Jiri Hlavacek

Školné či dotace? (simulace s modely systému vysokých škol)

The impact of different financing alternatives on two simple models of the university system is analysed in this paper. Both models are agent - based, the reason is that we analyse a system of heterogeneous universities instead of a representative university. Models differ in the rules for the decision-making of universities. In the first - optimising model - each university in each period maximalizes the probability of survival, control variables are the income of universities and the salary of teachers. In the second model we implicitly assume constrained rationality or shortage of relevant information and each university in each period reacts according to simple rules on the difference between the number of applicants and its capacity. Basic result is that the behaviour of models in different situations differs with the financing alternatives and it would be an oversimplification to generalize that some of the financing alternative is always the best.

Wage Trap Model: Producer Behavior in Economies with Heterogeneous Labor Force

The main goal of this paper is to help determine why the communist (and partly even transition) economies are substantially inefficient in comparison with their market counterparts. The reasons will be analyzed with the help of the profit maximization model (based on the efficiency wage theory) leading to the existence of multiple profit optima. The inefficiency of planned and transition economies will then be considered mainly as the consequence of the impossibility to reach the highest profit optimum (this situation will be referred to as the wage trap, because the production suboptimality was due to the lack of freedom to set the optimal wage level). The results of the analysis will also be used to explain the huge discontinuous shifts in the profitability or production of certain firms in transition economies as well as of some possible initial advantages of foreign firms acting in transition economies.