Hysteresis effect on unemployment is a much discussed topic in macroeconomics. However, empirical findings regarding the existence of hysteresis effect are contradictory. The present study investigates hysteresis in the unemployment rates of the Visegrad Group countries, namely: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. For this purpose it employs the following three econometric methods: (1) the linear unit root tests; (2) the Seemingly Unrelated Regressions Augmented Dickey-Fuller (SURADF) test; and (3) the Fourier Dickey-Fuller (FADF) test. The findings revealed that among the Visegrad Group countries hysteresis effect was found to exist in the unemployment rates in Hungary and Poland.
The aim of this paper is to detect business cycles of the Visegrad countries using Markov-switching approach and to examine their synchronicity with the Euro Area aggregate as one of the inevitable conditions for optimal common monetary policy implementation. Unlike previous studies, we provide a further analysis by the use of disaggregated data in order to achieve a detailed look at the co-movement of the production and find the highest level of the synchronization within the capital and intermediate goods sector. On the contrary, non-durable consumer goods production can be identified as a potential demand-based source of the asymmetric shocks due to the lowest rate of concordance. The results on the aggregated level complemented with the Hodrick-Prescott filtered data suggest a medium-to-high level of synchronization, although its increase in time cannot be confirmed for all Visegrad countries.
The paper investigates the access of small and medium-sized enterprises to external financing during the recent financial crisis via non-parametric density estimation. The kernel density estimation is applied on a firm-level measure of financing constraints and evaluates its distribution on a balanced panel of SMEs. For application and cross-country comparison we use panel data on Limited Liability enterprises in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. Our results reveal asymmetric impact of the financial crisis on the ability of SMEs to secure external financing. We identify that there is no sizeable difference in access to credit of SMEs in Hungary and Poland before and during the crisis. In Slovakia and the Czech Republic our results suggest that firms were more constrained during the crisis and their financing constraints did not largely improve after the end of financial crisis. We argue that economic recession was the driving factor of financing constraints in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The growing importance of everyday work-life balance (WLB) focuses attention on a fair time distribution between the work, life and family domains. Despite the global perception of the crucial role work-life balance plays in everyday routine there are still cross-country differences in WLB satisfaction. The aim of this study was to examine cross-country differences and similarities among a group of four neighbouring European countries; the Visegrad group (V4) countries. More specifically the study aimed to describe the level, changes within rounds of data collection and between-group comparisons of selected ESS variables: WLB satisfaction, working time, and work attachment. The correlation analysis was applied to explain and understand relations between selected variables. The correlation analysis revealed significant negative relationships between WLB satisfaction and both working hours and work attachment in all V4 countries. The results show a similar pattern for Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Czechia, with a significant between-round of WLB satisfaction increase, was the exception. There were almost no differences in level of satisfaction with work-life balance between respondents living with and without children across time in V4 countries. The comparative analysis revealed a difference between respondents with and without children at home when reporting work attachment. For a deeper understanding further analysis should be done in the future with the focus on time use patterns in the context of work and non-work activities with an emphasis on work and family values in the V4 countries.
Recently the popularity of fiscal rules has been increasing also due to the impact of the macroeconomic and financial shocks on fiscal sustainability. This paper reviews supranational and national fiscal rules implemented in the Visegrad countries (V4). Namely, we base the review and comparison of fiscal rules on the existing literature and the empirical data from the European Commission. According to the Fiscal Rule Strength Index developed by the European Commission, Poland’s debt rule as of 1997 received the highest ranking. Poland also received the highest score based on the aggregated Fiscal Rules Index in 2009. The most influential in this respect is the application of an early adjustment mechanism which is triggered once the debt to GDP ratio exceeds 50%. Empirical analysis showed that effectiveness of fiscal rules differs across selected groups of countries.
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