Department of Economic Policy

This paper examines changing regional patterns of energy and emission efficiency in the Slovak regions in the period of 2008-18. Firstly; we review literature on key approaches to evaluating energy and emission efficiency; followed by discussing the pros and cons of specific methods. A slacks-based model of data envelopment analysis is applied in order to investigate changing patterns of energy and emission efficiency in 79 Slovak regions (LAU 1). Thereafter; changes in energy and emission efficiency are associated with policy interventions supported by the European Structural and Cohesion Funds (ESCF) in the period of 2011-15. The evaluation found no support for the hypothesis with regard to the positive impact of the ESCF on the increase in energy and emission efficiency. Combined support from three ESCF policy measures (€606.44m) was substantial; but accounted for a mere 6.3% of the total firm expenditure on product and process innovations in the period of 2007-15 (€9,573m). Prod...

There has been a lively discussion about measures of social welfare beyond GDP induced by Stiglitz Report (Stiglitz et al, 2009) which can be viewed as a summation of the earlier efforts to deal with those challenges. Environmental indicators constitute one important dimension to be taken into account in assessing the welfare along with the economic and social indicators. Employing non-parametrical approach, the Data Envelopment Analysis SBM model is extended for environment to measure the so called eco-efficiency. Resulting scores and benchmarks are used to decompose eco-productivity into factors attributable to changes in efficiency, technology, extensive factors of production, and emissions. Results suggest that in European countries in the span 2000 – 2010, an environment-saving rather than input-saving technology change has been taking place.

The role of human capital for economic growth has been given a massive body of evidence up to the present, mostly employing parametric regression analysis. In this study, a non-parametric data envelopment analysis method is used to identify the type of technological progress in Europe with respect to involvement of human capital over the period of 2000 – 2010. The decomposition procedure is based on the ratios of benchmarks resulting from linear optimization problems, specifically, outputoriented slacked-based DEA models with labour, physical and human capital as inputs producing GDP. The results imply that economic growth is taking place mainly due to technology combining capital, knowledge and labour rather than pure human capital or extensive factors of production accumulation. The implementation for European integration policies should thus involve putting more stress on factors facilitating synergy effects rather than pursuing particular goals.

Resumo: Este estudo trata da distribuição diatópica da ditongação diante de <S> em 22 cidades da Bahia, a partir do corpus do Atlas Linguístico do Brasil (ALiB). Foram observadas respostas a seis perguntas do Questionário Fonético-Fonológico (QFF) voltadas à ditongação e, depois, foi feita uma análise geral, com base em 5.001 dados de sílabas fechadas por <S> obtidas de toda a gravação do QFF e do Questionário Semântico-Lexical (QSL). Os resultados para as seis respostas são expostos em cartas linguísticas que demonstram diferenças diatópicas significativas. Da verificação de todos os demais contextos estudados, por meio de análise quantitativa, é possível identificar quatro diferentes comportamentos dentre as cidades. São destaques Salvador e Santo Amaro, localidades em que o fenômeno é expressivo; Vitória da Conquista, Carinhanha e Santana, por sua vez, apresentam forte restrição às vogais ditongadas. Palavras-chave: Ditongação diante de <S>. Atlas linguístico do Brasil. Geolinguística.

Recent discussions on the definition of growth in terms of welfare beyond GDP suggest that it is of urgent need to develop new approaches for measuring the economic performance of the firms and national economies. The new concepts should take into account simultaneously economic as well as social and environmental goals. We first discuss several approaches to productivity measures. Then we extend the Data Envelopment Analysis models for environment to measure the so called eco-efficiency and for social indicators to take into account the social performance. For an illustration, we perform the analysis of 30 European countries in the year 2010. In the last section we discuss the possibilities of inter-temporal analysis of proposed models and of their use in ex-ante evaluation of different policy scenarios.

