CEEOL - Search Result

Rosatom's Activities in the Asian Market

Author(s): Hedvika Koďousková / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Asian Market; Civil nuclear power development; Rosatom's activities;

As far as civil nuclear power development is concerned, the research identified several different groups of players in the Asian market: 1) mature countries with their own nuclear technology and services export programs (i.e., Japan, South Korea, and increasingly China); 2) countries which operate nuclear power plants, but have had otherwise limited participation in the nuclear sector due to being non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (i.e., India until 2008, Pakistan); and 3) newcomers to the sector, who decided to address their rapidly growing energy demand by developing their own nuclear power-generating capacity (e.g. Vietnam and Bangladesh).

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Natural Gas Market Of the European Union and Its Impact on the Position of Gazprom in Europe

Author(s): Filip Černoch / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Natural gas market; European Union; Gazprom;

Natural gas markets in the EU are characterised by the high level of import dependency resulting from the combination of decreasing indigenous production and stable or increasing demand. Despite significant share of LNG, the EU imports most of its consumption from Norway, Russia and Algeria.The producers in this countries are often state controlled and function in close cooperation with the government (Talus, 2014). Given the accusations of Gazprom misusing gas suppliesas a political tool, the EU faces a challenge how to cope with this company as a significant energy supplier.

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Country Case Study: Belarus

Author(s): Anna Leshchenko / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Belarus; Russia; Energy and gas sector;

From the political, economic and security relations point of view, Belarus is often considered to be the closest ally among Russia's neighbours (Garbe, Hett & Lindner, 2011, p. 188). In the times of USSSR's existence, Belarus was Byelorussian SSR a federal republic, within which significant production capacities of Soviet industry existed, especially the heavy industry and consumer production.

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Country Case Study: Slovak Republic

Author(s): Lukáš Lehotský / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Slovakia; Natural gas from Russia; main transit route; pipeline system;

Slovak Republic has played a key role in transit of natural gas from Russia to Western Europe, the domestic demand of country is not very significant. It has oscillated between 4.5 to 7 billions of cubic meters (bcm) annually for the last 30 years. The final consumption of gas in Slovakia was expected to be slightly above 5 bcm in 2014. According to IEA data from 2012, share of gas in total final consumption of gas was slightly above 30%.

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Country Case Study: Ukraine

Author(s): Anna Leshchenko / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Ukraine; Russia; Economic relations; gas and oil extractions;

Regarding their geographical closeness and historical interconnection of economies, Russia and Ukraine maintained high level of political and economic cooperation even after the end of the so called Cold War. In the 1990s of 20th century under President Leonid Kuchma Ukrainian foreign policy was characterized by being “multi-vectoral”, when attempts to establish closer relations with EU states and the US were compensated by active political and economic cooperation with Russia.

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Activities of Gazprom in Asia and the "Eastern Dimension" in Russian Energy Policy

Author(s): Hedvika Koďousková / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Gazprom; Asia; Russian energy policy; Asian gas market; energy policy;

In the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s, there were practically no major efforts of Russia to diversify its oil and gas exports beyond Europe. Except for some preliminary agreements between Russian private players with potential Asian consumers (see below), there were no gas purchase and sale contracts concluded as well as no major infrastructure constructed, which would connect Russian vast but untapped Eastern Siberian and the Far Eastern gas resources with Asian market.

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Summary of findings

Author(s): Martin Jirušek / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Natural gas; Central and Eastern Europe; Nuclear and gas sector; Russia;

The aim of the research was to provide an insight into the conduct of Russian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in natural gas and nuclear sector and test the following hypothesis:„Russian energy companies in natural gas and nuclear sector actin order to maximize their influence on CEE markets and to strengthen Russian geopolitical influence in this region.“ This section is intended to address the natural gas sector, i. e. Gazprom's conduct in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. For this purpose, a theoretical model based on the strategic approach to energy policy was developed.

