On Determinants Of The Economic Growth Of European Countries During 2005–2015

The aim of the paper is to examine the economic growth of 32 European countries from 2005 to 2015. This period was characterized by a strong growth prior to 2009, when the Great Recession started, and lasted until 2012-2013 in the majority of examined countries. The growth between 2005 and 2015 was studied with regard to six selected socio-economic factors: initial level of the gross domestic product, economic openness, democracy index, human capital, physical capital, and foreign direct investments. The main result is that the growth was directly proportional to human and physical capital, and indirectly proportional to the initial level of GDP and the democracy index. Furthermore, cluster analysis showed that the historical division of Europe into “West” and “East” still persists to a considerable extent

On some issues concerning definition of an economic recession

In the article it is shown that current definitions of economic recessions are unsatisfactory. NBER definition of an economic recession is only qualitative, so it does not enable identifying recession unequivocally. Another often used ‘technical definition’ of a recession takes into account only quarter-to-quarter changes in real GDP without considering changes in population, so in some cases economy can be in recession while real GDP per capita is actually increasing, and vice versa. Hence, the aim of the article is to propose new quantitative definition of an economic recession based both on economic and population growth or decline respectively. The use of the proposed definition is illustrated on examples of recent economic development in selected countries of the European Union

Examination of European Union Economic Cohesion: A Cluster Analysis Approach

In the past years majority of EU members experienced the highest economic decline in their modern history, but impacts of the global financial crisis were not distributed homogeneously across the continent. The aim of the paper is to examine a cohesion of European Union (plus Norway and Iceland) in terms of an economic development of its members from the 1st of January 2008 to the 31st of December 2012. For the study five economic indicators were selected: GDP growth, unemployment, inflation, labour productivity and government debt. Annual data from Eurostat databases were averaged over the whole period and then used as an input for a cluster analysis. It was found that EU countries were divided into six different clusters. The most populated cluster with 14 countries covered Central and West Europe and reflected relative homogeneity of this part of Europe. Countries of Southern Europe (Greece, Portugal and Spain) shared their own cluster of the most affected countries by the recent crisis as well as the Baltics and the Balkans states in another cluster. On the other hand Slovakia and Poland, only two countries that escaped a recession, were classified in their own cluster of the most successful countries

The evaluation of recession magnitudes in EU countries during the global financial crisis 2008-2010

The aim of the article is to compare 2008-2010 recessions in individual EU countries. For the comparison a new quantitative measure – recession magnitude scale – is used. The scale is derived from (negative) quarterly GDP growth rates during a recession and its duration. Moreover, recessions are classified on the basis of their magnitudes into one of four categories: minor, major, severe and ultra. The strongest recession (of severe category) took place in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Ireland, while the majority of EU countries experienced recessions of major category. Magnitude of Greek recession will be evaluated after the end of the ongoing event. The weakest recessions in EU occurred in France, Malta and Cyprus (the only recession of minor category). A comparison of EU’s recession with the US Great Depression in the 1930s revealed that the recent crisis was more than eight times smaller than that of 1930s. Furthermore, it was found out that recession magnitudes in EU countries were positively correlated to the countries’ economic growth prior to the recession and this relationship was statistically significant at 0.01 level

Modelování optimální výše zápisného na české veřejné vysoké školy

Public universities in the Czech Republic suffer from insufficient funding for many years. One possibility for an increased funding of Czech public universities is an introduction of a low administrative fee called enrollment fee for each semester of a study. The aim of this article is to show how to find the optimal level of the enrollment fee for a given university so the total revenue of a university for enrolling students is maximal. This is done via mathematical model encompassing parameters such as maximal enrollment fee, sensitivity of enrolling students to the level of the enrollment fee, the number of enrolling students, etc. By improperly adjusted enrollment fee a university can lose millions or tens of millions crowns per year. Thus, the determination of the optimal level of the enrollment fee has high practical value, as it enables a university to maximize its combined revenue from the enrollment fee and the number of enrolling students

