Ingrid Majerová

Czech International Development Policy in the Context of EU Enlargement

Development policy of any state is to contribute to poverty reduction, the economic and industrial development, gradual integration of economies which are supported by the world economy to develop agriculture, development and consolidation of democracy and human rights, establishment of the rule of law and ultimately contribute to sustainable development along with improvement of environment and quality of life of a country. Sufficient support of the above is possible only trough sufficient financial resources, which are measured by their percentage representation on GNI in this case. Motivating factor for writing this article was to determine, based on the historical context, whether the financial support for development policy in the Czech Republic and in the EU is in accordance with the objectives. The first aim of this paper was than short historical overview of the Czech development policy before and after EU enlargement – main finding is the complete change of its orientation. The second aim was a comparison of EU-members development aid with focus on position of new EU member states (especially Czech Republic) where failing to meet the targets was detected in the majority of EU members and slow progression of development aid. The paper also evaluated the multilateral cooperation of the EU member states as a background of the progress of Official Development Assistance in whole European Union and finded the high share on the total aid. The methods of description, analysis and comparison are used in the paper.

Comparison of Old and New Methodology in Human Development and Poverty Indexes: A Case of the Least Developed Countries

The most common indicators for measuring the countrieseconomic level are the macroeconomic aggregates such as the per capita Gross National Product or Gross National Income. Though they reflect the creation of added value, their drawback is that they do not include aspects such as the social, political, cultural or environmental side. It is therefore necessary to create and use alternatives for measuring ongoing economic development. These alternatives can be indicators that reflect socio-economic development and the degree of economic deprivation, and include the Human Development Index and Human Poverty Index, or Multidimensional Index of Poverty. As the world economy changes, such as bio-social system, the structure of these two indices are also changing in order to better reflect the conditions and state of economies. This paper deals with the development of both human development and poverty indexes in general and, secondly, their empirical research focusing on the poorest part of the world - the Least Developed Countries. A two-sided comparison of traditional and new formulations of these indices found significant differences in achieved levels. The analysis shows that using the new methodology, human development index worsened values of individual economies, with the exception of three countries. The results of a new methodology of poverty indexes are not so clear, but more satisfactory, since nearly half of economies did not change the values and eight countries improved their situation in relation to poverty.

The measurement of human development using the Ward method of cluster analysis

The Human Development Index is one of the methods how to measure human development. It measures the level of human development both in the economic and social field. Human development is studied at the national level in most cases, yet it might be used at the regional level of a country, too. The objective of the article is to describe the potential for human development in the NUTS II regions of the Visegrad Group Plus countries (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria and Slovenia) using the cluster analysis. The research was carried out in the period from 2004 to 2013. Initially, a research hypothesis regarding the dynamization of the human development processes in most of the regions was set, moving from a lower to a higher development potential within three groups. This hypothesis was verified by a hierarchy cluster analysis in the Ward method and was not confirmed.