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The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of intellectual capital (IC) undisclosed on the assets side on the balance sheet of knowledge enterprises. This capital is very relevant, and mana-gers need to have information about it in order to facilitate effective IC management process. The issue of IC performance measurement has been a matter of growing importance in both academic community and managerial practices for the past two decades. Based on the previous ideas put forward in the literature of knowledge management and IC management, this paper suggests a new methodological framework for overcoming the problem of IC performance measurement in knowledge enterprises. Efficiency of Intellectual Capital (EIC) methodological framework offers practical solutions for measuring the efficiency of total enterprises' IC, as well as the efficiency in the use of all IC components. The EIC framework connects financial accounting valuation and market valuation.

This paper relates to the initial public offering problem and companies' profitability levels before and after this event. In the presented study, profitability ratios in the year before initial public offering increase over the previous year, and then, after the IPO, fall. This confirms the phenomenon of distorting the level of profit before the IPO and partially equity dilution after the IPO.

This study offers a scientific and methodical approach to identifying systemically important domestic banks based on the indicator-based measurement approach recommended by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. By improving both a set of criteria and indicators of a bank's systemic importance it is offered to distinguish its five levels - low, moderate, medium, significant and high. The approach was tested on 26 Ukrainian banks representing different groups (depending on the size of assets) according to the classification of the National Bank of Ukraine. We have discovered the absence of banks with high systemic importance in the period 2007-2011 - the majo-rity of banks are characterized by their moderate or low level. In our opinion, the best solution for systemic risk regulation would be the introduction of a differentiated regime of supervision over banks depending on their level of systemic importance and risk profile.

The influence of foreign banks on a host country's lending depends on several factors, including the policy of the parent bank, the strategy of entry, economic cycles in the home country and abroad, growth prospects, the indebtedness of commitments and the capital adequacy of the parent bank. During the most recent economic crisis, the credit supply of foreign banks in the 10 new European Union (EU) Member States has not remained stable in the crisis. More specifically, we find evidence that foreign banks have cut the credit supply slightly in the new EU Member States.

Assuming a non-satiable risk-averse investor, the standard approach to portfolio selection suggests discarding of all inefficient investment in terms of mean return and its standard deviation ratio within its first step. However, in literature we can find many alternative dispersion and risk measures that can help us to identify the most suitable investment opportunity. In this work two new dispersion measures, fulfilling the condition that ""more is better than less"" are proposed. Moreover, their distinct characteristics are analysed and empirically compared. In particular, starting from the definition of dispersion measures, we discuss the property of consistency with respect to additive shifts and we examine two dispersion measures that satisfy this property. Finally, we empirically compare the proposed dispersion measures with the standard deviation and the conditional value at risk on the US stock market. Moreover, within the empirical example the so called ""alarm"" is incorporated in order to predict potential fails of the market.

The aim of this paper is to find out determinants which affect the commercial banks' decision to lend on the interbank market in the Visegrad countries. The data cover the period from 2000 to 2011. The net interbank position of individual banking sectors significantly differs. Results of the probit model showed that banks' decision to lend in interbank market is determined both by bank-specific and macroeconomic factors. Bank liquidity, capital adequacy and quality of the loan portfolio are important bank-specific factors. Growth rate of the gross domestic products, unemployment rate, financial crisis and level of interest rates matter among macroeconomic factors. Although the Visegrad countries have a lot in common, different factors determined the banks' decision in individual countries. Moreover, the direction of influence of some factors may also differ.

The origins, growth and importance of the 2007-2009 American and European credit crisis are analysed. The causes lie in the speculative bubbles, the changed attitudes to domestic property, the growth of securitisation and derivatives trading, the changing roles of financial institutions, poor policy choices and inadequate regulation. The Visegrad states are being affected by declining export markets that have triggered domestic recessions, and growing credit problems. The recession is especially penalising economies they have followed risky policies. The course of the recession is currently impossible to predict. But it is possible for these states to draw on the regulatory lessons inflicted on others, and to respond to the challenge of co-regulating the international banks that dominate their domestic markets, and which while too large to fail, are also too large to rescue unaided.

