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Abstract
Since the foundation of the eurozone (EZ) until the crisis outbreak, the macroeconomic imbalances between EZ core and EZ periphery have been identified at the internal and external plan. Growing external divergence was evident in the precrisis period reflected in the chronic current account deficit of the periphery, and vice versa for the core EZ members. However, external imbalance within the EZ has been substantially narrowed in the postcrisis period. Based on the panel data framework, crucial factors of current account improvement/worsening are identified in the precrisis 1999-2007 period, as well as the postcrisis 2008-2017 period. Random effect model with standard errors robust to autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity is estimated, in which current account is analysed in dependence from economic growth, fiscal balance, EZ interest rate, real effective exchange rate, openness and dummy variable for the EZ core/periphery. Empirical findings for the precrisis period confirm macroeconomic overheating of the periphery as the main cause of current account worsening, while the postcrisis improvement has been achieved mainly through fiscal contraction and European Central Bank (ECB) loosened monetary stance.

The aim of this paper is to point out the limitations of conventional approaches, articulated via political processes, in reducing income inequality. Using the panel data methods, on the sample of 21 affluent OECD countries in the period from 1980 to 2011, it is observed that the increase in labour productivity as well as preferences of voters to parties that advocate greater redistribution, contrary to common perception, not necessarily lead to reduction in income inequality. Increasing dominance of big capital in the field of technological progress changes the conventions about contribution of workers to labour productivity. The result is a weakening of workers' bargaining power in relation to employers as well as increase in gap between labour productivity growth and real wage growth, which both lead to increase in income inequality. In comparison with the other political parties, it seems that the right-wing parties are more efficient in using voters' support to implement their concept of the welfare state, which contributes to maintaining the high market-generated income inequality. Such situation could be explained that de jure power of the government depends on election results, whereas de facto power depends on the support of so-called globally-oriented super elites.