Journal of Economics - Obsahy ročníkov

The present study aims at verifying whether the balance-of-payments constrained growth approach is suitable for explaining the Slovak growth performance after 1993. We use Thirlwall’s Law to predict actual growth of the Slovak economy based on the estimation of the income elasticities of demand for imports and exports, respectively. The income elasticity of demand for imports is obtained by employing 2SLS assuming that domestic income is endogenous. It is shown that the Slovak economy grew at a higher rate than the rate consistent with the balance-of-payments equilibrium at the cost of accumulating current account deficits. A sustainable solution should be focused on reducing the income elasticity of the de¬mand for imports and increasing exports growth. In order the country not to fall into a balance-of-payments constrained growth trap policies must be designed to reduce the country´s dependence on imports by producing higher quality tradable goods. Keywords: balance-of-payments equilibrium growth rate, price and income elasticities of foreign trade, 2SLS regressions JEL Classification: C13, E12, F43, O24

A current account may be viewed as an indicator of an imbalance between savings and investments in an economy. One of the key issues is the degree to which consumption is sensitive to actual temporary changes in current income. Modern intertemporal approach builds on permanent income hypothesis, which concludes that the sensitivity of consumption (and savings) to temporary changes in income is low. The paper formulates a simple intertemporal model of current account and employs the present value test of the model in the cases of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. It further focuses on the role of habits in modeling current accounts. The results show that a simple intertemporal model has some descriptive power, especially in the case of the Czech Republic, but overall it gives rather poor results. It is the assumption that the economy consists strictly of ricardian agents that seems to be the main reason behind the empirical failure. Keywords: current account, intertemporal model, permanent income hypothesis, present value test JEL Classification: E21, F32, F41

The presented paper aims to discuss the measurement of inclusive growth, using an abstraction, through which the inclusive growth is approximated as the pro-poor growth. Furthermore, we aim to provide an empirical evidence from the Slovak Republic. The analysis examines whether the economic growth achieved in the Slovak Republic during the time period from 2004 to 2009 had decreased the inequality of the income distribution of the households or not. During the analysis the Headcount index, the Poverty gap index and the Severity of poverty index are calculated and evaluated. The paper also provides estimation of the actual income distributions through the theoretical distributions, for the examined years. The results show rather negative relationship between growth and the decrease of income inequality. Keywords: inclusive growth, poverty, pro-poor growth, income distribution of Slovakia JEL Classification: I32, O47

This paper helps to understand why some nascent entrepreneurs are successful in getting their new business operational while others are not and terminate their effort. We interviewed eighty one nascent entrepreneurs in the Czech Republic in 2011 and then again in 2012. The results of binary and multinomial logistic regressions show that nascent entrepreneurs who spent less time on developing their business, stayed longer in the “just trying” status and feared of failure were less likely to get their business operational within the next year. Previous industry experience and competition mapping lowered the probability of getting operational as well. On the other hand, entrepreneurial self-efficacy led to positive outcomes of venture creation effort. Finally, the study dealt also with growth expectations and found out that moderate expectations were increasing the probability of an actual launch. Keywords: entrepreneurship, start-ups, success factors, nascent entrepreneurs, Czech Republic, longitudinal survey JEL Classification: L26, O31

In the article, the Instrumental Variables Method (IVM) is used to describe the interaction among taxation and economic growth in the OECD countries. The analysis aims to verify the negative effect, suggested by economic theory, of the effective tax burden on economic growth. Inasmuch as the Tax Quota, that is standardly used to approximate the tax burden, brings some shortcomings that call the results of empirical analyzes into question, the authors also present the WTI – World Tax Index. Above all, the results show that (i) taxation has a significantly negative impact on economic growth, both when measuring the tax burden using the tax quota, and when using the alternative WTI tax burden index; (ii) use of the WTI generally allows to prove more significantly and clearly the negative effect of taxation in case of particular types of taxes, which is not possible using the tax quota. Keywords: world tax index, effective tax burden, instrumental variables method, economic growth JEL Classification: O40, C20, H50

Deepening globalization of the world economy characterized by a growing volume of cross-border transactions of goods, services and capital, initiates an objective need for liberalization of international trade. Formation of preferential trading agreement, such as free trade agreements (FTAs), brings urgent need to assess and quantifies the effects of FTAs by General Equilibrium Model (CGE). CGE model was used to assess the effects of the upcoming Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between EU and Canada. The quantitative analysis estimates the potential economic effects of the full removal of tariffs on bilateral trade in goods, a partial reduction of the cost of non-tariff barriers on trade in goods, and a partial liberalization of bilateral trade in services. Canada and the EU launched negotiations for CETA in 2009, and have a target date of early 2012 for completing them. Keywords: CGE model, foreign trade and services, globalisation, libera-lization, regional agreement, quantitative analysis JEL Classification: F12, F15, F23, F43, F47