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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).

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).

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.

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).

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.