Smart legislative regulation: investigation of the behavior of the Czech RIA Committee

Motivation: This article studies the behavior of the Czech Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) Committee during the years between 2013–2018. This institution assesses RIAs of new laws and regulations which are in the process of ratification. Aim: The main aim was to find if the legislative change of February 3, 2016 had a direct impact on the decision-making of the Committee. Further, we ask whether there are other distinct patterns in the behavior of Czech RIA Committee members. Specifically, do the RIA Committee’s verdicts become more negative with time? We also investigate the level of independence of the Committee. In our analysis we used basic statistics: Chi-Square test of independence and regression analysis. To complete our study, we used data from a questionnaire which was distributed among RIA Committee members. Results: In our analysis we found that the legislative change did not have a direct immediate effect on the RIA Committee of the Czech Republic. However, we discovered that the RIA Committee has lost most of its independence and power in the six years of its existence. This change was gradual and most likely catalyzed by pressure from politicians. Further, voting per rollam yielded more positive results. We also discovered an institution whose RIA Committee verdicts differed significantly. Based on the findings of our research, we offer recommendations to the RIA Committee and other institutions with a similar purpose

The influence of foreign direct investment and public incentives on the socio-economic development of regions: an empirical study from the czech republic

This article investigates the impact of foreign direct investment, government financial incentives as well as science and research expenditures on different socio-economic development processes in the Czech Republic. These financial flows are important for economic growth of regions and constitute a substantial part of financial flows within national economies. We focus on the effect of these aspects on various indicators concerning the business environment, labor market, population growth and construction activity. The analysis is conducted using OLS regression models. Results indicate that it takes about two years for foreign direct investment to take effect and its influence is relevant for approximately 13 years. We found that foreign direct investment has a considerable influence on the number of small firms in the region, on the number of buildings permits in the region and on the value of residential estates. Our analysis further shows that government investment incentives have an impact on similar areas as foreign direct investment, which is in accordance with the general theory of the functioning of the economy. Science and research expenditures, on the other hand, seem not to have any effect in the first seven years after the expense has been realized. In this case, science and research expenditures show a longer time to respond as far as the studied indicators are concerned. The concrete effects of foreign direct investment and government financial incentives in terms of numerical values have been calculated using the structure of our models. The magnitude and reasons for these effects are discussed. The results of these calculations indicate that foreign direct investment and government investment incentives have significant positive effect on the development processes of regions but in specific areas only

Inquiry into high school students’ utility function

his study uses data from our life-satisfaction survey of 1,414 students in 11 high schools in Northern parts of Czech Republic in the spring 2017 to discover certain parts of high school students’’ utility function. This is potentially useful for audiences ranging from macro-level policy-makers to teachers to parents to the students themselves in improving the design of policies and practices that either address life-satisfaction directly or affect it indirectly by pursuing other objectives. We use ordered logit and OLS regression models in various specifications to explore how different factors of students’ life from various domains (e.g. housing, economic, lifestyle, personal) associate with their self-assessed degree (0-10 scale) of life satisfaction or happiness. The effects of independent variables were investigated both separately within their own domain, and in all-inclusive models while always controlling for gender, age and specific effects of particular schools. The results confirm quite robustly several well-established and expected effects, namely the positive effects of one’s relations to parents and friends, or one’s health conditions, and negative effects of smoking tobacco or being discriminated. The findings also reveal some relatively unestablished facts such as a large positive effect of being needed, or the negative effect of commuting time. The outright surprising results include the irrelevance of alcohol consumption (contrary to expected negative effects and in contrast to identified negative effects of tobacco consumption) or of the absolute amount of money available (contrary to expected positive effects); the positive effect of cannabis use and of being a vegan; or the partially negative effect of engaging in arts or creative activities. While the above results are not all easily turned into recommendations for students, their parents, school administrators or policy makers on how to secure a happy life of teenagers, there are a few that may go beyond the obvious: avoid smoking, consider commuting time seriously, encourage and nurture good relations. Caveats regarding external validity apply