INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STUDIES

The eighth year of the Seminar on Austrian Economics organized by INESS was now traditionally held in the Mojmírovce manor on March 15th to 18th, 2018. Here, 29 students from various universities from all around Slovakia and the Czech Republic got together.

Automotive industry plays one of the most important roles in economies of the Visegrad Group countries. The sector became the regional leader in export and a reason for close ties among countries. Hyundai Kia in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is a textbook example of how one company ignores artificial national borders. Thanks to automotive industry, all V4 countries profit from a business relationship with Germany, the productive hegemon in the EU. Hundreds of thousands of usually above-average paid employees are only one of the significant benefits for the economies. Let’s mention also transfer of know-how, improvements in business culture, modern technologies, among others.

In 2017, INESS launched a series of informal economic discussions called Ekonomické reči (Econtalks).

If every innovation had to pass through parliament first, we would live in a very sad world today. In a world with no innovation.

Every fifth euro goes to a pensioner, railroads and highways consume 7-times more public resources than family benefits. To support farmers, Slovak citizens spent 3-times more than on benefits in material need. Despite these facts, many Slovak citizens believe that benefits received by Roma minority are the main cause of high taxes and budget deficit can be solved by their restriction. 

Democracy works best alongside civil society. However, civil society is built by solving local issues without relying on the remote hands of politicians and democracy. It may sound like a paradox, but in reality, the expansion of so-called civil society requires neither politicians or more elections, nor longer electoral programs.

A dozen countries out of the 28 European Union (EU) members had legal limits on cash transactions in place at the end of 2015.

In the recent years, cash has earned the label of obsolescence and high cost, and become a public enemy. Restrictions on cash payments are in place in many countries around the world and an EU-wide restriction is looming. However, cash plays a number of important roles in the economy.

Tom is the most expensive cat in the world. The Chinese bought him from a young Slovenian couple for a billion dollars. Even from our own local experience, we know that the Chinese buy any damn thing. So what?

The slowdown in raising the deductible item did exactly what the government needed. More taxes are paid to the budget and people have not even noticed it.