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Risk management is one of the most dynamically developed areas in economic sciences. One of the main driving forces for this development has been the practical challenge resulting from increasing financial risk. Risk management is a process in which key role is played by risk measurement (Jajuga, 2016). Comparison of various forecasting models and selection of the best ones for particular markets is of key importance in many fields of economics and finance. Theoretic aspects concerning commodity markets very often concentrate on relations between changes in commodity prices and on the news impact on rates of return. However, up until now studies concerning conditional volatility of returns on commodity markets and market risk have been less comprehensive than those concerning conditions affecting prices and rates of return. Nevertheless, studies concerning market volatility are becoming increasingly popular due to the growth of market volatility itself and the significance of commodities as investment assets (Kang, 2013; Thuraisamy, 2013; Vivian, 2012). The growing interest also results from the fact that commodity rates of return have some empirically verifiable features such as non-normal distribution, asymmetry, structural breaks and fat tails (Aloui, 2010; Cheng, 2011).

How can you imagine the future of marketing communication? The last several decades have brought the unexpected development of marketing concepts and tools (Keller, 2009), conditioned by changes in the economic environment: globalization processes, internationalization of enterprises, increase in competitiveness, social change, development of information technology, popularization of proinnovation culture and, finally, “acceleration” of processes. Against the background of these market conditions, presentation and analysis of currently used communication forms and tools in the sector of small and medium enterprises, in terms of types and forms of messages, seems to be a very interesting topic and will enable diagnosing existing status and drawing conclusions about future organizational behaviour in this area. The need for conducting this kind of research results from constant changes in the architecture of marketing communication. The aim of the study was to learn the approach of small and medium entrepreneurs to customer value management processes through the prism of: quantity, intensity, quality of communication forms and tools. The research problem is the answer to the question: what forms and tools of marketing communication find practical application in the SME sector?

Over the previous two decades, festivals have gained a prominent position within the world’s tourism and leisure industry. Festivals are regarded as an effective strategy for the promotion of the tourism industry and the local economy. Hosting a festival may attract tourists who otherwise would not choose to visit the destination and whose expenditures contribute to income and tax revenues in host communities (Getz & Page, 2016). Festivals and events facilitate the positioning of a locality as a tourism destination (Hudson et al., 2015) and can be effective tools in combating the seasonality of tourism demand (Tkaczynski & Rundle-Thiele, 2011; Yolal et al., 2016). Festivals play an important role in preserving cultural heritage and reinforce residents’ pride of being members of host community (Yolal et al., 2016; Yoon, Lee, & Lee, 2010). Due to a number of benefi ts brought by hosting festivals, signifi cant attention has been paid to festival studies over previous years. The vast majority of previous studies focused on the importance of visitors’ motives, dimensions of motivation and differences in the importance of motivational domains based on visitors’ socio-demographic characteristics, previous visitations, types of event being studied, etc. (Crompton & McKay, 1997; Kang et al., 2014; Lee, 2000).

Towards the end of the 1980s, all the countries of the former socialist bloc had to wrestle with structural and systemic problems. At the moment of entering the period of transformations, Poland and Czechoslovakia were characterized by different conditions, among others, GDP per capita, the range of macroeconomic imbalance, inflation rate, indebtedness, or the share of the private sector. In Poland, private ownership dominated in agriculture, while in trade and service its share was significant. On the other hand, as regards Czechoslovakia, private ownership was scarce. The 1990s saw far-reaching systemic changes going on both in Poland and Czechoslovakia (and following the split of the latter – the Czech Republic). Privatization of enterprises was the fundamental part of the economic reforms program implemented in both countries. The introduction of free market principles, the influx of foreign investment and restructuring actions, undoubtedly influenced the change in the way enterprises functioned in the market. At present, small and mediumsized enterprises are of the key importance to the economic development of Poland and the Czech Republic.

In the context of the research on human behaviour, the issue we deal with is the reason why a people’s message is precisely that, and not another one, what forces them to act as they do. Is it an external compulsion – e.g. to escape from danger, or that they want to achieve something – to satisfy some of their needs, interests in hobbies, or because they consider it right and moral? Can a person behave in a way that has no cause, or reason? Although we distinguish between involuntary and voluntary behaviour, human behaviour in the work process is largely influenced by the will, the desire that results from the impact of several motives. The concept of motivation is the internal process, the process of psychological causes of human behaviour. These causes are motives, internal presuppositions, and internal impulses leading to certain target behaviour. The process of motivation is thus the process of activating internal assumptions, guiding human action to a certain goal of their pursuit (Nakonečný, 1992). Motivation can be defined as processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal (Robbins, 2001).

International trade has played the role of engine of growth in many countries around the world. Export-import activities may affect the economy through some channels. First, it makes easier to access many commodities and services that lead to higher levels of income per capita and better living standards (Butkiewicz & Yanikkaya, 2011). Second, international trade among countries might also generate capital formation as an important step to the production process in the economy. The effect of international trade on income and economic growth has been intensively discussed in some papers (Altaee & Al-Jafari, 2014; Bajwa & Siddiqi, 2011; Das & Paul, 2011; Hassen, Anis, Taha, & Yosra, 2013; Hye, Wizarat, & Lau, 2016; Malefane, 2018). The vector error correction model (VECM. Over 100 developed and developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America experienced the positive impact of international trade on the increase of their income per capita (Butkiewicz & Yanikkaya, 2011). Therefore, eliminating trade barriers as an implementation of liberalization agreements is likely to boost the volume of international trade and promote economic growth rates.

