Martina Mysíková

• PhD
• The Czech Academy of Sciences

This paper examines the micro-determinants of unemployment durations and exits in Czechia, Poland and Austria. Our hazard estimates utilize EU-SILC data and identify national specificities in which individual, household and regional characteristics affect labor market outcomes. This concerns particularly the effects of education on jobfinding proba...

We show that economies of scale estimated individually for each EU country differ from the officially adopted OECD‐modified scale; the differences across the countries further confirm the prevailing East‐West disparity. Using the minimum income question in the 2019 EU‐Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey, we demonstrate that applying t...

We examine the role of unemployment inflows and outflows in contributing to unemployment cyclicality in Czechia and Poland, using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, and a three-state model of unemployment variance decomposition. We find that the labour market fluidity is higher in Poland than in Czechia, with P...

This book recapitulates the methodology of income poverty measurement applied in the EU and provides statistics and characteristics of the poor in Visegrád countries, supplemented by appendices with results for EU countries. After introducing the data, which is drawn from EU-SILC 2005-2018 and HBS 2010, the main analytical chapter focuses on method...

When developing anti-poverty policies, policymakers need accurate data on the prevalence of poverty. In this paper, we focus on subjective poverty, a concept which has been largely neglected in the literature, though it remains a conceptually appealing way to define poverty. The primary goal of this study is to re-examine the concept of subjective...

The at-risk-of-poverty rate, the relative income poverty indicator applied in the EU, can be highly sensitive to the equivalence scale used to transform household income to an equivalent for individuals. This study applies two well-established approaches to estimate the equivalence scale: an ‘objective’ one, based on consumption expenditures availa...

This article analyses the effects of minimum wage on employment in the Czech and Slovak Republics based on 2005–17 EU-SILC data. Our results contribute to the scant literature on minimum wage effects in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. While prior empirical findings concurred with the effects of minimum wage on labour market outcomes...

Purpose – The authors aim to demonstrate the impact of allowing for unequal intra-household distribution of resources on income poverty and income inequality. Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies a collective consumption model to study the intrahousehold distribution of resources in Visegrad countries (V4). It utilises subjective financi...

This paper proposes a novel methodology for the estimation of subjective poverty lines (SPLs) using a discrete information approach that obviates the potential discomfort of asking respondents directly about the value of their individual SPL. To estimate income SPLs, we utilize the Youden index. Using a simulated data-set, we first show that the le...

We analyse labour market prospects of unemployed Czechs and Slovaks aged 50-65. Those aged 55 and over face the most diminished opportunities for re-employment and the strongest incentives to withdraw from the labour force. Women and individuals in poor health also fall into strongly disadvantaged/ discouraged subcategories. Education levels or reg...

This paper estimates the youth employment effects of minimum wages in the Visegrád countries: Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The analyses are based on a regional panel dataset for the period 2003-16. Our results indicate that changes in minimum wages measured as a ratio of regional average wages have not negatively affected youth employmen...

We analyse the extent and determinants of somewhat gloomy employment prospects of older unemployed populations in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia. For this purpose, we explore European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions over the period 2004–2014. Survival estimates suggest that older unemployed workers face lower job...

The primary objective of this study was to analyse the development of the effect of the bachelor’s and master’s tertiary degree on both respondents’ wage and socioeconomic status in the Czech labour market ten years after the Bologna Process. For the purposes of the study, structural modelling was applied using the European Union Statistics on Inco...

Severe material deprivation, a dimension of the poverty and social exclusion index, one of Europe 2020 Strategy headline indicators, is defined as enforced lack of at least four of nine specific items. Proposals for modifications in the indicator include the Material and Social Deprivation indicator which is based on an updated set of thirteen item...

The conventional optics of social stratification research—in which the social position of the family unit is seen as being determined by the status of the male head of the household—have been challenged since the early 1970s. Similarly, economic research which views the household as a single unit has been questioned. Changing family circumstances a...

The methodology used to determine the at-risk-of-poverty rate commonly applied in the European context is often criticised for arbitrary steps in its construction. This study questions the first step-the equivalence scale applied to transform the disposable income of households of different sizes into comparable units. First, we hypothesise that ec...

Studies into the relation between subjective perceptions of individuals and objective economic conditions have usually resulted in ambiguous empirical findings. Whilst most studies perceive subjective welfare as being operationalized by indicators of happiness or life satisfaction, we narrow the approach to an economic domain of subjective well-bei...

This chapter analyzes youth labor market dynamics, their structure, and their policy implications, focusing on selected European Union countries during the various stages of the Great Recession and comparing flows between labor market statuses for young people (aged 16 – 34 years) with those for prime-age individuals (aged 35 – 54 years). The flow...

In the Czech public and professional discourse, there is a strong rhetoric of a rooted egalitarianism of the society. This study thus traces various objective and subjective dimensions of socio-economic inequality in an attempt to examine the validity of this rhetoric. It uses various data on levels and trends in earnings, household income and livi...

In the public and professional discourse, there is a strong rhetoric about a rooted Czech egalitarianism. This study traces various – objective and subjective – dimensions of socio-economic inequality in an attempt to examine the validity of this rhetoric. It uses data on trends in income and living conditions in The Czech Republic in comparison wi...

Unemployment and Age-based Labor Market Segmentation We analyze age-specific labor market dynamics in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia over the period 2009-2012. We document a marginalized status of young workers aged 16-24, whose risk of job loss followed by unemployment is two to three times higher than that of prime-age workers (35-49)....

