It is telling that the public almost unquestioningly believes that the minimum wage helps low-income people in particular. But as the prominent Czech economist Robert Holman writes in his textbook on microeconomics, “If economists agree on anything, it is that legislating a minimum wage increases unemployment.”
Advertisements are generally regarded as a socially undesirable phenomenon. At best, they are seen as a poor source of information about a company’s products in an attempt to raise awareness of their existence and thereby win new customers, but more often as a despicable practice aimed at manipulating consumer preferences.
Why are expectations about the impact of government regulation so often not met? Why do the actual consequences of government interventions diverge countless times from the intentions of the politicians who promote them? Economics has elegant answers to these stimulating questions. One of them will be illustrated and explained in this article.
Liberalism is a political philosophy based on the principles of peace. However, this fact has been very often generously interpreted by detaching liberalism from events beyond the borders of liberal states, no matter how anti-liberal, and thus threatening to freedom they might be.
It is increasingly clear that free trade, in all its forms is good for everyone. Ever since David Ricardo introduced the concept of comparative advantage as the ultimate argument against the mercantilist policies that had dominated until then. Simply put, in cases where one party has an absolute advantage in the production of a particular good, both parties should produce what they are best at and then trade with each other.
In the current situation of high inflation and large budget deficits, salary increases for politicians and central bankers alike are rightly criticised. While, because of the poor economic situation, the wages of most citizens are falling in real terms due to inflation, these high-ranking civil servants are not feeling any of the pinch.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about several socio-economic changes. However, one of them is undoubtedly the change in alcohol consumption among Czech consumers. Despite the fact that the aggregated data from the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) showed overall decline in average alcohol consumption in the Czech Republic during 2021, for some most-risky groups of consumers the situation has worsened.
Libertarians have never been a mass movement, and therefore have often had to work with their own competitors, both conservatives and liberals, to advance their ideas.
In a comparison of seven European countries, a new study by the CETA shows the Czech Republic to be the second most successful in applying a risk reduction approach to its tobacco policy.
There are undoubtedly many factors that determine how individual governments dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, one of the main aspects that has determined the success of mitigating the health impacts of the pandemic is the level of public trust in government institutions, as noted in numerous scientific publications.