The collar option is one kind of exotic options which is useful when institutional investors wish to lock in the profit they already have on the underlying asset. Collar options can be implemented by investors on the stock they have already own. Usually investors will obtain the collar when they have enjoyed a decent gain on their investment but they want to hedge against potential downside in their shares. Collar options are very useful and practical instruments in revenue management and project management. Shan et al. (2010) study the use of collar options to manage revenue risks in real toll public-private partnership transportation projects, in particular how to redistribute the profit and losses in order to improve the effectiveness of risk management and fulfill the stakeholder’s needs. Under the constant volatility assumption, the pricing problem of collar option can be solved in the classical Black Scholes framework. However, the smile-shaped pattern of the Black Scholes implied volatilities which extracted from options has provided evidence against the constant volatility assumption in the Black Scholes model.

Leading cause of death in Europe and worldwide are cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). According to AstraZeneca (2014), they are estimated to account for 31% of all global deaths, 47% of all deaths in Europe and 40% of all deaths in the European Union (EU). The economic costs to societies of cardiovascular problems are enormous, including sick leave and lost employment, reduced efficiency at work and premature mortality. Patients with CVD cost the EU economy around 210 billion EUR per year. As mentioned by Wilkins et al. (2017), funding for CVDs as a proportion of the total health budget in the EU is estimated to account for 8%, and it ranges from around 19% in Hungary to around 3% in other countries like Denmark, Sweden and Ireland. Around 53% of the total cost is due to direct healthcare costs, 26% to productivity losses and 21% to the informal care of people with CVD. The relatively significant burden of cardiovascular diseases and a high level of resources allocated to healthcare delivery for CVD patients makes the performance in this health area very critical important issue.

The foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows have exhibited substantial increases with contri bution of relaxation of the impediments over the international flows of goods, services and capital mainly resulting from the accelerating liberalization and globalization as of 1980s. Consequently, international FDI inflows reached USD 3.111 trillion in 2007, but then contracted due to economic crises and the increasing protectionism concerns in the recent years and became USD 1.95 trillion in 2017 (World Bank, 2019a). The rapidly expanding FDI flows made the economic effects of FDI one of the muchdiscussed and studied topics in the international economics. On the one hand, the scholars have focused on the effect of FDI inflows on the economic growth, unemployment, total taxes, technological development, environmental degradation (see, e.g., Lasbrey et al., 2018).

The Internet plays a vital role in our daily life in that people can easily access our world and open international borders. Meanwhile, online shopping has been widely accepted as a way of purchasing products and services. It provides a dominant alternative to traditional retail shopping. Consumers can search for more information and select to compare product and price, more options, convenience. Online shopping offers more satisfaction to consumers save time (Katawetawaraks & Wang, 2011). However, the investigation of online consumer behaviour is relatively underdeveloped (Smith et al., 2013). Although online shopping behaviour is not a new topic, the unanswered question that what determines consumers’ willingness to purchase a product online have attracted many researchers. In this line of study, researchers identified factors influencing on purchase behaviour of the consumer based on Theory Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989), Stimulus–Organism–Response (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). The first approach focused on the direct impact on consumer behaviour. For example, Wu and Ke (2015) integrated a model of personality traits, perceived risk and technology acceptance in online shopping behaviour.

On July 30, 2019, the government of the Czech Republic passed a draft Lobbying Act which was drawn up in accordance with the current Program Declaration of the Government of the Czech Republic, the Government Plan of Legislative Works for 2018 and Government Resolution No. 114 of 21st February 2018, approving the material proposal of the Lobbying Act. According to the Government’s Concept of the Fight Against Corruption for the years 2018 to 2022 (Government of the Czech Republic, 2018) “the intention of the government is to enable the public access to the information about the contact of politicians and high officials with lobbyists and at the same time relieve legitimate lobbying from negative connotations with which it is perceived by the public”. The aim of the article is to evaluate the lobbying regulation system in the draft Lobbying Act in the Czech Republic and to compare it with regulation models in selected European countries. A partial aim is to complement the assessment included in the Final Report on Regulatory Impact Assessment with a quantitative cost-benefit analysis by means of Ninefold theory.

Population migration continues to be a current topic linked to a wide spectrum of various external and internal factors on both international and regional levels. In contemporary literature, there is a whole score of empirical studies that deal with international migration, its determinants and impacts on the economy. However, there are only few empirical studies that deal primarily with solely regional (i.e. internal) migration in comparison to the large number of studies analyzing international migration, which is one of the main reasons for the selection of the topic of this study and its focus on internal migration and thus on movements that take place within one geopolitical entity, usually a nationstate (for more on the definition of internal migration, see, e.g., Fendel, 2014; Royuela & Ordóñez, 2016). So-called “gravity models” stemming from an analogy to Newton’s law of gravity and Ravenstein’s laws of migration are often used for modelling internal migration and the study of it, or for the analysis of the main determinates that impact these internal fluctuations of citizens; however, these gravity models of migration are often criticized for their insufficient theoretical foundation.

The economy of China has been maintaining a middle and high growth rates in the past 40 years since reform and opening-up. Railway is an important infrastructure and a major factor of economic development. It is also a witness and beneficiary of reform and opening-up. Railway in China has undergone transformation and development. Given the continuous expansion of traffic network and innovative reform of technologies, high-speed rail construction has achieved outstanding progresses. During the “12th Five-Year Plan,” the total investment of China to high-speed rail system has exceeded 1,800 billion RMB. Moreover, 3,500 billion RMB of investment is expected under railway plan in the “13th Five-Year Plan.” Currently, China owns a high-speed rail network with the longest operation miles, the highest transportation density, and the most complicated network operation scenario in the world (Karolys et al., 2019).