonstrate that high levels of unemployment in the Western Balkan region are the primary cause of the surge in migration; thus, large levels of labour force migration are also present in these countries. The findings also show that variables related to the political situation have statistical significance in reducing migration. The paper does not find a statistically significant influence of the level of corruption on migration. The recommendations for the countries of the Western Balkan region are to create long-term sustainable employment policies and increase wages as preventive measures for migration.

This article simulates a programme called Employer of Last Resort, and analyses its potential impact in the Czech Republic. The design of the programme guarantees perfectly inelastic demand for labour at a given wage level. In practice, the state would offer a job to anyone willing to work in order to eliminate involuntary unemployment, reduce poverty and income inequality and secure stable growth. My aim is to estimate hypothetical effects on the main objectives and calculate fiscal demands if the programme was launched on the Czech labour market. The results suggest that the programme could significantly reduce unemployment and decrease income inequality. On the other hand, it would have limited impact on income poverty. The gross wage costs of implementing the Employer of Last Resort programme in the Czech Republic are in all constructed scenarios below 1% of the gross domestic product and further calculations suggest that the total net costs could even be negative.

This paper analyses the unemployment hysteresis in the Czech Republic on data from 1999 to 2016. The hysteresis is modelled by allowing for the impact of cyclical unemployment on the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. Models are estimated using the Bayesian approach and provide robust evidence in favour of the hysteresis. The estimates imply that in response to an increase in the cyclical unemployment of 1 percentage point, the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment increases by 0.18 percentage points.

The relationship between economic growth and unemployment is well known. The growth of gross domestic product leads to a fall in unemployment and, reversely, its fall is associated with a rise in unemployment. The paper deals with the estimation of Okun's coefficient for EU28 countries between years 2001 and 2014. Additionally, two sub-periods are also analysed. These represent the pre-crisis period 2001-2007 and the post-crisis period 2008-2014. The result shows higher Okun's coefficient in the post-crisis period. Unemployment in that period responded to changes in gross domestic product more sensitively than in the pre-crisis period. As a result, in order to decrease unemployment, lower economic growth was necessary in the post-crisis period compared to the pre-crisis one.

With respect to instability and structural changes for maintaining effective functioning of economy an important issue is to study the dynamics of processes in the labour market, including labour supply and employment. Considering negative demographic trends and an acute problem of population aging in Ukraine the article presents an empirical research of the dynamics of labour force participation and unemployment rate, as well as the correlation relationship between them in various periods of time. On the basis of threshold-disturbance moving average and threshold-disturbance autoregressive models there are elicited significant asymmetric reactions of labour force participation rate, unemployment rate and productivity to positive and negative macroeconomic shocks. For modelling the asymmetric behaviour of economic activity of population there is developed a nonlinear logistic smooth transition autoregressive model. In the result of econometric analysis there is received large estimated value of slope parameter which characterizes the smoothness of transition. This indicates that the economic activity of the population in Ukraine quickly reacts to the previous changes that took place in the labour market. In times of crisis Ukrainian households increase labour supply and show increased activity in job search in order to prevent the decline of their income.

The paper examines the duration of unemployment in the Czech Republic in the three selected years (2008, 2010 and 2014). It is based on the Czech Statistical Office data collected from the Labour Force Sample Survey. Lognormal probability distribution (unimodal positively skewed heavy-tailed distribution) is used in the Accelerated Failure Time regression model including the following factor explanatory variables: years (three levels, 2008, 2010, 2014), gender (two levels), education (four levels), five-year age groups (nine levels) and municipality size (five levels). Apart from this parametric model, Turnbull's nonparametric estimator of the survival function is evaluated for subsamples defined by the year, gender and education. The effects of education and gender - a strong positive one of the former and less significant one of the latter, respectively - are quantified and assessed.

The paper examines the hysteresis hypothesis in unemployment in the case of eight selected countries in transition, using the Kalman filter and testing whether the NAIRU time series are stationary. The empirical results show that the hysteresis effect is confirmed for the majority of the countries. Testing the influence of the inflation growth rate on the decline in the NAIRU and vice versa, performed using the panel regression with fixed effect, confirmed that the increase in inflation leads to decline in the NAIRU. The conclusion also suggests the existence of the impact of actual unemployment rate on the NAIRU, which may be affected by the change in aggregate demand.

The present paper deals with the development of wage distribution by educational attainment in the Czech Republic in the years 2003-2012, analysing fifty wage distributions as the object of research and the gross monthly wage in CZK as the research variable. It examines the development of wage distribution in time and the gross monthly wage in relation to the level of educational attainment. It also pursues the development of the minimum wage in the monitored period. The author pays special attention to the lowest guaranteed wage levels classified according to wage classes and work capability assessment, comparing the minimum wage to the wage of subsistence. The forecasts of future wage distribution are an integral component of the research, the financial standing of Czech households being evaluated in an international context within the European Union.