Project
Institute of Economic Research
International Projects
GLITSS - Globalization, Illicit Trade, Sustainability and Security
Globalization, Illicit Trade, Sustainability and Security
| Duration: | 14. 10. 2022 - 13. 10. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | COST Action 21133 |
| Program: | COST |
| Project leader: | Ing. Širaňová Mária MA., PhD. |
Identifying the causes of long-term unemployment among older women in Serbia and North Macedonia
Identifikácia príčin dlhodobej nezamestnanosti starších žien v Srbsku a Severnom Macedónsku
| Duration: | 1. 10. 2024 - 31. 3. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | IVF 22420146 |
| Program: | Iné |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Štefánik Miroslav PhD. |
(From Crisis to Coordination? V4 Migration Strategies and Scenarios (V4-MigStrat)
Od krízy ku koordinácii? Migračné stratégie a scenáre V4 (V4-MigStrat)
| Duration: | 1. 10. 2025 - 31. 3. 2027 |
| Evidence number: | IVF 22520302 |
| Program: | Iné |
| Project leader: | Ing. Lichner Ivan PhD. |
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Provision of Comprehensive Data and Analysis Related to Regional Price Indices: The Case of Slovak Republic
| Duration: | 1. 10. 2025 - 28. 2. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | 500151654 |
| Program: | Iné |
| Project leader: | Ing. Lichner Ivan PhD. |
HiTEc - CA21163 - Text, functional and other high-dimensional data in econometrics: New models, methods, applications (HiTEc)
Textové, funkčné a iné viac dimenzionálne dáta v ekonometrií: Nové modely, metódy a aplikácie
| Duration: | 10. 10. 2022 - 9. 10. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | COST Action 21163 |
| Program: | COST |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Štefánik Miroslav PhD. |
National Projects
Applications and development of a microsimulation model to support the creation of policy decision-making
Aplikácie a vývoj mikrosimulačného modelu na podporu tvorby politických rozhodnutí
| Duration: | 1. 9. 2024 - 31. 8. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | 09I03-03-V04-00536 |
| Program: | Plán obnovy EÚ |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Miklošovič Tomáš PhD. |
| Annotation: | The main objective of the present project is to support policy making using microsimulation modelling in the areas of health care, education, labour market and long-term care through the production of relevant scientific information. This objective will be achieved through four sub-tasks. The first of the partial tasks represents the application part of the project, in which the researcher will develop a microsimulation model designed for the healthcare system. The second partial task consists of the creation of application models that will focus on predicting labour demand in education, healthcare and long-term care. The outputs from these partial tasks will be communicated to decision-making institutions and adapted to their requirements. The third subtask will consist in the methodological extension of existing tools. Microsimulation models will be developed using alternative input databases such as EU-SILC or CENZUS 2021. Subsequent comparison of the individual outputs will determine the most appropriate use of each input database. Also within this task, cooperation with relevant public sector institutions that use the individual inputs is planned. One of the activities of the proposed project is to communicate the specific requirements of the decision-making sphere and the development of individual applications of microsimulation methodologies in order to evaluate the impact of public policies. The application of internationally established microsimulation techniques in the evaluation of policy impacts normally requires a specific approach in the development and application of these models. This may be due to local data availability, but also to the specific needs of the decision-making sphere. |
AMaLeM - Applying machine learning methods to support labour market policy making
Aplikácie metód strojového učenia na podporu tvorby politík trhu práce
| Duration: | 1. 7. 2022 - 30. 6. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | APVV-21-0360 |
| Program: | APVV |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Štefánik Miroslav PhD. |
| Annotation: | The project's central aim is to explore new options opened by the recent advancement of machine learning (ML) research. We consider two suitable data applications of ML techniques: i. impact evaluation of active labour market policies (ALMP) using administrative data of registered job seekers, ii online job search data analysis. Members of the research team have experience in both these data contexts, documented by publications, projects participation, and underlined by the interest of external project partners: Institute of Financial Policy (IFP) and an online job-advertisement company - Profesia. Under the first objective, we plan to apply ML techniques in the impact evaluation of Slovak ALMPs. For this purpose, in cooperation with IFP, we will develop a cleaned and documented evaluation dataset. The annually updated evaluation dataset will serve as a base in generating particular evaluation studies. Particular evaluation studies will benefit from a methodological activity focused on adjusting and applying new ML techniques for the Slovak data context. In this respect, we can build on the current cooperation of the research team. The project's second objective aims to explore the potential of big, online data in forecasting socio-economic development. More specifically, Profesia is interested in utilising the information on the total number of registered job vacancy postings in predicting labour market indicators, such as the unemployment rate or the total employment. We plan to propose the most favourable design of such a forecasting model. Moreover, we explore additional, freely available online data sources (e.g. Google search trends) and their potential in improving the prediction. Finally, having access to online job vacancy data, we aim to explore their further utilisation in social research. Building on an already rich list of studies using data collected by Profesia, we extend our interest more in the depth of the content of the online job vacancy postings. |