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Overal Conclusion

Author(s): Martin Jirušek,Roger W. Jr. Robinson / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Rosatom; Gazprom; marketplace; Energy supply; NPP; state-owned energy enterprise;

After an exhaustive research process, several popular assumptions about the operations and behaviour of Rosatom and Gazprom were validated, while several others proved exaggerated or outright incorrect. Rosatom, in particular, faces competitors in a high-end (technically), high-cost marketplace,and hence is visible and monitored by prospective sovereign customers. The company, therefore, must show extra caution concerning the politicization of any of its actions for fear of market estrangement.

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Evaluation of User Interface Usability of Public Administration Webpages by Models

Author(s): Barbora Musilová,Miloslav Hub / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: usability; models; user interfaces; usability evaluation;

This article presents a not well-known way of usability evaluation and it focuses on user interface evaluation using models. It is another method of evaluating, apart from user and the expert evaluation. This article presents a short review of the existing models and it is focused on usability evaluation. There are seven basic models. Some of them are demanding because of their time requirements; other because of their knowledge demands; or there is a combination of both factors.

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Small and Medium Size Enterprises in the Municipality Public Procurement and Municipal Companies. Case Study of the Czech Republic

Author(s): Radek Jurčík / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: public administration; public contracts; small and medum size enterpises; municipalities; municipal companies

The paper explores the relationship between procurement and implementation SMEs with the municipality aspect. This article highlights the fact that the new policy within the EU is to support SMEs in public procurement. The article deals with some spatial relations of public contracts in the Czech Republic. Focus is on public contracts awarded statutory cities of the Czech Republic and its municipal companies.

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Risk-Taking Attitudes and Lottery Experiment

Author(s): Jozef Nemec,Tomáš Želinský,Matúš Kubák / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: lottery game; DoSpeRT; regression;

We carry out framed lottery game experiments with the aim to study whether economic agents behave in accordance with expected utility theory. We control for socio-economic background of the participants and we use Domain-Specific Risk-Taking [DoSpeRT) scale to detect, which of the five risk domains [ETHICAL, FINANCIAL, HEALTH, RECREATIONAL, SOCIAL) have most impact on risky behavior in a lottery game. We find out, that females are more rational than males in non-risky environment and males are more rational in a risky environment. Also, the evidence of more frequent use of risky strategy by males is found.

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Exploring the Emerging Impacts of Open Data in the Public Sector

Author(s): Renata Machova,Martin Lněnička / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: open data; open government; impact; public sector; partial least squares;

Open Government Data initiatives, and in particular open data portals, are being developed at the national, regional, local and international level. The increasing availability of open data affects the whole economy. Therefore, this paper explores the emerging impacts of these data in the public sector by using key aspects and attributes of existing e-government development indices. It extends the previously published models and evaluates the impacts of open data enabling factors and also generating mechanisms in the economic, educational, environmental, health, politics and legislation, social, and trade and business development.

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Evaluation of Ministerial Employee Satisfaction within the Context of the Civil Service Act

Author(s): Milan Půček,František Ochrana,Michal Plaček / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: ministrial employee; satisfaction; Civil Service Act;

The paper presents the results of empirical research [April-June 2013) regarding the employees of ministries in the Czech Republic [N = 1351 respondents) who deal with analytical, conceptual, strategic, planning, project, programming, strategic and managerial activities. From the current perspective, it regards workers who fall under the regime of the Civil Service Act, which came into effect on 1.1.2015. The main objective of the survey was to explore some aspects of employee satisfaction linked to performance in their position. Based on the survey results, we define the previous state which existed prior to the introduction of new legislation and discuss the possible impacts of the new legislation on employee satisfaction and on the level of the civil service as a whole.

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Impact of Decentralization on the Efficiency of Public Procurement. The Case of the Czech Republic

Author(s): Milan Půček,František Ochrana,Martin Schmidt,Michal Plaček / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: public procurement; decentralization; centralization; efficiency; accountability;

The article examines the impact of decentralization factors on the efficiency of public procurement. We analyzed the influence of these factors using an econometric model applied to data on public procurement purchases of gas for the years 2013-2014. In the context of the available data, this tender procedure is with a relatively homogeneous subject of performance, which significantly eliminates the possible distortion of the results due to various quality parameters of the required performance and different methods for determining the estimated value of public contracts.

