Suchergebnisse

This article deals first with the relative affordability of owner-occupied housing in Prague compared to the situation in the Czech Republic in general. The relative position of Prague in this region is then assessed in a cross-national comparison and determined to be specific. The article's main objective is to uncover the main demand factors behind the high prices and the low affordability of owner-occupied housing in Prague. The authors focus on factors that derive from the specifi c economic position of Prague and the specific culturally-rooted preferences of Czech citizens for owner-occupied housing. Findings from numerous sociological studies and experiments have proved both of these factors to be very important, and their future development will thus largely be influenced by the affordability of housing in Prague.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the issue of innovation from the perspective of relevant sociological interpretative frameworks. The discussion starts with an assessment of evolutionary and institutional economic studies of innovation, which have contributed to a better understanding of the role of institutional and social factors in the formation of innovation resources and the performance of (innovating) firms and (innovating) nation states. The concepts of a national innovation system (Nelson), the learning firm (Lundvall) and the social system of production (Hollingsworth) are discussed to explain this contribution in more detail. They indicate a set of socio-cultural factors and circumstances that can be identifi ed not only as implications of the techno-economic power of innovation but also as the autonomous factors that shape the performance of innovating actors. The EU Lisabon strategy is faced with a similar challenge: to balance the issue of competitiveness with environmental issues and social cohesion. The current debate over fulfilling its goals (the Kok report) offers good arguments as to how techno-economic and socio-cultural resources of innovation could be theorised and governed. In this article, selected methodological frameworks and databases (EIS 2005, EXIS) are applied in an analysis of the social forms and structures of national innovation systems. The final discussion refers both to the relevant concepts (the learning economy, knowledge societies, reflexive modernisation) and the analytical data in order to suggest a concept of innovation, which understands both economic and social factors to be productive resources of current innovation performance. The suggested interpretative framework is used to assess the structural dependencies and challenges of the innovation system in the Czech Republic.

This paper investigates the effects of economic growth on income inequality in EU countries by employing econometric models. We estimated the effect of growth on the share of income for all particular deciles of population and on the Gini. Other control variables were included in the models as well. The results showed a negative effect of economic growth on inequality, while this impact is the largest for the deciles ranging from the third to the seventh. This can be perceived as an indication of a shrinking middle class. Inequality-increasing effects were found for long-term unemployment, openness and partly for indicators of importance of the financial sector. Factors reducing inequality were rule of law and population with tertiary education. The size of government turned out to be a rather insignificant determinant.

The analysis builds on existing empirical and theoretical literature in the field of job polarization, which is primarily focused on advanced economies. Hypotheses of the incidence of "skill-biased" and "routine-biased" technical change in the Visegrad group countries are verified in the analysis. The aim is to find out whether the impact of technical change on the labour market in the V4 countries is similar to or different than that in advanced economies. The analytical part is primarily performed on the EU-LFS. The results suggest that the structure of the labour market has changed in the V4 countries in a heterogeneous way. In Hungary and Slovakia, there was an apparent slight job polarization over the period under review. In addition, the evidence suggests that the technical change in these countries may be of a "routine-biased" nature. On the contrary, the pattern of "upgrading" was evident in the Czech Republic and Poland, where the evidence suggests "skill-biased" technical change.

We use EU SILC data for the Czech Republic to estimate the size of the motherhood penalty for the period 2006-2017. We find out that adjusted motherhood penalty amounts to 11-15% in the period 2006-2008. At that time, the Czech Republic appeared to be comparable to countries such as Germany and the UK. However, the motherhood penalty effectively disappears after 2009 and the Czech Republic is now placed in the same group with Scandinavian countries, France and Belgium. Despite that, there are still many obstacles for mothers to increase their labour market participation, which translate mainly into wage penalties via the experience and labour intensity channels. The study also supports other general evidence from cross-country motherhood penalty comparisons, motherhood penalty being mostly a phenomenon of middle-educated, married women located outside large cities, employed in private industry and having more than one child.

The article provides an overview of the main theoretical approaches to research on educational choices and anticipated labour-market opportunities from a gender perspective. It then presents the results of three quantitative analyses of secondary data. The objective is to help facilitate a complex understanding of the mechanisms of the reproduction of gendered social
structures. The genderedness of the social institutions in the education system and the labour market in relation to the socialising trends in the family is described in three parts: 1) gender segregation in employment in the context of segregation in education – the author shows that the horizontal dimension of these social institutions plays a more signifi cant role than the vertical dimension; 2) the factors that condition girls' and boys' educational aspirations and choice of schools – the author demonstrates how secondary school choices are gendered (though the analysis did not reveal the differences between the factors that infl uence girls' and boys' aspirations); 3) the factors that condition parents' educational and class aspirations for their sons and daughters – the author uncovers several aspects of the socialising effect of the reproduction of the two traditional career trajectories based on gender. In conclusion, the article answers the question of how structurally gendered expectations cohere with individual career trajectories, and based on the three analyses formulates questions for further research and offers a revised theoretical conceptualisation of gender as an analytical category.

The study provides estimates of the size of the fatherhood premium for the Czech Republic in the years 2006-2017, using data from the EU SILC survey. In the years 2006-2009, the fatherhood premium in the Czech Republic does not manifest itself if explanatory variables include the marriage premium and the partner's labour market participation. The fatherhood premium only starts to express itself in 2010 and the following years, when it reaches values from 11% to 15% as a consequence of a decision of families with high-income fathers to have a third child in the years after 2010.

Personal income taxation in the Czech Republic has undergone significant changes in the last 20 years. Among main changes is replacing of deductions from the tax base with tax credits in 2006, as well as linking income tax and contributions on compulsory insurance in the form of so-called super-gross wage with the simultaneous introduction of a flat tax rate and introduction of maximum assessment bases for compulsory contributions in 2008. In this paper, we quantify the fiscal impacts of significant changes using macroeconomic and microeconomic approaches. We compare the results within each other, but also with the expected fiscal impact stated in the explanatory reports of the amending laws. The results show good consistency in estimates of the fiscal impact of tax and contribution reforms and confirm four fiscally significant reforms from 2000 to 2018. The expected negative and positive effects of changes in income tax presented in the explanatory reports are generally lower than in our calculations. Improving the quantification of fiscal impacts is essential for the adoption of an efficient and rational tax policy.

The article deals with the factors that affect the tax morale of the population of the Visegrad Four countries, i.e. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The evaluation of the answers of the respondents of the European Values Study to the question of whether they justify tax evasion serves as an indicator of tax morale. The authors work on the one hand with the frequency of answers expressing a complete rejection of fraud and on the other hand with average answers on a scale from 1 to 10. Respondents from Slovakia were found to be justifying tax fraud the most, and Polish and Hungarian residents agreed with tax evasion the least. Furthermore, the dependence of tax morale on gender, religion and satisfaction with the political system was analysed. Using contingency tables, it was found that all the monitored factors have a statistically significant effect on the tendency of people to justify tax evasion. The only exceptions were the factor of religion in the Czech Republic and the influence of satisfaction with the political system in Poland, where the relationship with tax morale was not confirmed.