On some issues concerning definition of an economic recession

In the article it is shown that current definitions of economic recessions are unsatisfactory. NBER definition of an economic recession is only qualitative, so it does not enable identifying recession unequivocally. Another often used ‘technical definition’ of a recession takes into account only quarter-to-quarter changes in real GDP without considering changes in population, so in some cases economy can be in recession while real GDP per capita is actually increasing, and vice versa. Hence, the aim of the article is to propose new quantitative definition of an economic recession based both on economic and population growth or decline respectively. The use of the proposed definition is illustrated on examples of recent economic development in selected countries of the European Union

The aims of music education with students with special educational needs

V souladu s tématem a názvem dizertační práce se v teoretické části, v její první kapitole, věnujeme pojmům souvisejícím s kategorií cíle a jeho definováním v obecné pedagogice, hudební pedagogice a speciální pedagogice. V následujících kapitolách na kategorii cíle navazujeme pojednáními zabývajícími se analýzou vzdělávacích programů, pojetí estetické výchovy, definováním pojmů žák se speciálními vzdělávacími potřebami a žák se zdravotním postižením s podkapitolami zaměřenými na jednotlivé typy postižení, s nimiž je dále operováno ve výzkumné části práce: syndrom ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, tj. syndrom hyperaktivity s poruchou pozornosti), vývojové poruchy učení, narušená komunikační schopnost, lehká mentální retardace a poruchy autistického spektra. Závěrečná šestá kapitola pak představuje teoretické vymezení estetické (hudební) výchovy v současném výchovně-vzdělávacím systému s přihlédnutím k problematice hudebního vzdělávání žáků se speciálními vzdělávacími potřebami. Úvodní část výzkumné části dizertační práce tvoří oddíly věnované deskripci prostředí škol a jejich žáků, charakteristice vzdělávacích programů obou institucí a subkapitola obsahující zdůvodnění výběru žáků pro výzkum. Stěžejní kapitolu výzkumné části představují případové studie doplněné o nastínění výsledků...In accordance with the topic and title of the dissertation, we dedicate the first chapter of the theoretical part to terms related to the category of pedagogical aim, defining it from the perspective of general pedagogy, music pedagogy and special pedagogy. In the following chapters we continue with analyses of educational programmes, of the concept of aesthetic education, defining the terms "a student with special educational needs" and "a student with disabilities" with subchapters focusing on individual types of disabilities, which are then used in the research part of the work: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), developmental learning disorders, impaired communication ability, mild mental retardation and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The sixth and final chapter of the first part presents a theoretical definition of aesthetic (music) education in the current educational system, taking into account the issue of musical education of students with special educational needs. The introduction of the research part of the dissertation consists of sections devoted to describing the environment of schools and their students, to the characteristics of school curricula of both institutions, and of a subchapter containing the rationale for selecting students for the research. The key chapter...Katedra hudební výchovyFaculty of EducationPedagogická fakult

On application of multi-criteria decision making with ordinal information in elementary education

In the Czech Republic each elementary or secondary school decides which textbook will be used for a given class and a given subject of education. As a supply of textbooks is wide, a selection of the most suitable textbook by a teacher is a typical case of multi-criteria decision making situation where an evaluation of different textbooks on selected criteria is rather ordinal in nature than cardinal: it is not possible to assign textbooks some numerical value with regard to criteria such as content, comprehensibility, adequacy to children’s age and knowledge, etc. (with the exception of textbook’s price), but textbooks can be ranked from the best to the worst by such criteria, and the best textbook can be found by a new and simple mathematical method developed for this purpose in this paper. The aim of the paper is to show how this multi-criteria decision making method with ordinal information can be used for the selection of the most appropriate textbook for elementary science education, because a right choice of a textbook plays an important role in children’s education. And we shall not forget that decisions made today influence the world tomorrow, and the World of Tomorrow is also a World of Our (well-educated) Children