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Offer, Receive and Share: How to Measure Proposers in fMRI Ultimatum and Dictator Game

Author(s): Lenka Kopečková,Jan ŘEZÁČ / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: fMRI; proposer; empathy; ultimatum; dictator;

Ultimatum game is in fMRI tested overwhelmingly from the responder's point of view. We assessed experimental designs which would allow for simultaneous testing of a proposer and a receiver under hyperscanning protocol. Our final laboratory designs use a specific set of choice sets and enables an iterated ultimatum game combined with control condition and dictator game. We run two pilots with different settings.

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Politicization of Civil Service in Slovakia: Case Study of Selected Ministries in 2004-2014

Author(s): Naďa Adamicová,Katarina Staronova / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: top civil service; politicization; turnover; Slovakia; Central Europe;

Politicization of top civil service in Central and Eastern Europe has been discussed among both academics and practitioners for some time now. It has been concluded that the politicization of civil servants has resurged since the accession into the EU, which has lead to a great deal of uncertainty among civil service. Nevertheless, the evidence on turnover is mostly stemming from interviews and expert survey since CEE countries lack basic data on HR functions. This paper wants to address this gap and looks into turnover data [both scope and depth) among top civil service officials at the six Slovak ministries between 2004 and 2014. During this period, the Slovak government was completely changed three times.

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Knowledge Management in Public Administration. What Can Be Found in Research Outputs in the Czech Republic - Preliminary Findings

Author(s): David Špaček / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: knowledge management; public administration; public management;

The paper first introduces the topic of knowledge management in public administration. Its main focus is to summarize how it was approached in research in the Czech Republic. The research of which the preliminary results are presented is based on research outputs as recorded in the Czech information system for research, experimental development and innovations [the called "RIV"). The results indicate particularly the novelty of the topic as well as relatively high ICT-oriented approaches.

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Does Negative News Create Tax Evaders? Evidence from a Tax Compliance Experiment

Author(s): Jiří Špalek,Otto Eibl,Zuzana Špačková,Jozef Zagrapan,Miloš Fišar / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: experiment; tax; compliance; evasion; media; framing;

Tax evasion is perceived as one of the main problems of public finance. People tend to avoid paying taxes if they do not recognise a return in the form of public goods provided by the state or local government. The rate of tax compliance might also be affected by external factors such as the media, which hold great power over public opinion. We conducted a laboratory experiment to study whether the framing of the effectiveness of state spending influenced the decision to pay taxes. Subjects read news headlines with information on how state institutions spend their budgets.

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The Paradox of "Lost Engagement" in the Public Sector Theory

Author(s): Petr Wawrosz,Radim Valenčík / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: engagement of public sector theory; human and social capital; sector of productive services; transferred price;

The paper deals with the paradox of “lost engagement” in the public sector theory. Although we face in the present time many serious problems public sector theory does not to them pay appropriate attention. Even when some problems are reflected by theory, the reflection does not sufficiently affect real life or the reflection represents only sporadic attempts. The paper brings examples of the Czech scientific paper that are engaged, it means they try to analyze the serious problems in time of publishing the paper. Further we shortly discuss Czech and foreign books trying complexly analyze development of the world in the latest fifty years. Based on this we will outline what an engaged and comprehensive concept of the presence should include and why its important part should be a solution of principal issues of the public sector.

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Usefulness of Tax Assignation for the Czech Tax System: The Direction of Debates on Introducing

Author(s): Vladimír Hyánek,Marie Hladká / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: gift; non-profit organization; tax assignation; tax designation scheme;

The Czech Republic is the only country of the Visegrad Four that still does not apply the percentage tax designation scheme as one of the forms of financing of the non-profit sector. The mechanism has been discussed in the Czech Republic for years, however the idea has not been put to practice yet. A number of these discussions was approached as seeking a vision for the future while in other cases the discussions shifted to the political level or studies were drawn up on introducing the mechanism to the Czech legislation.The authors present the direction and development of debates on introducing percentage tax designation scheme in the Czech Republic, introduce arguments presented for and against the percentage tax designation scheme and estimate impact of the introduction in the Czech Republic.

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