INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STUDIES

INESS organized an interesting public lecture during summer season. On August 6, 2019, Dr. Sean Gabb delivered a speech on Brexit and British strategy in Bratislava. Below you can read the outline of the lecture, accompanied by the video.

None of us likes interacting with bureaucracy. Filling out documents, spending hours in queues, and arguing with officials about formal details – many comedy movies have been built around these situations.

In Slovakia, non-monetary transfers are often forgotten due to the contributions system – this is set up so that only self-employed know, with exaggeration, how expensive it is. Most employees have no idea that the employer pays an additional 35% to their gross wage. Therefore, they do not realize the value received when the state pays health or pension insurance for them. 

Which healthcare system in Europe provides the best value for money? Rankings of healthcare systems are rare, and those which would rate value for money for a long time have been non-existent.

The Economics Olympiad was launched in 2017 with a participation of 4,000 high school students. This year, the competition enjoyed even more popularity with more than 5,300 contestants overall.

Nowadays, decision-makers are driven to come up with solutions to the issue of rising obesity rate. In Slovakia, the obesity rate has doubled in last 35 years.

Crumbled and scattered parcels, inaccessible fields, frauds with farming subsidies, and problems with floods and droughts – this is the reality of Slovak agriculture. Extreme fragmentation makes it impossible to use land efficiently.

Unfortunately, innovation appears also in the field of taxation. Several East European countries have been flirting with various forms of a “retailer tax”. A tax similar (but not equal) to VAT, or the sales tax. Its proclaimed aim is typically to “punish” international retail chains, who have been repeatedly blamed for problems of local farmers and local food and beverages industry. In reality, the tax primarily hits consumers.

Institute of Economic and Social Studies (INESS) has been organizing Free Market Road Show for a few years now. It is a unique series of conferences which has been organized in more than 30 capital cities across Europe and Caucasus.

Slovakia was once the reform tiger that used to set the example that others would lkely follow. However, that time is now certainly over. With the rise of populism, Slovak politics has recently produced ad hoc a number of negative social measures introduced to buy the support of a specific group of voters. And this time, the measure employed is even worse.