The goal of this article is to determine whether low capital intensive firms, characterised by low productivity and low level of R&D activities that operate in technologically intensive branches of the Czech manufacturing industry, tend to be localised in economically lagging regions which are attractive for costs seeking FDI. We wanted to determine to the Czech regions that are more threatened by delocalisation of manufacturing activities. The assessment of companies' localisation stability is based on 3 economic indicators representing internal keep-factors of delocalisation - capital intensity, complexity of value chain, and sophistication of production processes. We did not confirm the hypothesis on concentration of footloose firms in economically lagging districts with high unemployment and accessibility of investment incentives. These firms, which are considered to be the most predisposed for delocalisation, are geographically dispersed. Localisation of technologically intensive branches corresponds neither to the settlement hierarchy nor to the economic performance of districts. Regional differences of indicators of localisation stability exhibit a strong path dependency effect.

This paper analyses the crucial factors determining the foreign direct investment (FDI) going to the privatized glass sector in the Czech Republic. In our research we felt that there was a scant evidence in Central and Eastern Europe of the determinants of foreign direct investments (FDI) at the micro level and we were aware of the endogeneity issue of FDI. The aim of this paper is to fill these gaps. The choice of the glass sector allows for an analysis of a firm's micro characteristics that attract foreign direct investors in an industrial sector, while reducing the impact of macroeconomic factors in their choice. Our econometrical analysis, using original panel data from 1990 to 2006, gives strong evidence that foreign direct investors in the glass sector in the Czech Republic have chosen larger and more profitable firms that were intensively restructured and privatized at the beginning of the transition. Our results support the relevance of the endogeneity issue in the choice of foreign direct investors in transition countries.

The results of stress tests of the Czech banking sector based on credit risk and credit growth models, applied to the household and corporate sector are presented in the paper. The use of these newly developed models enables the stress tests to be linked to the CNB's official quarterly macroeconomic forecast. In addition, the article updates the stress scenarios, including simple sensitivity analyses of credit risk for individual sectors. Based on the analysis, an answer is sought to the question of whether the observed credit growth to corporate sector and households poses any threat to the stability of the banking sector. The analyses conclude that the banking sector as a whole seems to be resilient to the macroeconomic shocks under consideration.

This paper presents an insight into problems of financing the greatest part of public services for the population - the health care. The situation in this field in two nearby countries - the Czech Republic and Austria is compared. The health status of the population and the health care bases in both countries are on a high level, and the Czech situation is approaching the somewhat better situation in Austria. The main problem in the both countries is the lack of financial resources for covering the increasing needs in health care services and medicaments. Therefore, the new ways how to balance the deficit of the system both on the revenue and expenditure sides are to be found. The reforms of the system should serve this goal. From the point of view of financial sources for health care a similar model is used in Austria and the Czech Republic, some modifications of it result from different historical development and from different economical level. These modifications and differences, together with the role of the state, insurance funds and direct payments of the population, are described in this paper. The causes of discrepancies between sources of finance and expenditures on the health care are discussed. Reforming the health care system is a long-term task. From this point of view the Austrian reform measures were prepared very well, with the needed advance before introducing them and it can serve as an example for preparation of the Czech reform. Nevertheless, many questions how to improve the financing of the health care for the benefit of patients remain still without answer and they are the matter of further research and discussions in many European countries.

The authors are attempting to draw together existing literature on the governance of GVCs; research on host country ""spillovers"" as a consequence of MNE activity and the broader cluster and innovation literature. While cluster research had done important work in identifying and operationalizing the necessary conditions for cluster formation, it had relatively ignored the global-local linkage brought by the presence of MNEs. The ""spillover"" literature has identified in theory numerous benefits of MNE presence in host countries. There was relatively little empirical work done in CEE to discover if these benefits actually exist. Neither literature had focused on how MNEs govern their GVCs. Thus bringing these sources together presents an important opportunity for international business. The authors find that in the Slovak case the industrial clusters among the firms surveyed were not much functional. On a strategic level, there appears to be little evidence of cooperation in areas of marketing, export promotion or investment. This is especially of concern in sectors such as automotive where cooperative strategies among suppliers could offer significant benefits.

The paper compares the quality of the institutional framework of the Czech Republic with other new EU Member States and the EU 15 average using the World Bank data on Governance Indicators and argues that the pressure from the EU institutions during the accession negotiation period to reform the legal framework was not sufficient to improve significantly the business environment. Among factors that prevented the improvement of institutions the influence of strong interest groups, ineffective enforcement of legal rules and corruption are discussed and empirically illustrated using data on "state capture".

The paper investigates both the impact of domestic and import competition on performance of manufacturing industries in the Czech Republic in 1998 - 2002. Using panel data we found a strong increasing non-linear (diminishing) relationship between performance of manufacturing industries and domestic competition measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. Import competition measured by an import penetration ratio is negatively related to performance of Czech industries, while foreign direct investments are positively correlated with performance.