This paper examines changing regional patterns of energy and emission efficiency in the Slovak regions in the period of 2008–18. Firstly; we review literature on key approaches to evaluating energy and emission efficiency; followed by discussing the pros and cons of specific methods. A slacks-based model of data envelopment analysis is applied in order to investigate changing patterns of energy and emission efficiency in 79 Slovak regions (LAU 1). Thereafter; changes in energy and emission efficiency are associated with policy interventions supported by the European Structural and Cohesion Funds (ESCF) in the period of 2011–15. The evaluation found no support for the hypothesis with regard to the positive impact of the ESCF on the increase in energy and emission efficiency. Combined support from three ESCF policy measures (€606.44m) was substantial; but accounted for a mere 6.3% of the total firm expenditure on product and process innovations in the period of 2007–15 (€9,573m). Prod...

Growing interest in the analysis of interrelationships between income distribution and economic growth has recently stimulated new theoretical and empirical research. Measures such as the head-count ratio for the poverty index or the widely used Gini coefficient are aggregated indicators describing the general extent of inequality without deeper insights into income distribution among households. To derive an indicator accounting for income distribution among income groups, we propose a new approach based on an output oriented DEA model where the input value is unitized to 1 for each country and weights restrictions imposed so as to favour a higher income share in the lower quantiles. We demonstrate the merits of this approach on the quintile income breakdown data of 29 European countries. Prioritizing lower income groups’ welfare, countries such as Slovenia and Slovakia can be equally favoured by the new proposed indicator while being assessed differently by the Gini index. An inte...

The objective of the paper is to give a picture of the sources of economic growth in the V4 countries during the decade following their EU entry and to crosscheck the results obtained by parametric and non-parametric approaches. Growth accounting technique is used to depict dynamics of the V4 countries evolution since 1995 up to 2013. The poor post-crisis performance reflected in TFP indicator is in line with the result of the absence of technological progress obtained by data envelopment analysis. Research Design & Methods: Sources of the economic growth are identified by growth accounting based on Solow-Swan model. Non-parametrical part employs an SBM measure of efficiency in Data envelopment analysis as an application of linear programming optimization. Findings: Main findings include determining faster-than-average economic growth of the V4 followed by a considerable decline both in total factor productivity and in catching-up rate in the after-crisis period. DEA approach reveals excessive use of labor in all of the V4 countries and finds almost negligible technological change. Implications & Recommendations: The main concern for economic policy in the V4 as well as the entire EU continues to be tackling unemployment and facilitating factors´ productivity by structural reforms. Contribution & Value Added: The paper makes use of parametric and non-parametric approaches with a view to cross-checking the results obtained on the technological change within the EU at large and across the V4 countries in particular. Article type: original research paper

Non-parametric DEA models are widely used in empirical investigations in educational domain. We demonstrate the merits of this approach analysing OECD PIAAC 2012 test results. Employing the basic radial CCR model, we compute a DEA-based index and expose capabilities of DEA to identify relative strong points of the subjects under evaluation. Though DEA based ranking are shown to be similar to the one derived from simple averages, the former can potentially provide insightful information from the detailed optimization results. Although in the particular dataset Japan towered over the rest of the countries and did not allow to fully demonstrate the capabilities of the approach, we find DEA a promising technique for future intertemporal analysis of PIAAC data.

In the current decade, the challenges in the sustainability of public finances associated with an aging population and the environment will be reflected in significant changes in the labor market. Knowing the determinants of labor supply and demand can be of great help in decisions towards the institutional reforms in education that can help close the gap between demand and supply through timely action. Given the global trends of digitization and automation, the quality of human capital is derived from the cognitive abilities of employees. Their measurement in the PIAAC project (OECD) is methodologically compatible with testing students using PISA in the areas of numeracy and literacy. PIAAC projections for 2030 use PISA results as a determinant of cognitive abilities in later life. The declining trend in PISA results determines the deterioration of PIAAC performance across age categories and shifts the focus of the population's cognitive skills towards higher age groups. The forthcoming PIAAC 2022 testing has the potential to better identify trends, compare cohorts over time, and refine forecasts.

