The recent outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has made a significant impact on the global financial markets. The aim of this paper is to assess the short-term reaction of the Visegrad countries’ financial markets to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Visegrad Group is a political alliance of four Central European countries, namely Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The financial assessment is based on the EUR/CZK, EUR/HUF, and EUR/PLN exchange rates and the major blue-chip stock market indices, that is Prague PX, Budapest BUX, Warsaw WIG20, and Bratislava SAX. It is evident that the ongoing pandemic has changed the expectations of the financial market participants about the future value of exchange rates in the Visegrad countries. This study indicates that, as a consequence of COVID-19, higher probability has been attached to the large depreciation of the Czech koruna (CZK), the Hungarian forint (HUF), and the Polish zloty (PLN) than to their large appreciation. Moreover, based on the TGARCH model, the positive and significant correlation between the number of reported COVID-19 cases and the exchange rates has been confirmed, implying that the ongoing pandemic has resulted in the depreciation of the Visegrad currencies. Additionally, the result of the TGARCH model reveals that there is a significant and negative link between the Visegrad stock market indices and the COVID-19 spread.

Although the EU and the USA are the largest players in the global agricultural market, there are only a few up-to-date comparative studies concerning their agricultural potential and performance. No comprehensive study covering all individual EU member states in relation to the USA has been provided so far. Considering that in the light of the lasting impasse in the negotiations on both international and transatlantic trade liberalization, differences in the production structures seem to be a decisive factor affecting competitiveness of the EU and the US agriculture, the paper attempts to identify the gap in the agricultural potential between individual EU countries and the USA and determine which EU countries are able to face the competitive pressure exerted by the US agricultural producers. Ward’s agglomerative hierarchical clustering method with the Euclidean distance was used to separate the most and the least competitive countries depending on their agricultural potential. Based on the conducted analyses it may be stated that the US agriculture is characterized by more rational ratios between production factors, resulting in their higher efficiency compared to the EU. The conducted typological analysis showed that thanks to the high standard of capital assets per employee leading to high labor productivity, only such countries as Germany, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, and Belgium may be considered as capable of meeting the competitive pressure exerted by the US agriculture with its greater degree of concentration and benefits from proper proportions between the production factors. A much more difficult competitive situation is observed in the EU countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Mediterranean region, specializing in land- and labor-intensive production, in which the rational utilization of the production potential is limited by the structural deficit, resulting from the fragmented agrarian structure and manifested in the low level of land and capital assets assigned to labor actively involved in the production process.

The agrarian structure in Poland is dominated by small farms; the large share of these is a result of historical consequences. The economy has pushed small farms toward economic efficiency, which in farming often translates into increasing the scale of production. The primary objective of this research was to present the directions of the changes in the number of small farms in Central and Eastern Poland and to indicate the factors determining their functioning and development. The research was based on a random sample selection from rural municipalities, villages and small farms. The researchers collected 19 completed surveys from municipal agricultural officers, 75 surveys from village mayors and 116 surveys from small and active farms. The data from the farm surveys was analysed using k-mean cluster analyses and the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to distinguish farms into homogenous groups. Three types of farms were identified: “hobby”, “two-occupation” and “professional” farms. The research shows that in the municipalities of Central and Eastern Poland, the number of landowners (over 1 ha of arable land) paying agricultural tax increased by 9% between 2005 and 2017. A significant gap was identified between the number of “official farmers” and “active” farmers. In the farm category surveyed, “active” farmers numbered only 33% of all farming entities. The surveys confirmed that the development of small farms is particularly influenced by external factors (EU funding; national benefits), rather than internal (entrepreneurial) factors. An in-depth survey of farmers, municipal agricultural officers and village mayors shows that “professional” farmers (Cluster 0) are expected to invest, develop and innovate. Farmers managing “hobby” and “two-occupation” farms have a reserved attitude towards investment and their objective is to maximise the benefits related to the arming status. In the authors’ opinions, “professional” farms have the highest probability of being economically viable, while others tend to focus on the provision of public goods related to financial support.

Securitization of the agricultural commodity market has accelerated since the beginning of the 21st century, particularly in the times of financial market uncertainty and crisis. Sugar belongs to the group of important agricultural commodities. The global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a substantial increase in the stock market volatility. Moreover, the novel coronavirus hit both the sugar market’s supply and demand side, resulting in sugar stock changes. The paper aims to assess potential structural changes in the relationship between sugar prices and the financial market uncertainty in a crisis time. In more detail, using sequential Bai–Perron tests for structural breaks, we check whether the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have induced structural breaks in that relationship. Sugar prices are represented by the S&P GSCI Sugar Index, while the S&P 500 option-implied volatility index (VIX) is used to show stock market uncertainty. To investigate the changes in the relationship between sugar prices and stock market uncertainty, a regression model with a sequential Bai–Perron test for structural breaks is applied for the daily data from 2000–2020. We reveal the existence of two structural breaks in the analysed relationship. The first breakpoint was linked to the global financial crisis outbreak, and the second occurred in December 2011. Surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has not induced the statistically significant structural change. Based on the regression model with Bai–Perron structural changes, we show that from 2000 until the beginning of the global financial crisis, the relationship between the sugar prices and the financial market uncertainty was insignificant. The global financial crisis led to a structural change in the relationship. Since August 2008, we observe a significant and negative relationship between the S&P GSCI Sugar Index and the S&P 500 option-implied volatility index (VIX). Sensitivity analysis conducted for the different financial market uncertainty measures, i.e., the S&P 500 Realized Volatility Index confirms our findings.

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, the scientific journal of the Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic