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This paper seeks to investigate the effect of financial development on growth in OECD countries during 1999–2014. The aim of the analysis is to study the dependence of growth on given financial development indicators along quantiles of the conditional growth distribution, taking into account the effect played by each country over time. For the purpose of the empirical analysis, it performed the instrumental variable quantile regression panel data (IV-QRPD) model suggested by Powell (2016). The findings of IV-QRPD model indicated that the effect of finance on growth is changing along quantiles of the conditional growth distribution. That is to say, we provide some evidence that high-growth OECD countries react to the changes in financial development less than low-growth countries.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the trade integration process of the Visegrad countries from a special point of view, namely by estimating border effects in the countries. The regressional analysis run with two different estimators (OLS vs. PPML) on two different model specifications suggests that between 1995 and 2011 the V4 countries were integrating continuously into the Single Market of the European Union. The results also show that the size of border effect is fairly sensitive to the estimator and particularly to the specification chosen by the researcher. According to the country-level estimation, Hungary seems to be the most integrated country getting the lowest home bias parameters followed by the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, respectively.

In this paper, we analyse the key determinants of bank fee and commission income in the European Union with a special emphasis on market concentration. On a sample of 258 EU banks during the 2007–2014 period, we apply System Generalized Method of Moments. First, we argue that the banks facing higher competition tend to expand more aggressively into non-traditional activities, and therefore they report a higher share of fee income in total income. Second, we found that a higher equity to assets ratio is related with higher shares of fee income since the bank needs more capital to prevent or manage the potential risks of the non-traditional activities. Finally, a high deposits to assets ratio tends to increase the fee income share, which may be possibly attributed to relatively high switching costs and to close depositor-bank relationship in the EU banks.

This study analyses the directions and the degree of financial integration of ASEAN-5 with the PRC, India, the U.S. and Japan. A non-parametric approach has been used to study the crosscountry correlations based on Concordance Index (CI) and Rolling Concordance Index (RCI). Monthly stock market indices between January 1991 and June 2010 for all the countries involved were analysed. The CI results indicate higher financial interdependence of ASEAN-5 with the U.S. and Japan compared to the PRC and India. The stock markets RCIs amongst ASEAN-5 with the emerging and developed economies depict a rising financial integration amongst these nations. Financial integration amongst ASEAN-5 stock markets with the PRC has gradually increased but is still relatively lower compared to the financial integration with India, the U.S. and Japan. Thus, the financial portfolio diversification of ASEAN-5 to the PRC is recommended, especially if the financial crisis originates from the ASEAN region.

We surveyed representative sample of 1,004 adult Poles to check the extent to which they distinguish among the entities operating in the market for personal loans in Poland, how they perceive loans and lending entities, and what is their knowledge on lending/borrowing issues. Particularly, we were interested in getting the insight into the fragment of the market that is operated by personal loan companies, with special emphasis on the profile of the average (statistical) borrower. Our examination was motivated by the controversies surrounding the law amendment started in Poland in 2015 in order to regulate the fraction of the consumer credit market represented by personal loan companies. By utilizing logistic and multivariate linear regression models with variables obtained from our survey, we tested whether the legal reform was well-informed and well-addressed. We found that Polish households have serious problems with distinguishing various entities that provide loans to private individuals and that such problems manifest even greater problem of material shortcomings in Poles' debt literacy. We also evidenced low public trust to lending entities, particularly to loan companies. In the light of the findings the law amendment is well-grounded, however it should be supported by actions aimed at enhancing households' financial literacy.

The purpose of the survey and to some extent polemical article is to present the issue of green growth, a new operating strategy, which the OECD is currently working on. Green growth is seen as a practical tool for achieving the timeless objective, which is sustainable development. In the paper, a particular attention is put on the following question: what kind of relationship occurs between green growth, green economy and sustainable development. The author analyses the purpose of simultaneous functioning of the three "green" ideas. The added value of this paper is a presentation of the author's model of GG-GE-SD relations and a new approach to defining the phenomenon of green growth. It is concluded that co-existence of the trio green economy - green growth - sustainable development is reasonable due to the complementary and synergistic nature of correlations between these concepts.

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 present paper investigates the use of national wage settings as a mechanism to deter entry via foreign direct investment (FDI) in a unionized monopoly industry. A union which sets centralized wages in a multi-unit firm can both decentralize and change the agenda to prevent the market entry of a non-unionized firm. The adoption of the efficient bargaining agenda is especially effective to deter entry because it lowers the fixed-cost threshold the entrant can bear. Moreover, through side-payments, the incumbent and the union can have common interests in modifying the wage setting to reach outcomes that is Pareto-superior to duopoly. However, if the union cedes "too much power" and becomes "too weak", internal conflicts with the incumbent firm may arise.