| Project web page: | http://www.lmevidence.sav.sk/ |
Distributional Effects of Misreporting in International Trade in Services
Distribučné dopady fiktívnej fakturácie v medzinárodnom obchode so službami
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2024 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | VEGA 2/0165/24 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | doc. Ing. König Brian PhD. |
| Annotation: | The service sector and its role in international trade have experienced significant growth in recent years. International trade in services has become one of the main sources of economic growth and it represents a significant source of competitiveness for companies. However, international trade is often used as a means of illicit financial flows through trade misinvoicing. The main objective of the project is to obtain estimates of illicit financial flows that originate due to the misreporting in international trade in services and to empirically investigate the effect of these illicit financial flows on income inequality. The project will rely on two key approaches to estimate volumes of misreporting in international trade in services for a global sample of countries: An approach based on the analysis of different reported values in international trade on the importer and exporter side, and an approach based on the analysis of the unexplained volume of international trade through the gravity model. |
DOGMA - Pensions and Transfers in a Dynamic Overlapping Generations Model of a Small Open Ageing Economy
Dôchodky a transfery v dynamickom modeli prekrývajúcich sa generácií malej otvorenej starnúcej ekonomiky
| Duration: | 1. 7. 2024 - 30. 6. 2028 |
| Evidence number: | APVV-23-0125 |
| Program: | APVV |
| Project leader: | doc. Ing. Domonkos Tomáš PhD. |
| Annotation: | Slovakia belongs to the group of European countries facing severe ageing of their population. This adverse development in the share of the working-age population led to the perception that the Slovak public Pay-As-You- Go pension system might not be sustainable in the future. Alongside the increasing pressure on public finances, aging can affect the economic development and welfare throughout other channels as well. It may lead to capital deepening which can be accompanied by increasing capital to labor ratio, decreasing returns on assets, and increasing wages. Aging in developed countries is accompanied by decreasing fertility rate, often far below replacement level. Considering the well-known quantity-quality tradeoff of children originating in the influential work of Becker (1960), a smaller number of children within households can be accompanied by increasing investments in their human capital. Thus, even if the number of workers is smaller, their higher productivity mitigates the negative welfare impacts of aging. Our aim is an in-depth analysis and modelling the impact of ageing on the sustainability of the Slovak pension and transfer system. By doing so, we assume encourage the general discussion about the intergeneration fairness and sustainability of the Slovak pension system. For addressing the main aim and the hypotheses we aim to develop a dynamic large-scale overlapping generations (OLG) model with heterogeneous agents, realistic demography, three-pillar pension system and other private and public transfers. The motivation is to expand the tools used to evaluate the effects of ageing on the Slovak economy with respect to various alternative settings of the pension and transfer system including t axation rules as well. The model will enrich the already well recognized OLG frameworks by including the second pillar, child - related pension benefits as well as bequests. Thus, it has the potential to enrich the theoretical foundations of dynamic OLG models. |
FinCyc - Financial cycle: design, modelling and forecasting within machine learning framework
Finančný cyklus: tvorba, modelovanie a predikcie v prostredí strojového učenia
| Duration: | 1. 7. 2023 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | APVV-22-0472 |
| Program: | APVV |
| Project leader: | prof. Ing. Lyócsa Štefan PhD. |
| Annotation: | Financial instability is associated with periods when businesses find it difficult to access capital, the investment is constrained, and confidence among economic agents, including households, is falling, forcing them to make significant adjustments to their current and future budgets. The peak and subsequent bust of the financial cycle is associated with such periods of financial instability. The financial cycle thus captures changes in the behaviour of economic agents, in particular changes in risk appetite. The way the financial cycle is estimated should reflect the specificities of individual financial systems, leading policy makers to demand tailor-made solutions for each country. The main objective of the proposed applied research project is to propose new financial cycle indicators that will be used to monitor and predict future risks for financial stability in Slovakia. Our solution will provide the beneficiary with several new financial cycle indicators, prediction models based on machine learning and estimates of the most important factors influencing the future development of the financial cycle. The proposed solution should provide a decision support system that is both beneficial for the financial sector but also has the ambition to contribute to the debate on future macroprudential policy measures. |
