Daniel Němec

Measuring Inefficiency of the Czech Labour Market

Abstract This paper aims to quantify the performance of the Czech regional labour markets and to reveal the most influential economic factors standing behind its dynamics in the last fifteen years. Investigated labour markets are described using matching function approach. The successful matches are treated as an output of production process, where the unemployed are paired with vacancies. Efficiency of this matching process plays an important role in determining unemployment outflows. Using stochastic frontier model approach, dynamics of quantified efficiency terms is revealed and differences among regions are evaluated. The model specification includes a fixed effect term, where individual effect terms and inefficiency terms are estimated jointly. The stochastic frontier is estimated using monthly and quarterly regional panel data of 77 districts for the period 1999-2014. Matching efficiency of the Czech regional labour markets is negatively influenced people who have been unemployed for a long time and by the unemployed aged over 50 years. Although all districts were able to operate at their stochastic frontiers of matching, an upward trend in the inefficiency has been found within the investigated period. These tendencies are accompanied by rising disparities among the regions. Low levels of estimated matching inefficiency do not necessary mean the low unemployment in the corresponding districts.

Regional Food Labels as a Way to Reposition Mature Products

This chapter discusses the use of regional labels as a way to reinvent local food, using data from a longitudinal research study on regional labeling in the Czech region Vysocina. The application and market presence of regional food labeling schemes are quite diverse across Europe; the broad range of food labeling policies within European Union member states reflects distinctions in historical evolution, organization, and development of food industries, as well as different consumer interests, attitudes, and behaviors. Regional labels signal above all authenticity and genuineness, and it is a sign that the product is actually produced in the region denoted by the name of the product. By exploring the application of a series of researches with both quantitative and qualitative designs, this case study examines the ways in which local producers and authorities may have reconstructed their knowledge of the regional food market and use of regional labels.

Household Adaptation Strategies to Climate Extremes Impacts and Population Dynamics: Case Study from the Czech Republic

This chapter deals with the state of household adaptation strategies in a region frequently affected by climate extremes, specifically floods occurred from 1997 to 2012 in selected rural municipalities in the Becva river basin in the North-Eastern part of the Czech Republic. We used quantitative methods, based on a survey of 605 households to find out ways of adaptation measures of household members, including potential for migration. The first, we found increased intensity and frequency of the impacts of climate extremes in the form of floods over the last two decades. Further, we recognized various responses to these extreme events applied by household, mainly some adaptation strategies outside houses, although our findings showed that households tend to repair damage instead of implementing costly adaptation measures. Our research also revealed that migration due to climate extremes did not play a significant role as an adaptation measure in the researched area, people moved out only in a few cases. In addition, our research showed a link between difficulty to migrate and some social consequences, meaning that the increasing occurrence of floods is a fairly serious problem for residents who cannot leave, even if they want to, because they had limited opportunities for resettlement. Nevertheless, we recognized commuting for work as a population dynamics adaptation strategy.