In the present paper, we develop a monopoly model of vertical product differentiation for analysing the monopolist's decision about the possibility of versioning goods as substitutes or complements when consumers can buy them simultaneously. In this context, we find that versioning goods as substitutes or complements is optimal for the monopolist if the cost of designing the bundle (the purchase of one unit of each version) is increasing, which implies that making variants of closer substitutes reduces costs. However, if making variants of closer substitutes is costly, the monopolist versions goods as complements only. The final result also depends on the degree of concavity and convexity of the cost function.

The study attempts to assess the effects of lifting short sale restrictions on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in terms of futures pricing efficiency. The approach implemented in the article involves evaluation and comparison of the mispricing series of the WIG20 index futures listed on the WSE, in a one-year time span before and after the regulatory change introduced in 2010. The results show that lifting short sale constraints has increased the efficiency of the Polish futures market. There was a decline both in the number of mispricing occurrences, and in the mean level and dispersion of deviations from the fair values, especially with regard to underpriced contracts series. The study reveals that, in contrast to the pre-event period, after the regulatory change the arbitrage opportunities were virtually absent for investors bearing the highest transaction costs.

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.

The paper analyses the evolution of the retail network of the capital city of Slovakia Bratislava affecting buying behaviour and lifestyle of its consumers. From the marketing point of view, it characterizes the space behaviour of the consumers and presents the behaviour of consumers living in single districts of Bratislava. It shows, on the one hand, how the importance of consumer behaviour rises in the declining economic prosperity during last years, while on the other hand, the concentration in retail declines the chances for success of small independent food retail stores during last recent years. The authors used different methods, e.g. GIS, cluster analysis, for testing they asses the significance of market segments on the sample involving 11,389 respondents interviewed.

This paper examines the theoretical concept of equilibrium in the money market that is empirically verified for the economy of the Czech Republic. The subject of the analysis is the relationship defining equilibrium in the domestic money market, i.e. when money demand corresponds to the money supply in the economy. The main objective is to determine whether such a long-term equilibrium relationship exists by verifying this assumption on real data for the Czech economy. The Johansen cointegration approach is applied for modelling the money demand function including four domestic macroeconomic indicators: money supply, price level, gross domestic product, and interest rate. The results suggest that the level of real money supply fluctuated around the estimated long-run equilibrium value in the analysed period 2000-2013.

The mutual fund industry has grown considerably in many countries since the 1990s. Its evolution has been explained primarily in terms of its economic and financial determinants. We draw on a dynamic set of measures for socio-cultural values to explain the differential development of mutual funds across the world. Using a sample of 38 countries for the period 1996-2009, we find a positive relation between the perception of happiness and the size of the mutual fund industry. Freedom of choice, a feature of countries that are dominated by individualistic behaviours and values, has a positive impact on the development of the industry. We also explain the positive relation between individuals' preference for private ownership and the development of mutual funds. Moreover, we prove that the industry is larger in developed countries with greater stock market liquidity, with low ratios of remittance inflows to GDP, and in which the industry is older.

This research investigates the emergence of stock market in the Czech Republic. We use Czech mass privatization as an experiment that allows us to analyze under what conditions a viable stock market arises. On the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE), unlike its counterparts in Poland or Hungary, exceptionally large amounts of shares were delisted e.g. excluded from public trading soon after trading at this market began in 1993. We estimate the determinants of shares delisting analyzing the period 1993-2004. Using firm-level data on listed and delisted companies we show that it was possible to prevent massive delisting if certain pre-privatization and privatization characteristics of the companies had been taken into account when deciding which companies to place on the stock exchange for public trading following the mass privatization. This result has important implications for establishing stock markets in emerging economies.

The paper is devoted to gender wage differences; it especially focuses on the impact of the gender characteristics of the manager on gender wage disparity. Under the social identity theory, women in managerial positions, that can affect the wage of their subordinates, are likely to evaluate female employees better than male employees. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the gender characteristics of middle managers on the wages of directly subordinated rank-and-file employees using a variation within the firm. We have used two methods to consider the effect of the manager gender characteristics on subordinates: the estimation of the wage function and the average treatment effect on the treated, both supplemented by a matching procedure. We concluded that women in middle management in comparison to their male counterparts have a lower tendency to apply wage discrimination against women. The presence of a female head of department led to a decrease in the gender pay gap by almost 7 percentage points.

This study investigates the exchange rate exposure of Turkish energy firms from 2002 to 2010. We employed a regression model that is constructed by adding exchange rate and oil price factors to Fama-French Three Factor Model. Empirical results suggest that exchange rate risk appears to impact energy firms diversely. Among the 9 energy firms in our sample, only 2 firms seem to be exposed to exchange rate risk. These two energy firms appear to have larger open foreign currency positions and do not use any hedging methods. On the contrary, rest of the energy firms that are not found to be affected by exchange rate risk either seem to have smaller open foreign currency positions or employ hedging methods to manage exchange rate risk. Overall, our results provide evidence that energy firms exposed to exchange rate risk share similar characteristics.