Corporate Efficiency, Failure, and EU Funds: Lessons from Slovakia
Firemná efektívnosť, zlyhania a fondy EÚ: Skúsenosti zo Slovenska
| Duration: | 1. 9. 2024 - 31. 8. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | 09I03-03-V04-00429 |
| Program: | Plán obnovy EÚ |
| Project leader: | doc. Ing. Výrost Tomáš PhD. |
| Annotation: | The project focuses on the impacts and consequences of the implementation of the European Union policy in the time dimension of the two programming periods (2007-2013 and 2014-2020) and the spatial dimension of the regions of Slovakia and in the EU Member States. The main objective of the project is to contribute to the modelling of the effectiveness and efficiency of the EU's cohesion policy instruments in relation to the achievement of its objectives (macroeconomic view) and in relation to entities participating in European projects, such as local businesses (microeconomic view). Although the European Commission regularly evaluates the macroeconomic performance of cohesion policy, which is also extensively examined in numerous publications, microeconomic studies on a large sample are relatively rare. The project aims to fill this gap by focusing on the performance, efficiency and failures of entities directly or indirectly involved in EU-funded projects. The project also deals with the construction of models for the determinants of failures in entities involved in projects funded under the EU cohesion policy. The quantification of possibility of failure has direct practical application in the management of EU funds through the potential reduction of financial irregularities, increasing the proportion of successfully completed projects and subsequently achieving the objectives of EU cohesion policy. |
Evaluation the dynamics and nature of changes in the Slovak economy in a rapidly changing external environment
Hodnotenie dynamiky a charakteru zmien v slovenskej ekonomike v prudko sa meniacom externom prostredí
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2023 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | VEGA 2/0042/23 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | Ing. Jeck Tomáš PhD. |
| Annotation: | The Slovak economy has recently been exposed to unprecedented external shocks that fundamentally affect its current and future development. The effects of the pandemic and the war conflict in Ukraine have triggered the need to respond to the new reality at the Slovak and European level. The problem of stagnating productivity and the loss of traditional competitiveness (in the form of low unit labour costs) in the post-Covid era calls for a new understanding of economic policy that better links the promotion of productivity with human development. In this context, new challenges arise for public policies, particularly in the areas of the labour market (demographic challenges, migration), external economic relations, public budgets, science, research and innovation, not only domestically but also in relation to European policies and continued integration. The project is therefore aimed at exploring the dynamics and nature of these changes in the Slovak economy in a rapidly changing external environment. |
Convergence and polarization in the world economy
Konvergencia a polarizácia vo svetovej ekonomike
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2023 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | VEGA 2/0060/23 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | Ing. Hošoff Boris PhD. |
| Annotation: | The world economy has undergone a major transformation in the last decade, characterized by an intensification of the interaction of several long-term trends at the same time. In recent years, the changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects of military conflicts have added to the trends of climate change and population ageing. The responsible authorities are reacting on this development by investing heavily and adapting economic strategies to improve resilience of economies and the balance of development. The project proposal is based on the need to update knowledge and major trends in real convergence, identifying endogenous and exogenous determinants that have fundamentally marked this process in the last decade, while focusing on those factors that affect GDP per capita convergence and minimize the negative effects of income polarization. |
Methodological and Empirical Aspects of Subjective Welfare Measurement
Metodické a empirické aspekty merania subjektívneho blahobytu
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2023 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | VEGA 1/0034/23 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | doc. Ing. Pauhofová Iveta CSc. |
| Annotation: | The perceptions of individuals are an essential component of the complex perspective of a country’s socio-economic profile, and ultimately they comprise an essential element when forming social policies. Ignoring the subjective dimension of welfare hence suggests that people’s perceptions of their economic welfare is relatively unconsidered in policy development. The main scientific goal of the project is to propose novel approaches to estimating subjective poverty lines and to examine trends in subjective welfare in the context of broader socio-economic changes in the European Union. This project will contribute to the ongoing research in the field of subjective welfare and subjective well-being in numerous important ways. Among others, it will make contributions to the field of subjective poverty measurement, and it will to the field provide new empirical evidence on subjective poverty and associated phenomena in Europe. |
Modelling of accumulation of risks and imbalances in the financial sector