Recent developments in the political, scientific and economic debate on the topic of the project proposal in Area 2: "The impact of ecological sustainability on growth and employment is investigated, as it will have important repercussions on econonmic policy and welfare, many of them not reflected in traditional GDP measures and in economic policy" suggest that it is of critical importance to develop and to use new approaches able to compare policy scenarios for their effectiveness, their efficiency, their enforceability and other dimensions. It is a urgent need for quantitative methodology able to assess the relative performance of different policy scenarios taking into account their long-term economic, social and environmental impacts. The methodology based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) provides a promising comparison framework. The objective of this part of research is not solely to discuss and comment on different scenario and policy outcomes provided by WP205, but to extract useful information from the phase where proposed and simulated policy scenarios are compared. In particular, we are interested in incorporating the economic, environmental and social dimensions of the positive and negative impacts of each policy scenario. As shown in the paper by Boseth-Buchner (2009) this methodology allows "to bridge the gap between the simulation phase, in which long-run efects of policies are mimicked, and the valuation phase, in which usually a coherent cost benefit analysis framework is adopted" (p. 1342). In difference to the standard application of DEA for the ex-post performance assessment in the proposed approach DEA can be used for ex-ante assessment of different policy scenarios. DEA models combined with MCA, in particular with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) incorporating human judgements provides an useful instrument to analyse the impact of different policy preferences and strategies that appear to be crucial for the increasing well-being of the population. As a consequence, the proposed approach can provide a very beneficial contribution to the project as a whole and in particular to one of the central questions: "How can the EU guarantee a maximum well-being of its population?" Contribution to the Project Following the MS43 with the new concept of measuring the economic performance taking into account simultaneously different outcomes of economic activities, the methodology based on DEA and MCA provides an useful instrument to assess the impact of different policy strategies for the welfare and well-being of the population.

Recent developments in the political, scientific and economic debate on the topic of the project proposal in Area 2: "The impact of ecological sustainability on growth and employment is investigated, as it will have important repercussions on econonmic policy and welfare, many of them not reflected in traditional GDP measures and in economic policy" suggest that it is of critical importance to develop and to use new approaches able to compare policy scenarios for their effectiveness, their efficiency, their enforceability and other dimensions. It is a urgent need for quantitative methodology able to assess the relative performance of different policy scenarios taking into account their long-term economic, social and environmental impacts. The methodology based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) provides a promising comparison framework. The objective of this part of research is not solely to discuss and comment on different scenario and policy outcomes provided by WP205, but to extract useful information from the phase where proposed and simulated policy scenarios are compared. In particular, we are interested in incorporating the economic, environmental and social dimensions of the positive and negative impacts of each policy scenario. As shown in the paper by Boseth-Buchner (2009) this methodology allows "to bridge the gap between the simulation phase, in which long-run efects of policies are mimicked, and the valuation phase, in which usually a coherent cost benefit analysis framework is adopted" (p. 1342). In difference to the standard application of DEA for the ex-post performance assessment in the proposed approach DEA can be used for ex-ante assessment of different policy scenarios. DEA models combined with MCA, in particular with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) incorporating human judgements provides an useful instrument to analyse the impact of different policy preferences and strategies that appear to be crucial for the increasing well-being of the population. As a consequence, the proposed approach can provide a very beneficial contribution to the project as a whole and in particular to one of the central questions: "How can the EU guarantee a maximum well-being of its population?" Contribution to the Project Following the MS43 with the new concept of measuring the economic performance taking into account simultaneously different outcomes of economic activities, the methodology based on DEA and MCA provides an useful instrument to assess the impact of different policy strategies for the welfare and well-being of the population.

The aim of this paper is to present the analysis of measurement of economic well-being by the index of economic well-being for selected OECD countries. The report also outlines trends in the four domains of economic well-being that create the index. The domains are consumption, wealth, economic equality, and economic security. Furthermore, the paper offers an analysis of the sensitivity of our results to the choice of weights assigned by means of data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to these four domains and a description of the performance of the index of economic well-being compared to GDP per capita through the most recent recession that caused declines in both, real GDP per capita and the index of economic well-being.