Eva Hromadkova

This article describes the bank lending survey that the Czech National Bank has been using since 2012 to gather valuable qualitative information about the bank credit market as a complement to statistical reporting. The article sets out to conduct a quantitative assessment of the survey results and to determine the roles played in new credit developments in 2012–2016 by changes in credit supply and changes in demand for loans as reported by banks in the survey. The results of the analysis indicate that although some of banks’ survey responses are statistically significant in explaining the amounts of new loans reported by banks, the survey’s ability to explain credit growth is currently limited. Growth in new loans for house purchase can be attributed primarily to growth in demand driven by falling interest rates. According to the results, supply and demand factors both played a role in the case of loans to non-financial corporations. For consumer credit and other lending to households, the results of the analysis are ambiguous.

We present a model of public finance for the Czech Republic that addresses the main sources of risks to long-term fiscal sustainability: ageing-related expenditures and revenues, and the corresponding evolution of government debt. The baseline model is based on recent demographic projections issued by the Czech Statistical Office that forecast a shrinking share of the working-age population. Along with regulations and microeconomic incentives embedded in the tax and expenditure systems, demographic developments will affect economic growth and government expenditure and revenues in the long run. Population ageing is found to have a significant impact on future government expenditure via spending on old-age pensions and health care, where the cost profiles are modelled to reflect technological progress in the treatment of ageing-related illnesses. The analysis shows that under the current policy settings, a compound demographic effect will cause the primary government balance to turn ...

Running across the globe for more than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic keeps demonstrating its strength. Despite a lot of understanding, uncertainty regarding the efficiency of interventions still persists. We developed an age-structured epidemic model parameterized with sociological data for the Czech Republic and found that (1) delaying the spring 2020 lockdown by four days produced twice as many confirmed cases by the end of the lockdown period, (2) personal protective measures such as face masks appear more effective than just a reduction of social contacts, (3) only sheltering the elderly is by no means effective, and (4) leaving schools open is a risky strategy. Despite the onset of vaccination, an evidence-based choice and timing of non-pharmaceutical interventions still remains the most important weapon against the COVID-19 pandemic.One sentence summaryWe address several issues regarding COVID-19 interventions that still elicit controversy and pursue ignorance

The primary aim of the paper is an analysis of the relationships between growth, innovation and subsidies based on a large firm-level data set in the period 2004-2007. The novelty of the approachlies in linking data from financial statements with data from innovation surveys of the Czech Statistical. Innovation activities of firms are modelled as a four stage model (CDM) which allows studying several interrelated questions while controlling for simultaneity and for causality problem. In the first two stages determinants of decision to innovate and consequent innovation investment are separated. In the third stage innovation input (R&D investment) is linked to innovation output, and finally, in the fourth stage it is determined how the productivity of firm is related to its innovationactivities.Our analysis proved that innovation input significantly increases innovation output, with increasing firm´s size, however, ceteris paribus, the innovation output is decreasing. This means that...

This article describes the bank lending survey that the Czech National Bank has been using since 2012 to gather valuable qualitative information about the bank credit market as a complement to statistical reporting. The article sets out to conduct a quantitative assessment of the survey results and to determine the roles played in new credit developments in 2012–2016 by changes in credit supply and changes in demand for loans as reported by banks in the survey. The results of the analysis indicate that although some of banks’ survey responses are statistically significant in explaining the amounts of new loans reported by banks, the survey’s ability to explain credit growth is currently limited. Growth in new loans for house purchase can be attributed primarily to growth in demand driven by falling interest rates. According to the results, supply and demand factors both played a role in the case of loans to non-financial corporations. For consumer credit and other lending to househo...