O16 - Economic Development: Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and GovernanceReturn

The article identifies characteristics of Czech individuals, which influence participation rate and contribution size in the government-subsidized supplementary retirement savings scheme, the 3rd pillar of the pension system. Using the representative sample of individuals, I show that men are by 8 percentage points more likely to participate in the 3rd pillar than women, but their average contributions are of similar size. Higher participation rates as well as contributions exhibit employees with higher incomes, older people and those working longer hours. More than a third (36%) of participants contributed 500 Czech crowns monthly to the 3rd pillar, which was identical with a ceiling, valid until the end of 2012, for a government subsidy of 0.3 crowns per each crown contributed. These results suggest that a large share of population has a larger propensity for long-term saving than they actually save.

Foreign direct investments are generally considered as one of the factors with positive influence on the economic development of countries in which this investments flow. In evaluating the impact of foreign direct investment on development, however, a key question is whether foreign direct investment crowd in domestic investment, or foreign direct investment crowd out domestic investment. The aim of this paper is to examine whether foreign direct investment in selected countries of Balkan crowds in or crowds out domestic investment. For this purpose we apply theoretical model of investment that includes foreign direct investment as an exogenous variable. We proceed test it with panel data for the period 1993 - 2009 and the two subperiods 1993 - 1999 and 2000 - 2009. We found that for the time period 1993 - 2009 and the two subperiods 1993 - 1999 and 2000 - 2009 there was an evidence of crowding out effect or neutral effect in the selected countries of Balkan.