New Articles – Economics

Investment incentives are a widely used tool of economic policy employed not only in the Czech Republic (CR) but also in other European economies. Given the ambiguous perception established by the review of the literature on investment incentives and the effects that supported investment brings to the economy, this article aims to evaluate the issue of investment incentives in the CR with the use of a time series regression analysis (1998–2019) in order to answer two main research questions: Do investment incentives attract investment into economically weaker regions? Do investments supported by incentives lead to the economic prosperity of these regions? The inspiration for the article comes from a comprehensive study focused on investment incentives in the CR (Schwarz et al., 2007). The experts’ views on investment incentives are ambiguous – some perceive them positively, others criticize them and consider them undesirable.

The competitiveness of cities is most often associated with their economic performances, but there is a growing consensus that other factors must be observed as relevant (Huggins et al., 2014). The performance of modern cities, in addition to hard infrastructure, is increasingly influenced by the availability and quality of social infrastructure (Caragliu et al., 2011). The development potential and competitiveness of the city depend on the quality of social infrastructure, i.e., human and social capital. Human capital is emerging as a major driver of innovation and economic growth. Therefore, attracting highly skilled workers plays a fundamental role in the perspective of cities since the economic progress of cities depends on the knowledge of highly skilled workers (Buch et al., 2017). The impact of population growth on urban areas is multidimensional, in addition to the impact on infrastructure, economy and patterns of social interaction, population growth also affects the environment (Marshall, 2007).

The issue of whether there is convergence or divergence between regions in terms of GDP per capita has long been investigated in regional studies. According to the position of neoclassical economics, if factors can flow freely and comparative advantages prevail, the flows of labour force and capital in opposite directions result in convergence in the long term. Less developed countries and regions with accelerated growth converge toward more developed regions. This hypothesis has been tested in several studies, utilising extensive methodology and instruments for the examination of convergence between countries and regions, e.g., absolute and conditional convergence, or beta and sigma convergence (Breinlich et al., 2014; Eurofound, 2018; Ertur & Le Gallo, 2009; Fischer & Stumpner, 2010; Halmai & Vásáry, 2012; Le Gallo & Fingleton, 2014; LeSage & Fischer, 2009).

There can be found many articles in which price discrimination was swiftly considered as a negative phenomenon, mainly behavioural economy studies. Such studies described it as pricing leading to consumer-detrimental effects and increasing companies’ profits. However, this rule is not as universal as it may seem. The case is more complicated because exceptions do exist, and they are far from rare – software, cell carrier services, real-time stock quotes, electronic newspapers subscription, electric energy supply, payment accounts, books, copyrighted content streaming, file storage, and more. These information and network goods were often treated as any mass-produced physical goods, which is not an adequate approach. The article’s ambition is to contribute to a change. I hope that after reading the article, you would agree that price discrimination in the case of information and network goods should be viewed by different optics.