Modelovanie kumulácie rizík a nerovnováh vo finančnom sektore
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2024 - 31. 12. 2027 |
| Evidence number: | VEGA 2/0124/24 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | Ing. Košťálová Zuzana PhD. |
| Annotation: | The proposed project aims to contribute to the current state of modelling of risks and imbalances in the financial market, in particular in the credit market. Expansionary tendencies in the credit and real estate market, in a context of increasing price instability, increase possibility of imbalances that may threaten financial stability. Identifying expansionary phases and indicators that could predict accumulation of risks and imbalances is important from the perspective of economic and monetary policy makers. The intention is to develop models that can predict expansionary phase of the financial cycle and thus signal potential disruptions to financial stability. Our scientific approach and the results will contribute to the debate on considering risks for financial sector, predicting financial stability and will provide additional information that can serve in the context of financial sector supervision, namely for macroprudential policy purposes. |
A non-classical perspective on migration and economy. Assessing the impact of migration on household welfare through indicators of inclusive growth
Neklasický pohľad na migráciu a ekonomiku. Hodnotenie vplyvu migrácie na blahobyt domácností prostredníctvom ukazovateľov inkluzívneho rastu
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2024 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | VEGA 2/0172/24 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | Saher Liudmyla PhD. |
| Annotation: | The social and cultural impacts of migration can affect economic well-being. Despite the considerable number of studies, each large and sudden wave of migration needs to be studied separately because they all differ in some characteristics. Using the example of the forced migration of Ukrainians due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this research, through inclusive growth indicators, studies the impact of migration on the well-being of households in the Slovak Republic as the final and most important indicator of the functioning of the economic system. The research is carried out in two stages. In the first stage, the impact of migration on inclusive growth is determined. In the second stage, the impact of inclusive growth on households' well-being is assessed using economic and mathematical modeling methods. The methodology, based on the combination of microeconomic and macroeconomic data during the survey, more accurately assesses the state of well-being of households than the available statistics allow. The problem of fragmentation of microeconomic data in the study is solved by imputation methods to estimate missing values data on household income or consumption for all subgroups. |
NMEEUM - New Methods for Emotion-based Economic Uncertainty Modelling
Nové metódy modelovania ekonomickej neistoty založené na emóciách
| Duration: | 25. 9. 2025 - 31. 10. 2027 |
| Evidence number: | GV-2025-14-P04-Z2 |
| Program: | Iné projekty |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Koráb Petr PhD. |
| Annotation: | The project develops new methods for economic uncertainty and geopolitical risk inference using advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) models. The project improves understanding in two related areas: (1) identifying economic uncertainty, building on the EPU index of Baker et al. (2016), and (2) modeling geopolitical risk, introduced with the pivotal GPR index of Caldara and Iacoviello (2022). It employs an innovative methodology, combining semantic similarity identification with word embeddings from BERT and emotion recognition with RoBERTa. It expands geopolitical risk inference by utilizing qualified risk assessment in speech datasets from central banks, NATO, and the International Monetary Fund. The constructed indices will be accessible to the general public on a project website, with a processing architecture securing regular data updates. |
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Prínosy a náklady osobitného postavenia vybraných kategórií poistencov verejného zdravotného poistenia v kontexte zdravotnej a sociálnej politiky
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2024 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | 1/0182/24 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | doc. Ing. Domonkos Tomáš PhD. |
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Rozvoj vedeckej spolupráce s ekonomickou diaspórou
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2025 - 31. 8. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | 10I02-03-V01-00022 |
| Program: | Iné projekty |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Miklošovič Tomáš PhD. |
| Annotation: | The aim of the project is to strengthen and subsequently develop mutual relations with academic economists working abroad. Through the project activities, the likelihood of their return home and the use of their knowledge for the modernisation of Slovakia will be increased. The project also aims to support the organisation of events in Slovakia, inviting the Slovak scientific diaspora living abroad to these events. One of the sub-objectives of the project is to bridge the existence of a certain information asymmetry on the part of Slovak researchers working abroad, especially if they have not had contact with the Institute of Economic Research of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (IER SAS) or if they have had contact with the IER SAS for a relatively longer period of time. Such a reduction of information asymmetry is an important element of the possibility of