We evaluate proposals for independent fiscal authority put forward as a solution to excessive public spending. Our main conclusion is that moving the responsibility to set broad measures of fiscal policy from the hands of government to an independent fiscal council is not necessarily welfare...

The European Union (EU) accepted ten new member states (NMS) in 2004. These countries, mostly former socialist countries, have had to adjust their economic policies to the EU’s standards. Perhaps most difficult has proven to be fiscal policy whereby NMS must comply with the Stability and...

In this paper, we track behaviour of fiscal authorities of the ten new EU member states (NSM) in the period which immediately preceded their EU accession. We first present basic stylized facts about public budgets of those countries. The paper then analyses reasons which led to periods of fiscal...

In this paper, we set out to examine an efficient fiscal policy framework for a monetary union. We find that a monetary union can survive with diverging fiscal policies and that the financial markets are efficient enough to separate between “good” and “bad” fiscal policies and punish the...

This paper intends to fill two gaps in the Optimal Currency Area literature. First of all, Mundell's original idea has very little formalmodel theoretical underpinning. Second, it almost exclusively views countries contemplating monetary unification as single economies. We question this view and...

In this paper, we set out to examine an efficient fiscal-policy framework for a monetary union. We illustrate that fiscal policy’s bias toward budget deficit only temporarily ceased at the end of the 20th century as European countries endeavored to qualify for euro-zone membership, which...

V této práci odhadujeme determinanty meziregionální migrace obyvatelstva v České republice v letech 1992-2001. Přes zvyšující se disparity mezi regiony, míra migrace zůstává na relativně nízké úrovni a ekonomické faktory jako nezaměstnanost a mzda ovlivňují migraci pouze do...

We examine the determinants of interest rate margins of Czech banks employing bank-level dataset at the quarterly frequency in 2000-2006. Our main results are as follows. We find that more efficient banks exhibit lower margins and there is no evidence that the banks with lower margins would...

In this paper, we examine the determinants of inflation differentials in a panel of the new European Union member states vis-à-vis the euro area in 1997-2007. Our main results are as follows. Exchange rate appreciation and higher price level in the new EU members is associated with narrower...

Most empirical studies on price setting that use micro data focus on advanced industrial countries. In this paper we analyze the experience of an emerging economy, Slovakia, using a large micro-level dataset that accounts for a substantial part of the consumer price index (about 5 million...