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Drawing from confidential firm-level balance sheets in 11 European countries, the paper presents a novel sectoral database of comparable productivity indicators built by members of the Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet) using a newly developed research infrastructure. Beyond aggregate information available from industry statistics of Eurostat or EU KLEMS, the paper provides information on the distribution of firms across several dimensions related to competitiveness, e.g. productivity and size. The database comprises so far 11 countries, with information for 58 sectors over the period 1995-2011. The paper documents the development of the new research infrastructure, describes the database, and shows some preliminary results. Among them, it shows that there is large heterogeneity in terms of firm productivity or size within narrowly defined industries in all countries. Productivity, and above all, size distribution are very skewed across countries, with a thick left-tail of low productive firms. Moreover, firms at both ends of the distribution show very different dynamics in terms of productivity and unit labour costs. Within-sector heterogeneity and productivity dispersion are positively correlated to aggregate productivity given the possibility of reallocating resources from less to more productive firms. To this extent, we show how allocative efficiency varies across countries, and more interestingly, over different periods of time. Finally, we apply the new database to illustrate the importance of productivity dispersion to explain aggregate trade results. JEL Classification: L11, L25, D24, O4, O57

Using the Albrecht et al. (2003) version of the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition technique along the wage distribution, we find that immigrant workers do not affect changes in the Czech wage structure between 2002 and 2006 despite their substantial inflows. Instead, changes in the wage structure are explained solely by increasing returns of native workers, while changes in the observed characteristics of native workers, particularly a rising level of education, are responsible for increasing wage dispersion. The sizeable inflows of foreign workers in the sample years are concentrated among young workers with primary and tertiary education and are primarily due to rising labour demand. The negative immigrant-native wage gaps are persistent along the wage distribution and are explained mainly by differences in observed characteristics. We provide evidence on increasing returns to education of native workers along the wage distribution. The returns are higher in 2006 than in 2002, in line with the evidence in the previous literature.

Title: "Monetary and Fiscal Policy in Small Open Economies" Abstract This dissertation studies monetary and fiscal policies jointly, with their respective policy rules in a small open economy. Policy interactions have attracted new research interest since the 2008 crisis due to a global increase in fiscal debt. The first chapter extends the standard New Keynesian model of a small open economy with the structural specifics relevant for emerging market countries: two instruments of monetary policy - interest rate and foreign exchange interventions, two instruments of fiscal policy - public consumption and public investment, two types of households - forward-looking and rule-of- thumb consumers, and foreign debt via collateral constraint. Imperfect capital mobility is assumed, as foreign borrowings are restricted and there is a positive steady state difference between the domestic and foreign interest rates, due to more impatient households in the domestic economy. Parameters are calibrated for Hungary and the model's simulation is compared between two cases: with and without a collateral constraint. The results show that fiscal and monetary policy shocks transmit to the economy differently from the standard Mundell-Fleming model. A positive public investment shock can cause exchange rate depreciation and...

This dissertation describes the relationship between inflation and unemployment with the concept of the natural rate of unemployment at which inflation remains unchanged. By comparing NAIRU, as defined in this manner, with the actual unemployment rate, we obtain the gap in unemployment. In connection with the analysed substitution between inflation and unemployment, there can be found a decrease in the importance of the PC in the 1970s, a very popular New Keynesian PC in the 1990s, and doubts over the robustness of the estimates. On the other hand, the concept of the PC and the NAIRU had previously been developed in accordance with the real data. There is a broad consensus on the impact of monetary policy on nominal variables (inflation) and real variables (unemployment). Methods are also being combined and continuously improved This dissertation is seeking to prove or disprove the hypothesis of the NAIRU concept's usability in estimating the economic cycle on the labor market. This hypothesis has helped in the acceptance of: the support for the concept and estimating PC and NAIRU in the literature; the application of measures to refine the estimate of the NAIRU and PC in the empirical analysis of the dissertation; the dissertation conclusion's compliance with the latest international research, with the local authors and with the own research. The contribution of the dissertation can be identified thusly: distribution methods depend upon the different time periods, their treatment and the best methods for the conditions of the countries in the Visegrad Group; the specification of an unstable environment and its impact upon the estimation of the NAIRU and the economic cycle; the calculation of the unemployment rate of the sectors, age categories and their use in estimating the NAIRU and cycle on the meso-level; to determine the effect of different pricing structure indicators in order to estimate the NAIRU and the economic cycle on the labor market and the topicality of their estimates.

