Journal of Economics - Obsahy ročníkov

In this paper, job flows and their determinants in the Slovak labor market over the period 2000 – 2004 are documented and analyzed. Using the dataset that covers a substantial part of the Slovak enterprise environment (the sample is restricted to enterprises with at least 20 employees), we focus on different issues of gross job reallocation. We find that job destruction dominates over job creation and job reallocation rates are comparable to those found in other transition economies. We show that most of the job reallocation emerges within the groups considered rather than between groups, the pattern that prevails in mature market economies. Finally, we investigate the enterprise growth and our results indicate that the probability of employment growth depends positively on ownership type and negatively on the initial size. Keywords: job creation, job destruction, enterprise growth, Slovak Republic JEL Classification: E24, J23, J63, P20

Derivative instruments are widely accepted tools in hedging against market risks. Hhowever, they can be used for elimination of impacts of non-market risks as well. Weather derivatives, like other Arrow-Debreu instruments (Jaimungal, 2004) provide specific payouts in the case of occurrence of weather risk events (e.g. temperature and precipitations). Dissimilarity of such risks even in very close areas and inability to settle them directly by delivery of underlying, makes the effective application of such derivatives dependent both on of the analytical model and on availability of the relevant empirical data as well. This paper is focused on certain issues in application of option-based temperature derivatives. Keywords: risk management, financial instruments, weather derivatives, HDD, CDD JEL Classifications: Q54, G19

Rent-seeking is both ubiquitous and inevitable. One would think the best and easiest way to avoid the rent-seeking problem is to avoid establishing the institutions that create rents. What one may fail to recognize is that the problem is much more general, that it is the presence of or potential for rights that leads to rent-seeking behavior. All rights create rents by their very nature. Rent-seeking is both an agent-government phenomenon and an agent-agent phenomenon. The neoclassical rent-seeking concept has labelled the former as wasteful while ig-noring the presence of the latter. The paper provides a different view of the problem and follows institutional concept of rent-seeking. Keywords: institutional economics, rent-seeking, government, public policy JEL Classifications: B52, D72, H11

The article analyses dynamism and regional structure for weakening the old model of the world trade and the reasons of increasing significance of developing countries, but the limits of trade South-South too. The perspectives of geographic structural changes in the world trade and a new dimension of global interdependence are presented too. Keywords: world trade, trade geography, North-South, South-South, developing countries, global interdependence JEL Classifications: F13

In the article the process of planning of capital structure optimisation has been presented. For the process, the gradient in the area of search of tools which stimulate the financial decision-making or which create the optimal capital structure has been determined. The capital structure has been found a fun-damental determinant for maximizing the value of a company. Keywords: capital structure, company value, rules for financing JEL Classifications: E22, G32