Tomáš Paleta

Long-Distance Passenger Transport: Geography, Infrastructure, Competition – A Conference Report

Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno have been organising a one-day international conference held in Prague biennially. In the previous two conference years, it was devoted first to competition in passenger railways in CEE countries (in 2014) and then to HSR in CEE countries (in 2016). This year conference took place on the 25th May 2018 at the Faculty of Social Sciences (Charles University in Prague) and was dedicated to long-distance passenger transport. The aim of the conference was to document changes that the long-distance market has undergone especially in Central Europe due to increasing mobility, policy challenges, infrastructure investment and service innovations and to analyse its impact on national and European transport markets. The conference was divided into three sessions. The first one was focused on British, French and Central European experience, the second session to Swedish, Italian and Swiss case and finally the third to the detailed Polish and Slovak experience.

Gravity Models of Internal Migration – the Czech Case Study

Abstract In this paper, the models of internal migration flows between regions (NUTS 3) in the Czech Republic in time series from 1991 to 2012 are tested. The paper aims to find out how size, distance and economic variables explain migration flows between Czech regions. Several versions of an extended gravity model were used for testing, where economic factors which are frequently mentioned in literature on migration were used as regressors (i.e. average wage, registered unemployment rate, job vacancies and job vacancies per applicant). Internal migration flow is the dependent variable. In comparison to the pure gravity model, the extending of models with the economic variables improves the results of the models only slightly. The results show that the highest explanatory value of migration is given by models with rates of the variables tested.

Maastricht Criteria of…Divergence?

Maastricht Criteria of…Divergence? This article focuses on problematic issues of the Maastricht criteria. The possible effect of attempt to meets the criteria is confronted with its intended purpose. Each criterion is analysed generally by pointing out problematic issues, subsequently, fulfilment by Eurozone members and risks for the Czech Republic, too, are shortly analysed. It is shown that in many cases fulfilling criteria can lead to a different development than was initially intended. The analysis reveals that attempts to meet the criteria can lead to divergence from Eurozone, can cause several economic problems and can bring pain with no gain.