This dissertation thesis is focused on the microeconomic analysis of public policy in the Czech Republic. It consists of three parts, the first two parts deal with the analysis of tax policy; the third part of this thesis is focused on inflation differentials. The first chapter deals with the analysis of value added tax. The rates of value added tax (VAT) have recently changed in the Czech Republic, and I simulate the impact of these reforms. They are an example of changes in indirect taxes that change the prices of goods and services, to which households can respond by adjusting their expenditures. I first estimate the behavioural response of consumers to price changes in the Czech Republic by applying a consumer demand model of the quadratic almost ideal system (QUAIDS) on the basis of the Czech Statistical Office household expenditure and price data for the period from 2001 to 2011. I derive estimates of own- and cross-price and income elasticities for individual households. I then use these elasticities to estimate the impact of the changes in VAT rates that were proposed or implemented between 2011 and 2013, on households' quantity demanded and government revenues. One of the main findings is that the estimated increases in government revenues that take the consumer responses into account are...

This dissertation consists of three distinct topics within labor macroeconomics, applied microeconomics, and applied time-series econometrics. The first essay extends the standard methodology used in analyzing unemployment duration. The extension is applied on empirical data for the Czech Republic and France. Furthermore, unemployment dynamics are examined in terms of unemployment incidence and duration for the Czech Republic, 1992-2007. The second essay belongs to the field of the economics of education. It contributes to the discussion on the equal access to higher education. The theoretical (structural) model of an individual schooling decision is set up and the implied reduced form is estimated on a unique data set of all secondary school graduates in the Czech Republic in 1998. Finally, the third essay deals with the inflation dynamics. It draws on extensive research in the modeling of the inflation process in developed countries. Nevertheless, the focus is on developing countries where specific economic and consequently econometric issues have to be considered.

The main aim of this dissertation thesis is to present a new system of statistical information concerning the labour market in the Czech Republic with respect to the theoretical background as well as to latest trends in the labour market statistics. The structure of the thesis is as follows. In the first chapter, there is a theoretical framework of the labour market introduced. This framework interlinks relations among employees and employers and is neutral with respect to all the economic schools of thought. Besides, I describe an actual state of the labour market statistics in the Czech Republic and evaluate its compliance with the theoretical research. The second chapter is focused on the state of the art concerning labour market statistics from the point of view of both data integration and comprehensive systems of labour market indicators. In the first part of the third chapter, there is a proposal of the new system of statistical information concerning the labour market that complies with both the economic theory and latest trends in the labour market statistics. The most likely advantage of the new system is the fact that all the key aspects of the labour market (i.e. employment as well as remuneration) are surveyed and evaluated together. In addition to the generally known indicators of both economic activity and remuneration, I propose new indicators of job creation, job destruction, hires, separations, job reallocation and worker reallocation. In the second part of the third chapter, there is a proposal of the integrated data source that will allow us to quantify all indicators provided that there are no legal restrictions concerning data integration in the Czech Republic. In last two parts of the third chapter, there are discussed both the main issues concerning the implementation of the system and the pros and cons of the system. There have never been quantified the indicators concerning job and employee flows using the linked employer-employee data in the Czech Republic, so the pilot results are introduced in the fourth chapter. It is obvious that using the new system, we could prove some hypotheses that were impossible to prove using standard set of indicators. In the last part of the fourth chapter, there are worker and job flows balanced with respect to the stock information concerning labour market in the Czech Republic. In the fifth chapter, I investigate the possibility of a wider use of the new system in order to be able to identify and analyse an array of labour market phenomena in more detail. The thesis brings a new insight to the dynamics of the labour market compared to the generally known basic set of labour market indicators. The systematic approach, based on a wider use of linked employer-employee microdata combined with new indicators, has the advantages of a higher information capability as well as of complying with the requirements of the academics.