Prague Economic Papers, 2022 (vol. 31), issue 2

Redistributive Policies of EU Member Countries in the Context of Welfare Regimes

Peter Tóth, Andrea Tkáčová, Katarína Muľová

Prague Economic Papers 2022, 31(2):119-142 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.798  

This paper aims to use cluster analysis to monitor changes in the social regimes of EU countries in the context of their economic situation. In the first step, the paper provides an overview of theoretical studies and categorizes countries into individual social regimes based on available studies. Subsequently, hierarchical cluster analyses are performed for 2007 and 2019, one for a group of redistributive variables and one for socio-economic variables. The cluster analysis confirmed that differences among individual social regimes are blurred over time, and belonging to a social regime does not automatically lead to occurrence...

Neither Parasite nor Paragon: Are Business Groups a Source of Competitive Power?

Ömer T. Doruk

Prague Economic Papers 2022, 31(2):143-168 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.800  

While profit persistence has been widely examined in the current literature, there have been no extensive studies on the link between business group membership and profit persistence on an emerging market. Using panel data econometric methods, this article examines the link between profit persistence and membership in a large industrialists' group, also known as the TUSIAD (Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Foundation), in the Turkish manufacturing sector in the period 1990-2017. The findings show that the re- lative magnitude of profit persistence of firms with TUSIAD membership is higher than those without TUSIAD membership...

Portfolio Diversification during Covid-19 Outbreak: Is Gold a Hedge and a Safe-Haven Asset?

Vladimir Živanović, Jelena Vitomir, Bojan Đorđević

Prague Economic Papers 2022, 31(2):169-194 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.802  

Price changes on all international financial and commodity markets have shown a sig- nificant correlation. The correlation dependence increased due to macroeconomic changes that led to cyclical economic trends caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the new economic circumstances, there has been a change in investment strategy of individual and institutional investors. The investment portfolios have increased in demand related to the purchase of gold, seen as a safe-haven asset, which has led to significant growth in aggregate demand on the international precious metals market. This paper deals with a dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) between the investment...

Oil Price, Exchange Rate and Asymmetric Adjustment of Nigeria's Bilateral Trade

Oliver E. Ogbonna, Hyacinth E. Ichoku

Prague Economic Papers 2022, 31(2):195-213 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.801  

Motivated by the persistent rise in bilateral trade imbalance in Nigeria, this paper empirically examines whether Nigeria's four trading partners (China, India, the UK and the US) respond asymmetrically to changes in the oil price and exchange rate using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model over the period from January 1999 to December 2019. Interestingly, we find that oil price increase and decrease influence Nigeria's trade balance with four trading partners asymmetrically. Further evidence indicates that oil price increases predominantly exert greater influence than decreases. Furthermore, Nigeria's trade balances with India and the...