Journal of Economics - Obsahy ročníkov

This study proposes an Early Warning System model composed of macro-financial and company-specific indicators that could help to anticipate a potential market distress in the European insurance sector. A distress is defined as periods in which insurance companies’ equity prices crash and CDS spreads spike simultaneously. The model is estimated using a sample of 36 insurance companies that are listed. Based on a fixed-effects panel binomial logit specification, empirical evidence shows that economic overheating that could be manifested by high economic growth, inflation and interest rates have negative impact on insurance sector stability. At the company level, a drop in return on assets and price-to-book value or raising operating expenses increase the likelihood of distress occurrence.

The paper presents an empirical evaluation of the relationship between some of the financial stability indicators and economic performance. It is focused on the sample of the members of the Eurasian Economic Union. Given some data limitations, dynamic panel analysis is performed. Nonperforming loans are identified as an important indicator of financial stability along with private credit and liquid reserves of commercial banks. These results are in line with many published studies focused on different sets of countries. Contrary to some published results no or little support is identified in the case of the number of commercial bank branches per capita and bank capital to asset ratio.

What types of market cooperation are essential for developing innovations? Is collaboration with other enterprises, clients or competitors worth it? Actual research and public debate reveal the range of the issue, whereas the subject of policies motivating private entities to create innovations is key for the national and international programs for boosting innovativeness of economies. The aim of the paper is to review the sphere of relevance of different types of market collaboration for innovativeness and to verify as well as compare their importance in European countries empirically, by applying econometric techniques. The results suggest the positive effect of cooperation on various kinds of innovation activities.

The new institutional economic theory working with the concept of transaction costs assumes a quality setting of formal and informal institutions for an effectively functioning economic system. In an economic freely environment, we can assume a lower level of transaction costs. The main aim of the presented article is to identify Hofstede’s cultural dimensions that have a combined impact with the Human Development Index on economic freedom measured by The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom in OECD member countries. We used instruments of quantitative analysis, namely correlation and multiple regression analysis. We confirmed a negative impact of power distance and uncertainty avoidance on The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom. Countries with higher values of the Human Development Index achieve better score in The Index of Economic Freedom. In literature review and discussion we open the question of cancel culture in context of economic freedom for further research and we recommend the application of the concept of economic freedom in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. However, the importance of economic freedom appears differently for diverse groups of countries.

The importance of organisational culture for the organisation’s success is already proven today, and in this situation, COVID-19 for organisations continues to grow. No previous review has focused on the role of organizational culture in the context of human resource management and its activities with a focus on Czech organizations. The article aims to identify human resources (HR) activities primarily influenced by the organisational culture of the examined organisations in the Czech Republic by quantitative and qualitative research. Exploratory factor analysis identified critical factors related to the objective of the paper. The results have shown that the HR activities most affected by the organisational culture in the examined Czech organisations are as follows: internal and external communication, friendly relationships, and HR planning. The results have also revealed that only 40% of the examined organisations deal with organisational culture, and 60% do not view organisational culture as a priority. Organisational culture is influenced by the industry, the sector and the market, the number of employees, and the existence or non-existence of the HR department. This paper encourages other researchers to apply and popularize concepts of organizational culture in the study of human resource management.