This paper empirically examines the possible causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Serbia. In this regard, the focus is on the development of financial intermediation by banks, considering the fact that the banking sector plays an important role in Serbian financial system. The empirical research is based on quarterly data for the period Q1 2004-Q4 2011 by using Toda-Yamamoto causality test. Our empirical findings suggest that process of economic growth contributes to process of financial deepening. On the other hand, the results indicate that there is a significant unidirectional causality that runs from both private enterprise credit to GDP and household credit to GDP to economic growth. Bidirectional causal relation is confirmed only between the share of bank credit to nonfinancial private sector in total domestic credit and economic growth rate.

Migration of population has been a significant feature of the international economy for a long time. It is an important source of income, foreign exchange and workforce for a large number of economies. The most studies dealing with the international migration consider it as efficient instrument for developing countries, because inflow of money (through remittances) has a positive impact on their economy. However, on the other hand, economically developed countries are threatened by outflow of money abroad. From this perspective, remittances may have negative consequences on the economy. This issue connected with remittances is very often neglected. The Czech Republic and most developed European countries are the immigration countries. It means that many foreigners come here because of work or study, especially from nonEU countries. The paper focuses on rarely discussed issues of migration standing on the border between demographics and economic statistics. It deals with positive and negative aspects of labour immigration with the specific focus on foreigners' behaviour - incomes, expenditures, savings and remittances. It is aimed to determine specific impact of migration and remittances on the economy of the Czech Republic.

We analyse labour market flows and unemployment rate dynamics in the Czech Republic (CR), Slovakia and Poland. Relative involvement of working-age individuals in movements between various labour market states appears to be approximately five times lower in Central Europe than in the U.S./UK. Compared to neighbouring countries, the CR suffers from a relatively weaker net flow of individuals from unemployment to employment. This net flow alone would cut the unemployment rate in Poland more than twice as fast as in the CR. In particular, currently unemployed Czech men, individuals with primary education, and the 55-65 age group are adversely affected by this national-specific feature of labour market flows.

This paper aims to model the day-ahead prices on the German EPEX SPOT exchange during the year 2011 using a fundamental mixed-integer programming model with focus on the changes in the volatility of prices. A model of the German market is built from publicly available data. Various constraints on the supply side such as operational characteristics of power plants are described, characterized and ultimately formulated as constraints of a cost-minimization problem. Unknown power plant characteristics are estimated by expert opinions or are inferred indirectly from other data. Several scenarios testing the impact of constraints and modelling approaches are analysed. In addition, a future scenario simulating the year 2016 is used to forecast price developments under the ongoing massive renewable energy growth. Finally, results are discussed with respect to price forecasting accuracy with a focus on the changes in the volatility of prices.

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.

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 aim of the article is to introduce a complex econometric model of cash-lows for the Czech life insurance market. Namely, technical-actuarial links among insurance variables observed in annually published summary balance sheets of life insurers are described by means of an econometric system of linear simultaneous equations. The suggested model is statistically veri ed and thus it can provide useful economic interpretations. Further, adjusted residual bootstrapping is introduced in this context as a straightforward alternative which can solve possible problems with questionable asymptotic distribution properties of residuals. This technique can be applied e.g. for signi cance testing purposes. Finally, an important practical illustration of scenario analysis is considered. Such an analysis might be really useful, e.g. for internal calculations of the Czech life insurers, nancial planning or stress testing in the framework of Solvency II. Two general approaches are presented: deterministic and stochastic. The second one is capable of delivering various empirical probabilities concerning possible future developments.

This study analyses the Czech, Hungarian, and Polish currencies by examining the statistical characteristics of the Swiss franc as well as the ECB monetary policy in order to indicate shocks in these markets between 2002 and 2013. The abundance of monetary easing decisions can be used as a viable sign of market misbehaviour in addition to the low probability of extreme exchange rate fluctuations. Indeed, the temporal distribution of extreme currency fluctuations provides vital information about the nature of the recent crisis. Contagions can be defined as increased correlations during periods of crisis, while divergence means a significant decrease in this regard. Methodologically, common movements in this study were calculated by using DCC-GARCH modelling. The findings of this study underline the special features of the Swiss franc exchange rate, notably that its extreme fluctuations can be managed by using swap agreements and that it tended towards divergences during the crisis era. These results support the idea of avoiding lending in reserve currencies.

