INESS

On July 30, 2015, INESS organized an event commemorating Milton Friedman. One of the special guests was Petr Barton of IREF, a Czech economist who spent a part of his professional carrier working at the University of Chicago and knew Milton Friedman in person.

Lack of jobs remains the key problem of the Slovak economy despite the currently declining unemployment rate. Government policies keep coming up with new labour market measures but these often prove ineffective, generating only temporary jobs by selectively supporting chosen jobseekers.

Just like every year, INESS released the Bill for Government services few days ago. Although such information should be ideally provided by the government itself, Slovak government is somewhat reluctant to inform the society on costs of the functioning of the state. This is precisely why INESS decided to take up this task.

The real problem of the minimum wage concerns a very different group of people. Yet you will not see these people in newspapers or TV and they are not part of government negotiations at all. They are the unemployed people. Hence, what economists argue as some “redistribution problems” between employers and employees is not at the core of issues with minimum wage.

Free Market Road Show 2015 has visited Bratislava, Slovakia on April 14, 2015. The event organized by INESS in cooperation with Austrian Economics Center was a part of the unique conference tour that visits 36 cities around Europe and Caucasus from April till May.

On March 5-8, 2015, university students from Slovakia and the Czech Republic gathered for the sixth annual Seminar on Austrian Economics organized by INESS, where they had an opportunity to attend quality lectures delivered by foreign and Slovak lecturers.

Slovak Labour Code that requires separation of the meal contribution for an employee from the salary of the employee created an artificial meal voucher market and ensured the voucher companies millions in revenue and generous profit margins, which are, at the end of the day, paid by the majority of workers, employers and restaurateurs in Slovakia.

The proponents of the limited access to savings caught savers into a trap. Take it or leave it. Fortunately, also thanks to INESS, which also commented on the law in Parliament, there is a sort of exit option for savers, who don’t like the offered annuities but need some money from their savings. They can keep their savings account and withdraw at least annual yield.

To understand utility of an intermediary we need to understand subjective price theory. A can of cheese does not have a universal value given from the “universe”, but rather N subjective values which vary in time and space. A task of the intermediary is to exchange what we need less for what we need more.

Competitiveness of Europe is lagging, pension systems keep ignoring the demographic trend, relative price of energy for industrial consumers is growing, there are popular jokes about labor markets in France or Italy, starting a business and tax compliance is still extremely demanding tasks in many of the member countries.