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The tax system reduces motivation to return to work among mothers with young children: recommendations and evaluation
Šatava, Jiří
In the Czech Republic, the overall taxation of work, i.e individuals' income tax together with social security and health insurance contributions, places a heavy burden even on the relatively low earnings of so-called second earners in households, i.e. partners with lower earnings. These peoples' work activity is, however, generally very sensitive to the level of taxation. A large group of these earners is made up of mothers with young children. Mothers who are the second earner in their household are subject to a participation tax rate (PTR) up to 30 % higher than their partners, and yet a higher PTR results in lower motivation to work. Women with children and low earning potential are subjected to the highest PTRs in comparison with their partners.
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Political competition in local governments and public procurement
Palguta, Ján
Municipalities in the Czech Republic manage 23.9% of the total public expenditure (approximately 10% of the GDP), with approximately half of these funds redistributed through public procurement. This is a very significant amount of public resources that should be given due attention. This analysis demonstrates that the composition of municipal governments significantly influences the process of public procurement. Our methodology allows to interpreting the estimated relationships as causal, rather than as mere correlations.
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Quality of publication output of scientific fields in Slovakia: an international comparison
Jurajda, Štěpán ; Kozubek, Stanislav ; Münich, Daniel ; Škoda, Samuel
This study covers in detail the publication output in scientific journals in Slovakia, based on articles published in the years 2010 – 2014 and included in the Web of Science (WoS) database and compares it with the output of 11 different countries. For our comparison, we have used the narrowly defined scientific fields used by the WoS to categorize the journals included in the database. The study compares both total publication output and outstanding publication output, i.e. the number of articles published in top scientific journals in the given field, based on their reputation in the academia.
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Political party donors on the public procurement market
Palguta, Ján
Entrepreneurs who make donations to political parties in the Czech Republic have a considerable share in the public procurement market. From 2007 to 2013, political donors were awarded 16.3 percent of public procurement contracts, which amounts to 16.6 percent of the contracts value. On average, the annual value of public procurements awarded to political donors was 32.8 billion CZK, which amounts to 0.7 percent of the GDP. Our analysis cannot determine whether contracting authorities select political donors using less transparent tender procedures in order to choose effective contractors who have proven themselves to the contracting authority in the past, or whether the political donations play a part in the selection process.
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A national comparison of the academic publication output of the Czech Academy of Sciences: quantity vs quality and co-authorship
Jurajda, Štěpán ; Kozubek, Stanislav ; Münich, Daniel ; Škoda, Samuel
This study maps out in detail the contribution made by the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) to the publication output of the Czech Republic for journals listed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The comparison covers not only the share of the total publication output, but also the share of the excellent publication output, i.e., publications in top-tier journals of respective fields enjoying the most academic prestige. A comparative look at the period 2010-2014 shows that in the vast majority of scientific fields with representation from the CAS scientific teams, the CAS is significantly more focused on publishing in the most prestigious international journals of the WoS database than are others in the Czech Republic. Research cooperation by the CAS in the form of co-authorship takes place at the national level in various fields with differing levels of intensity, as well as differing in the qualitative focus of such cooperation. The sources for this study include the unique bibliometric data processed during the 2015 exercise, the ‘R&D Evaluation of CAS units for 2010-2014’.\n\n
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Divorces and women's income: initial findings for the Czech Republic based on individual data
Janský, Petr ; Pertold, Filip ; Šatava, Jiří
In most cases, divorce leads to a radical change in life situation with many consequences for both divorcees. Nowadays nearly half of all marriages in the Czech Republic end in divorce and so this has been and will continue to be part of life for a significant proportion of the country's population. The consequences of divorce are highly influenced by the division of labour within the couple prior to their separation. There is a high level of division in most Czech families. Women spend much more time caring for children, relatives and the home, while men are largely focused on paid employment. We estimate that married women aged 20 to 70 who are neither studying nor in receipt of an old-age pension would see their net incomes fall by 20 % if they ceased to share income within their household (e.g. as a result of divorce and separation). Households led by divorced women report some of the lowest incomes per household member. The average income in a female-led divorced household is one fifth lower than in married households and a quarter lower than in households led by divorced men. Divorced women are, however, more economically active than married women; this is probably a reaction to their loss of income following divorce. Nevertheless this difference could also suggest that women who are economically active are less attractive as partners (Bertrand, 2016).
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Czech research centres' publication performance in the period 2009-2013, by field of research
Jurajda, Štěpán ; Kozubek, Stanislav ; Münich, Daniel ; Škoda, Samuel
Evaluating Czech research institutions is largely reduced to automatized scoring of R&D otputs. The sole exception is the practice of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The results of the government’s evaluation of research centres, in the form in which they are processed and officially presented to the public, have little informational value for the management of the R&D system and individual research workplaces. At the same time, the system (of data collection about the R&D results, verification and basic classification) offers several unused possibilities, to convey valuable information about the quantity and the quality of research workplaces' publication performance both to the academic community and to the broader public. Our overview exploits these possibilities for results published in journals listed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The presented comparison is an update of the IDEA study (2015), the publication performance comparison of Czech research centres, mainly of universities and institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences, in the period of 2009-2013. The underlying logic of the updated comparison, its advantages, disadvantages, limitations and shortcomings remain more or less the same as before, therefore we refer the reader to the detailed explanations in the aforementioned study. The main change from the previous comparison (besides shifting the five-year window by one year) is the usage of an alternative citation index: while our previous comparison differentiated results from journals by the Impact Factor index, the updated comparison uses the Article Influence Score, which weighs citations according to their importance.
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Impact of taxes and social benefits on income inequality and relative poverty in the Czech Republic
Janský, Petr ; Kalíšková, Klára ; Münich, Daniel
International comparisons have long shown that income inequality and the proportion of people at risk of relative poverty in the Czech Republic are among the lowest both in the EU and across the world's most developed countries (OECD). Data from representative surveys on household incomes and expenditures show that the Czech tax and social benefits system has rather little effect on income equality and the risk of poverty. Relatively low variation in gross income, for which the old-age pension system plays a key role, plays a greater part in maintaining the low rates of both measures. If besides direct taxes and social benefits we also take into account the effects of indirect taxation (value added tax and consumer taxes), then we find that the current system reduces income inequality relatively little, and in fact slightly increases the relative poverty risk. 80 % of those in relative poverty and 33 % of other individuals are in receipt of at least one social benefit. Only 38 % of total expenditures on state social support are spent on people who are at risk of relative income poverty. The most potentially effective benefits for reducing relative income inequality and overall poverty rates are benefits in material need (contributions towards basic living costs and accommodation). The most effective instrument for reducing the proportion of the population at risk of relative income poverty is child benefit.
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Self-confidence of a class and competition of the classmates for eight-year gymnasium
Federičová, Miroslava ; Pertold, Filip ; Smith, Michael
The Czech Republic belongs to a small group of European countries with an educational system that leads to a very early differentiation of pupils in schools according to their academic performance and socio-economic background. In the Czech Republic, 18% of pupils in the 5th grade apply for 8-year grammar schools (gymnasia in Czech) and go through the challenging process of preparing for entrance exams. Thus, on average 3 pupils in each classroom apply to these gymnasia, of which almost 2 pupils are admitted. Our analysis on data from a unique survey of schools shows that a presence of an extra classmate who is applying for gymnasia affects one’s self-confidence. The biggest negative impact we noted was in case of self-confidence of girls in mathematics. Decline in confidence (from the level in the fourth grade, that is before preparing for entrance exams) is about 7% of the student with at least two classmates who applied. As a control group, we use the class where no one has applied.
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