The paper analyzes selected indicators monitoring the socioeconomic conditions of the European Union with regard to reducing inequalities. The main attention is paid to the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goal 10, which calls for reducing inequalities within and among countries. The empirical part of the study is based on two separate studies and the data source is Eurostat. The first study focuses on the dynamics of the SDG10 indicators for the EU27. Due to the limited availability of all SDG10 indicators, the timeframe of this study covers the years 2010–2019. As a result, the SDG10 indicators for the EU27 as a whole are analyzed over that period or via a comparison of disparities between the two extreme dates, i.e., between 2010 and 2019. The second study focuses on the analysis of (dis)similarities of 27 individual European Union member states with respect to a set of variables capturing the socioeconomic conditions of these countries. The method used is cluster analysis, supported by the linear ordering method and principal component analysis. Due to the limited availability of indicators measuring the progress towards SDG10, especially those related to the evaluation of a citizenship gap, the second research does not use all indicators directly assigned to SDG10 (because most of them are not available for all countries), but rather employs a set of additional variables that may potentially affect the levels and dynamics of inequalities among and within countries. The general conclusion of the study is that the analysis of SDG10 indicators over the medium term (i.e., over the period 2010–2019) implies that the EU27 was able to make progress in reducing inequalities among countries; however, the income inequalities within countries persist or have even deepened. The insights from multivariate statistical methods emphasize the existing disparities between a group of countries, including Spain, Bulgaria, and Romania, and the rest of the EU countries in both analyzed years (i.e., in 2010 and 2019), regardless of the set of variables applied in analyses. Moreover, the results highlight the persistence in disparities between “old” and “new” member states and suggest the disparity between the “peripheral” and the rest of the “old” EU countries. Furthermore, the role of expenditure on social protection in affecting income disparities is emphasized, as is the impact of demographic factors in emphasizing the differences in socioeconomic situations across EU member states.

Prague Economic Papers - impact factor journal of the University of Economics, Prague

In this article we analyze the effectiveness of fiscal policy—for a group of four Central and Eastern European countries. The recent literature shows that fiscal multipliers in the developed economies are higher during recession than expansion. So far, similar empirical analyses have been lacking for CEE countries. The results presented in this article show that fiscal multipliers in CEE countries differ with respect to the phase of the business cycle. Based on the SVAR methodology in which we allow for deterministic regime switching, we show that the government spending multipliers are significantly higher when the output gap is negative.

The importance of the central bank and the government conducting their policies has increased recently, with more attention being given to the effectiveness of policy mix. The non-cooperative models of the monetary and fiscal game are frequently employed to study interactions between both authorities. The models assume that the authorities take into account each other’s choices when making decisions. It is also important to remember when seeking equilibrium in the non-cooperative models that in the Nash Equilibrium (which is sought in this study) the parties try to come up with the best response to the opponent’s decision. The aim of the paper is to present the Nash Equilibrium in a non-cooperative game between the government and the central bank using a non-cooperative model of a fiscal-monetary game (a policy-mix MODEL). This study demonstrates that in the Nash Equilibrium in the model, the budget deficit and interest rate of an EU member state depend on the exogenous data (external to the model), such as inflation target, base inflation and the Maastricht deficit limit. This study is enhanced by an analysis of the government and central bank’s sensitivity to the deep parameters of economic variables.

The aim of this study is to compare the implementation of sustainable development goals targeted at an important area of socio-economic life: quality education. The study focuses on a sample of 28 European Union countries and uses multivariate approaches to check to what extent the goals have been achieved. Due to data availability, the study is based on data for 2018. Regardless of the employed method, the results, presented in the form of rankings, show that Romania and Italy achieved the lowest positions and were outliers; in contrast, Sweden was the best performer. The rankings underscore the differences within the European Union, highlighting the dissimilarities between countries. The results show that globalisation and the creation of unified policy frameworks in the European Union require additional effort at the domestic level, especially since education is an important element of the European Union’s strategies and the Sustainable Development Goals announced by the United Nations.

The aim of this article is to investigate the similarities between the EU countries in terms of achieving the Europe 2020 Strategy goals. Due to the latest data availability, the analysis is based on the year 2014. The study uses grouping methods, including the k-means algorithm. The results indicate the existence of a division between the "old" and "new" European Union Member States. However, as is shown, some of the Strategy's targets have already been achieved and some indicators have been nearly achieved, whereas among others, such as implementation of the headline indicator for investment in the R&D sector as a % of GDP is uncertain. The average performance of headline indicators for the EU-15 and EU-13 countries seems to be similar and exhibits the same trend of changes.