Journal of Economics - Obsahy ročníkov

Working for low pay may have substantial negative consequences at both the individual and societal level. This article adds to scarce research on low pay in Czechia, employing pooled longitudinal EU-SILC data for 2004 – 2017. It analyses patterns of low-wage employment and estimates the degree of low-pay persistence in terms of genuine state dependence in low-wage employment, ac-counting for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity among workers and endogeneity in the initial conditions. The results indicate that low pay exhibits a significant degree of state dependence in Czechia: having a low-paid job on average increases the likelihood of staying low paid in the future by 14 percentage points. The most important individual factors predisposing workers to earn low wages and get stuck in a low-paid job are low education and the female gender.

Measuring the stance of monetary policy is of importance for the analysis and implementation of monetary policy. In emerging economies, the popular use of multiple instrument framework as well as the significance of interest rate channel and exchange rate channel implies that monetary condition index (MCI) can play an important role in evaluating the timing of tightening or loosing monetary policy. In this paper, we aim to evaluate the role of MCI as an overall measure of monetary policy in emerging economy that follow inflation targeting by using the VAR model. The weight of MCI components, exchange rate and interest rate, is derived from the inflation equation in the VAR model. It shows that exchange rate plays a significant role but its weight is less than that of interest rate in most emerging economies. Furthermore, the empirical results show that inflation shows a reduction after a contractionary shock of monetary policy in most emerging economies. The finding implies that MCI is a useful indicator that can predict changes in the stance of monetary policy and the trend in inflation.

This paper researches the size of volatility transmission from Brent oil market to six stock markets of Central and Eastern European countries, with a distinction between the short-term and long-term effect. We create the transitory and permanent parts of volatilities by using the component GARCH model with the optimal density function and inserted dummy variables. Created volatilities are subsequently embedded in the robust quantile regression framework. The results indicate that the transitory volatility shocks are higher than the permanent ones, which means that investors who operate in the short-term horizons need to be more careful for volatility spillovers from oil market than long-term investors. We find that Polish and Czech stock markets receive the strongest volatility impact from oil. On the other hand, Hungarian and Lithuanian stock markets suffer the lowest volatility effect, in both short and long terms, which favors combining these indices with oil. All the findings can be explained very well by the weight of industry sector in GDP and the net-import of oil. Results of weekly data serve as robustness check for the main findings.

This paper aims to examine the effectiveness of international remittances on poverty. The equation explaining the determinants of poverty is analyzed using the fixed-effects regression model, and the equation examining the existence of a two-way relationship between poverty and international remittances is analyzed using the three-stage least squares model. The empirical findings reveal that there is a bi-directional relationship between poverty and international remittances. An increase in poverty levels triggers migration abroad, and remittances sent by immigrants to their country of origin reduce poverty. An increase in government spending and household income reduces poverty, while an in-crease in income inequality and inflation exacerbates poverty. Moreover, trade openness has a positive effect on international remittances, and official remittances become easier in financially developed economies as transaction costs decrease. By channeling international remittances, which are considered a stable source of finance, into the accumulation of physical and human capital, they contribute to economic development and increase their impact on poverty. This study contributes to the literature by using the most recent and comprehensive dataset and econometric methodology, and by differentiating the impact of international remittances on poverty by income group-specific effects as well as by region-specific effects.