INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STUDIES

There were over 400,000 distrains recorded in Slovakia in 2017. New websites and organizations have emerged to help people in debt. A vast majority of people do not know how much taxes they pay or how much public services cost.

INESS has been organizing the Free Market Road Show, an international conference, for a number of years. It is a series of conferences, organized across Europe, from Scandinavia to Montenegro, from Spain to Ukraine. The event found its way to Bratislava in 2018 again and brought topics stirring the public at home and abroad.

Sharing economy platforms, like Uber and Taxify, present a new opportunity. The opportunity for people with cars who can make some extra money instead of watching their favorite reality show on TV. The opportunity for people who want a cheaper and more comfortable ride on Friday night. The opportunity for city parking policy, for public transport or for air quality.

Slovak politicians are full of talks about competitiveness and improving business environment. However, when it comes to action, they oppose even the most trivial and costless improvements.

While the business environment is the domain of the Ministry of Economy in Slovakia, the Act on inappropriate conditions in trade relations is the domain of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. This government institution lists among its goals the support of Slovak agricultural production. Except their heavy subsidizing under EU common agricultural policy, it uses several tools of nationalist protection of local production.

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.

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.