Real convergence is the key economic challenge for the new EU Member Countries. The main growth area today is the "new" entrepreneurial economy of creativity and innovation. But such an economy needs a financial structure capable of coping with the higher risk inherent in the "new" economy. To provide such a financial structure, the financial markets must be broad, deep and liquid, i.e. financial markets must be large enough to provide this financial structure. Hence, the financial integration became an imperative for the new Member Countries. But this integration process possesses both economic and political challenges and dilemmas. Answers to those challenges and dilemmas will then determine the degree of real convergence - and hence the degree of economic success - for each new Member State.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of establishment of the Politická ekonomie economic periodical six articles were published in 2003 reviewing the history, rise and fall of this journal in 1953 - 1989. This review presents to foreign readers a brief outline of economic thinking in this country in the period concerned that was reflected in articles published by Czech and Slovak economists in Politická ekonomie.

Banks played a central and, at times, controversial, role in the post-1989 transformation of the Czech economy. This article is trying to assess that role by setting it in a historical and comparative context. Economic historians have specified two broad models of banking behaviour, although the differences can be exaggerated. Transition economies show some common characteristics, but past history gave Czech banks a particularly important role and policy makers pursued a conception under which they would finance rapid economic transformation, partly following a model from the past. With varying degrees of willingness, established banks took on this role, undermining their own financial solidity. As the Czech road ran into difficulties, so a different conception of banks' development was adopted, closer to policies more familiar across Central and Eastern Europe.

This article addresses the restructuration of the utilities sector/industry, a process generally described as deregulation. At the core of deregulation processes, not only in the EU, but also in the US, lies the replacement of old-fashioned forms of state regulation based on ownership control by new forms of regulation based on the operation of an independent regulatory body. In Central and Eastern European countries undergoing economic transition, surviving communist-type behavior, along with half-implemented EU deregulation directives, have led to specifically re-regulated utility markets. The new forms of regulation applied in the process of deregulation have served only to preserve the market protection of former state monopolies. Regulators who manage deregulation processes in the EU style allocate benefits across organized producer and consumer groups, so that the regulators' total utility is maximized.

The paper discusses the prospects for capital inflows to the Czech Republic before Economic and Monetary Union accession. It reviews the potential costs and benefits of capital flows and the history of capital flows to the Czech Republic, before turning to future capital inflows. It notes that different theoretical models provide different predictions about future capital inflows. To get further insight, the paper discusses the future capital inflows from the perspective of nonresidents' supply of external savings and residents' demand for external borrowing and from the perspective of external vulnerability related to large foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow. It concludes that FDI is likely to decline somewhat in the future, but increasing sovereign borrowing needs could lead to higher inflow of portfolio capital. The final section discusses the potential for capital inflows resulting from the so-called convergence plays and concludes that there is presently little incentive for convergence-play related capital inflows.

This theoretical paper maps the transition experience of the financial sector using evidence from the Czech money market. Especially, the respect is paid to the structure of interest rates during the period from 1993 to 2001. The main components of the money market that mostly determine the term structure are the interbank deposit market and the market for short-term securities. The study abstains from interbank market survey and provides a detailed description of the default-free short-term securities market and its impact on past interest rate movements.

Since the mid-1990s, the IMF has provided large financial assistance to a number of member countries affected by serious financial and exchange rate crises. Because of the unprecedented size of these packages and possible negative side effects, the desirability of such assistance has become a hotly discussed issue. A consensus is now forming that official lending to country in crisis should not cease completely, but at the same time, official funds cannot be expected to fill in any existing financing gap. The article evaluates the risk of moral hazard connected with IMF lending. Although the substantial assistance inevitably influences the behavior and expectations of all players, there is little support for argument that lending created serious moral hazard. The role of the IMF conditionality as the traditional tool of reducing moral hazard is described in the circumstances of the new capital account developments.

In the last a few years, the volume of derivatives trading steadily increased, the market being built, in particular, by major Czech banks (including subsidiaries of foreign banks) and branches of foreign banks. The most common derivatives are currency forwards and currency swaps up to 6 months. They are used by banks for trading (i.e. purchase or sale with other banks or clients) and hedging foreign exchange positions. More and more clients demand these instruments to hedge their own operations, mainly foreign trade and short-term loans. Equity options have so far been used to buy securities through major securities dealers who sell options to foreign investors. Some banks offer currency options to their clients. But clients have small expertise how to handle with options e.g. how to do effective option hedging.