In this paper we analysed to which extent the changes in market potentials in Poland have been a cause for increasing income disparities, which were observed across Polish regions from 1995 to 2008. To do so we derived and estimated a New Economy Geography Model, which relates per capita GDP growth rates to changes in market potential. The results of the crosssection estimations of the model for the period 1995-2008 and for its different subsamples point to a positive and significant effect of changing market potentials in per capita GDP growth rates. Due to the fact that core-economic regions have mostly benefited in terms of market potential growth during 1995-2008, these results confirm the important role played by the relative changing in market potentials across Polish regions in widening the gap between poor and rich regions in the country in the period of analysis.

The article focuses on the elaboration and research of the real nature of standards of value. The methodology chosen for this paper is mainly based on the late institutional economics and European theories of the economic and legal order, such as the German ordoliberalism. It is argued that standards (International Valuation Standards, European Valuation Standards, IDW S 1 etc.) are not determined by the stage of development of economic theory, but rather by valuation "best practices". The standards of value, which are normatively defined, first enable us to connect the valuation and the valuation purpose. The value standard or the contained value basis establishes the connection between the value and the valuation purpose, and make the estimated value relevant, or subject to the valuation purpose. Further, the purpose of the standards as a set of rules is examined, and the entities involved in the formulation of the standards and its influence are closely connected. There were identified three driving forces shaping the current scope and status of both international and national valuation standards: firstly, the state and legislation (hard and soft law), secondly, science providing a methodological background, and lastly, joint interest groups, such as appraisers and appraisers' associations who are generally responsible for the final versions of the standards. Since Czech commercial law does not precisely address all possible market transactions and applicable standards of value, it is argued that the International Valuation Standards can and should also be applied in the Czech Republic, since their purpose would show its effect in the Czech Republic, too. Other inspiration for business valuation can be found in the German IDW S 1 standard.

The 2007-2009 global financial turmoil was exacerbated by a low level of financial market regulatory coordination. Historical experience has shown that despite implementing regulations, supervision and macroeconomic policies, the financial industry regularly experiences crises. Consequently, a similar impact might be expected from the Basel III new bank regulatory framework. The aim of this paper is two-fold; in the first part dedicated to theory we describe the Basel III regulatory standards and argue that this regulation is not sufficient and will not prevent financial markets from experiencing future crises. Moreover, we discuss implementation of new banking regulation in Europe: the Capital Requirements Directive IV and stricter capital requirements for European banks set by the European Banking Authority in 2011. In the second part, we focus on an empirical analysis of the impact of stricter capital requirements as defined in the Basel III framework on the market value of European banks. Our analysis employs the fixed effects methodology on the financial data collected from 172 banks listed on European stock exchanges during the 2005-2011 period. We conclude that the impact of the Basel III regulation on the value of bank shares will probably be perceived negatively by the market, which could be reflected in a drop in the market value of the observed banks.

This paper investigates multiscale interdependence between the stock markets of Germany, Austria, France, and the United Kingdom. Wavelet energy additive decomposition was analyzed to investigate which scales capture the most energy (volatility), whereas a wavelet cross-correlation estimator was used to analyze comovement and lead/lag relationship between stock markets' return dynamics on a scale-by-scale basis. The main findings of the paper are as follows. First, major financial market crises had a significant impact on return volatility of investigated stock markets. Among them, the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 had the greatest and the most durable impact. Second, the lowest scale (associated with stock markets' return dynamics over a 2-4 days horizon) and the second lowest scale (associated with stock markets' return dynamics over 4-8 days horizon) MODWT (maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform) decompositions of stock markets' returns captured the greatest share (together about 70-80%) of indices' returns volatility. Third, comovement between stock market returns is a scale-dependent phenomenon. Fourth, a strong comovement between stock market returns of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom exists at all scales, while the Austrian stock market is less correlated with the three biggest stock markets in Europe. Fifth, the dynamics of stock market returns seems to be well time-synchronized at daily (raw returns) and the lowest scale (scale ) return decomposition as most of the return innovations are transmitted between stock markets intraday. Sixth, at the highest investigated scale (associated with stock markets' return dynamics over a 64-128 days horizon), significant leads and lags between dynamics of stock markets' returns were detected. The time-synchronization of the stock markets' return dynamics for investments of 64 to 128 days horizon is less perfect than for investments of shorter investment horizons.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of labour market dynamics in EU-27 in the recent period and to assess their impact on the process of economic development. The degree of originality is given by our choice to focus on the comparative analysis of two periods of time: 2000-2007, when the European Union as a whole, but especially Central and Eastern European countries as well as Mediterranean ones experienced significant improvements in labour market performances and overall competitiveness and 2008-2010, a recession period characterized by a massive loss of jobs and an equally large increase in unemployment, with anticipated consequences on economic growth. The main interest is to look for the key factors that determine the lasting performances of the leading European economies and possible solutions for ensuring the sustainable growth of the others.