deepening future research cooperation, which will not only result from joint research in the form of articles or projects, but will also potentially result in the decision of a Slovak researcher abroad to move his/her workplace back to Slovakia. The specific sub-objective of the project is also to establish and maintain contacts, especially with PhD students and young researchers working at foreign universities, whose mobility is usually higher, and who need to be especially motivated to return to Slovakia in view of the problem of brain drain in this specific group observed in the last decade. The project partner is the Slovak Economic Association (SEA), which is a voluntary scientific and professional association of economists working as a civic association. The aim of the Society is to contribute to the development and popularisation of economic science by supporting basic and applied research. SEA also supports the improvement of economic education in Slovakia with a special emphasis on the education of young talents. Membership in the Association is open to scientific economists, practitioners, doctoral students and students, as well as the professional public. |
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Transmisia menovej politiky v eurozóne: Úloha finančných nerovnováh
| Duration: | 1. 3. 2025 - 31. 12. 2028 |
| Evidence number: | VV-MVP-24-0427 |
| Program: | APVV |
| Project leader: | Ing. Fišera Boris PhD. |
| Annotation: | The recent inflation surge has underlined the importance of studying the transmission of monetary policy to inflation. Monetary policy tightening in the Euro Area (EA) and in most major economies in 2022-2023 was followed by a rapid disinflation with only limited output losses. While several explanations for this “soft landing” have been proposed, the role of imbalances in the financial system has remained largely unexplored. We hypothesize that the presence (absence) of financial imbalances might constrain (enhance) the ability of monetary policy to affect real variables such as inflation. We assume that the diverse inflation paths that were recently observed across the EA countries could be partly explained by varying magnitudes of financial imbalances across the EA that might have contributed to heterogeneous monetary transmission. The primary objective of this research proposal is thus to explore the effect of financial imbalances on the transmission of monetary policy in the EA, using a self-constructed financial cycle indicator (FCI) as a comprehensive measure of financial imbalances. Moreover, we also aim to construct an improved indicator of EA monetary policy shocks. Using these indicators, we aim to empirically study the conditionality of monetary policy transmission on the stage of the financial cycle. Using counterfactual analysis, we also aim to assess whether monetary policy would have been more effective if it had followed a policy rule that also responded to financial imbalances. |
Dawn of the Dead? Zombie firms in Slovakia
Úsvit mŕtvych? Zombie firmy na Slovensku
| Duration: | 1. 9. 2024 - 31. 8. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | 09I03-03-V04-00337 |
| Program: | Plán obnovy EÚ |
| Project leader: | doc. Ing. Baumöhl Eduard PhD. |
| Annotation: | The project is aimed at the so-called zombie firms within the Slovak business environment. These types of firms might represent a severe danger to an otherwise healthy economy, as a high share of zombie firms can lead to a decline in aggregate productivity either through a credit misallocation channel or through a congestion channel. The outcome is that zombie firms, in the end, reduce the profits of healthy firms, lower their investment and employment growth, and might represent a barrier to the entry of new companies. Within the project we will (i) analyze various measures for identifying zombie firms, (ii) estimate firm efficiency and compare healthy firms with their zombie counterparts, (iii) focus on zombie lending during the COVID-19 period, and (iv) calculate zombie firm survival rates in Slovakia. By fulfilling all these four goals, we should be able to provide a panoramic view of the prevalence of zombie firms in the Slovak economy; a topic that has not been covered in the conditions of the Slovak business environment yet. |
The impact of political and economic events in the global environment on energy prices and EU energy security: implications for the Slovak Republic
Vplyv politicko-ekonomických udalostí vo svetovom prostredí na ceny energie a energeticú bezpečnosť EÚ: implikácie pre Slovenskú republiku
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2023 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | VEGA 2/0003/23 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | prof. Ing. Obadi Saleh Mothana PhD. |
| Annotation: | Geopolitical and economic events in the global environment in recent years have significantly affected energy prices as well as the EU's energy security. The oil shocks, the global economic crisis, the ongoing and current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the diversity and asynchrony of EU economic policies are all instances that have highlighted the problematic situation of energy policy and energy security of the EU, as well as energy price fluctuations. Energy, represented by energy commities is closely linked to international politics, geopolitical economy and national security, has become one of the key factors in ever-changing international relations, which has a major impact on political, economic and social stability. The research will focus primarily on identifying the effects of political and economic events in the global environment on energy prices and energy security in the European Union, with a specific focus on the implications for the Slovak Republic. |
Projects total: 22