TOURISM DEVELOPMENT PLANNING IN SELECTED EU COUNTRIES

Tourism development planning is now part of the regional policies of all Member States of the European Union. Strategic plans at national or regional level are specific instruments of regional management, which contain results of the planning process and ensure the development of tourism in the selected region. The paper analyzes the representatives of these plans from Great Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. It evaluates their contents and form of processing according to suggested united methodology respecting main principles of current quality management. The paper tests the process of evaluation on a selected sample, compares different approaches to planning and identifies the best transferable practices as the first step of creating the complex system for evaluation and quality improvement of regional planning in tourism.regional management, tourism, strategic documents, evaluation.

Price Convergence: What Can the Balassa-Samuelson Model Tell Us? (in English)

The article contributes to the theory of convergence in the price level and relative prices. The authors present a model integrating the Balassa-Samuelson model of real equilibrium exchange rate with a model of capital accumulation and with the demand side of the economy. They also show how the Balassa-Samuelson model can be extended to the case of more than two goods. The predictions of the Balassa-Samuelson model are generally consistent with empirical findings in Central and Eastern European countries. The authors show how the model can be used toward projecting price convergence in a transition economy.inflation; relative prices; Balassa-Samuelson model

Voltage noise, switching rates, and multiple phase-slips in moderately damped Josephson junctions

We study the voltage noise properties including the switching rates and statistics of phase-slips in moderately damped Josephson junctions using a novel efficient numerical approach combining the matrix continued-fraction method with the full counting statistics. By analyzing the noise results obtained for the RCSJ model we identify different dominating components, namely the thermal noise close to equilibrium (small current-bias regime), the shot noise of (multiple) phase-slips in the intermediate range of biases and the switching noise for yet higher bias currents. We extract thus far inaccessible characteristic rates of phase-slips in the shot noise regime as well as the escape and retrapping rates in the switching regime as functions of various junction's parameters. The method can be extended and applied to other experimentally relevant Josephson junction circuits.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures of the main text + 7 pages of supplemen

Fast Simulation of Vehicles with Non-deformable Tracks

This paper presents a novel technique that allows for both computationally fast and sufficiently plausible simulation of vehicles with non-deformable tracks. The method is based on an effect we have called Contact Surface Motion. A comparison with several other methods for simulation of tracked vehicle dynamics is presented with the aim to evaluate methods that are available off-the-shelf or with minimum effort in general-purpose robotics simulators. The proposed method is implemented as a plugin for the open-source physics-based simulator Gazebo using the Open Dynamics Engine.Comment: Submitted to IROS 201

Central Bank Losses and Economic Convergence

This paper discusses central bank losses and develops a formal framework for assessing the sustainability of its balance sheet. Analyzing the consequences of economic convergence in depth, it emphasizes the role played by the risk premium and equilibrium real exchange rate appreciation. A closed-form comparative-static analysis and also numerical solutions of the future evolution of the central bank’s own capital are presented. Applying this framework to an example of a converging economy, namely the Czech Republic, the authors find that the Czech National Bank should be able to repay its accumulated loss in about 15 years without any transfer from public budgets.balance sheet, central bank, economic convergence, monetary policy, real appreciation, risk premium, seigniorage, transition