ABSTRACT
In early 2020, many widespread restrictive measures were introduced worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures entailed high socio-economic costs, which have been largely overlooked due to political motivations and the difficulty of their measurement. One of them is the negative impact of widespread restrictive measures on life expectancy due to the limited school attendance and the negative impact of restrictions on the population's health status. In this paper, we use our own structural model based on the trade-off analysis method. The research compares the lost years of life in the situation of the existence of restrictive measures and, on the contrary, the situation of a complete absence of these measures. We use data from the Czech Republic between February 2020 and October 2021. Our article concludes that the number of lost years of life is many times higher when widespread restrictive measures are implemented in all considered scenarios. These findings should be considered when making further decisions on applying widespread restrictive measures in the Czech Republic. © 2022, Bucharest University of Economic Studies. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This article provides a comprehensive summary of selected macroeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic, including an assessment of certain implemented fiscal and monetary policies, using data from 2019 (to compare the development of the economic situation during the COVID-19 pandemic with the period before the onset of the pandemic), 2020 and 2021 on a monthly or quarterly basis. Particular attention is paid to monetary policy effects, which, unlike fiscal policy, the Mundell-Fleming model considers effective in a small open economy with a freely floating exchange rate. The article also investigates the volume of fiscal measures taken to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic effects, the restrictive measures introduced to Czech households and firms as well as labour market developments during the period of 2019-2021, including quantification of the aggregate labour productivity index. The conclusions of the article are that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, macroeconomic indicators in the Czech Republic acted in accordance with the established partial hypotheses of the Mundell-Fleming model and in accordance with the hypothesis of the modified Phillips curve. Possible causes of the significant increase in inflation since September 2021 include 2020 nominal public and private sector salary growth, which showed faster growth than aggregate labour productivity, and the highly expansionary fiscal policy that characterized the 2021 pre-election period.
ABSTRACT
The worldwide spread of coronavirus has shaken stock markets and significantly increased risk. The most-watched US stock index S&P 500 fell by 35% from 19th February to 23rd March. Indices of other countries registered a similar development. Although the spread of the virus has been brought under control in many countries currently, the worldwide number of infections is still growing. Unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimuli, on the other hand, have reversed sentiment in the markets. From 23rd March 2020, stock markets gradually had been growing until the S&P 500 index reached only 5% below historical highs on 8th June 2020. The paper deals with the development of volatility of selected stock indices, their mutual correlations, and the relationship with the number of infected in a given country.
ABSTRACT
The content of the paper defines and characterizes five key arguments for why, given the absence of an optimal monetary area, it is advantageous for an economy to be able to dispose of its own currency during periods of crisis, such as the current coronavirus pandemic. The article bases its arguments on the optimal currency area theory and the Mundell-Fleming model. The analytical part of the article approaches the example of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, a well-matched comparison given that they are both small open economies with a common history but also because they faced the coronavirus pandemic at the same time and were affected to a similar extent. Unlike its Czech neighbour, the Slovak Republic adopted a single currency, the Euro, in 2009 and therefore became a member of the eurozone. Therefore, the use of its own currency to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic effects can be approximated by comparing the two countries. The analysis in this article results in the identification of the following five arguments for the advantage of having an independent currency: 1) absence of an optimal monetary area in the eurozone, 2) an independent monetary policy, 3) foreign trade support, 4) mitigating the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on price level changes, 5) supporting domestic production and services. The coronavirus pandemic has deepened the already existing problems of the eurozone and has clearly demonstrated the benefits of maintaining an independent currency in the case of the Czech Republic.