In the 1990s, the transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe witnessed an upward trend in returns to education, unlike in Western European countries. This upward trend led to much higher returns than in what was observed in the communist period or compared to the West. The surveys EU-SILC collected since 2005 show that although returns to t...

This article analyzes personal earnings distribution in the Czech Republic, Austria, and Poland, using EU-SILC longitudinal data. It captures a before-crisis period, 2004–2007, and a period impacted by the economic crisis, 2007–2010. It focuses on earnings distribution from three perspectives. First, it applies a relative distribution method to ver...

This article analyses personal earnings distribution in the Czech Republic (CR) since the early transition from communism, using a relative distribution method. It applies data from two surveys, the national Microcensus (MC) and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), covering the period 1988–2013. The trend of “hol...

The book describes the fields of work and family in the Czech Republic in comparison with European countries using statistical and sociological surveys. The first part is devoted to the labour market and education. The second part aims at objective and subjective well-being, their indicators and determinants. The third part describes work and life...

The article deals with life and job satisfaction of the Czech working-age population. First it highlights concepts of happiness and satisfaction within the emerging multidimensional approaches to individual and societal well-being. Then, it resumes the data sources of those measures, with specific attention to the Module on Subjective Well-being of...

Educational mismatch in labour markets is a phenomenon that has been widely analysed, mainly with respect to rising concerns about a possible oversupply of graduates. Like most European countries, the Czech Republic has experienced a boom in tertiary education in the last decade. The incidence and determinants of over- and undereducation vary subst...

See also "2020 Update of Tables and Figures" here: https://www.soc.cas.cz/sites/default/files/publikace/vecernik_mysikova-poverty_in_the_czech_republic.pdf

Within-couple earnings distribution can be of great importance, especially in transition countries. The transition from communist-style compulsory employment (that is, the policy of almost full employment of both men and women) to a diversified labour market with increasing earnings inequality may considerably change the within-household income str...

This paper uses the national EU-SILC 2013 data to analyse the impact of the distribution of personal income between partners on reported financial wellbeing of couples in the Czech Republic. It focuses on partners in two life stages: couples raising children and couples with empty nests. On average, women contribute substantially less to the househ...

Empirical literature offers a number of studies suggesting that living conditions in childhood can significantly influence achievements and living conditions in adulthood. The aim of this paper is to answer the question: To what extent is the intergenerational transmission of poverty associated with social mobility (in terms of educational and occu...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on earnings inequality within dual-earner couples in four Central-East European (CEE) countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. It aims to analyse the factors that influence earnings distribution within couples. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis uses OLS regression applie...

Our analysis confirms a lower degree of fluidity on Polish/Czech labour markets compared to Austria. In particular, we find evidence on higher employment rigidity and on lower employability of unemployed in Poland and Czech Republic. The major employment policy challenge faced by Poland and the Czech Republic is actually embodied in much lower job...

Cross-national comparisons on returns to education were so far based on secondary evidence from national studies. Unlike in Western European countries, in Eastern countries the data on the levels and development of returns since 1990 shows a uniform upward trend in returns to higher education. Since 2004, the European Union Statistics on Income and...

Using Spain and the Czech Republic as examples of two EU countries with different labour market performance, we apply a gross flow analysis based on EU-SILC longitudinal data. We find that while in Spain the increases in youth unemployment are driven mostly by young people who lose their jobs, in the Czech Republic, this is mainly due to new labour...

While poverty has long been a phenomenon closely related to the life cycle of family, in recent decades is increasingly dependent on the economic participation of household members. In addition, this change in post-communist countries is associated with the economic and social transformation, which has led to an increasing income inequality. The st...

This article contributes to the debate about the impact of the transition on subjective well-being. After reviewing the relevant literature the authors draw on the surveys of the European Values Study of 1991, 1999 and 2008 to describe the trends in life satisfaction in 13 Western and 11 Eastern countries. The analysis finds that life satisfaction...

We analyse labour market flows and unemployment rate dynamics in the Czech Republic (CR), Slovakia and Poland. Relative involvement of working-age individuals in movements between various labour market states appears to be approximately five times lower in Central Europe than in the U.S./UK. Compared to neighbouring countries, the CR suffers from a...

We estimate the impact of unemployment duration on exits from unemployment, along with a set of individual and other explanatory variables. The analysis is based on EU-SILC longitudinal data for the period 2007–2010 and involves Spain and the Czech Republic as examples of the two EU countries with remarkably different labour market performance but...

Educational mismatch in labour markets is a phenomenon that has been widely analysed, mainly with respect rising concerns about possible oversupply of graduates. Similarly to most European countries, the Czech Republic has experienced a boom in tertiary education in the last decade. The incidence and the determinants of over-and undereducation vary...

This study focuses on comparison of factors of job satisfaction within Europe. The rare comparative papers on this subject commonly compare Western Europe (WE) and Eastern Europe (EE) by pooling data on the two regions. By contrast, this analysis takes into account dis/similarities within each of the two regions. We use an ordered probit regression...

This paper contributes to the debate about the impact of the transition to subjective well-being. After reviewing the relevant literature the authors draw on the surveys of the European Values Study between 1991 and 2008 to describe the trends in life satisfaction in 13 "Western" and 11 "Eastern" countries. The analysis finds that life satisfaction...

This paper aims to quantify the basic structure of gender wage gaps in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, using the EU-SILC 2008 dataset. The structure of the gender wage gap is analyzed based on the Heckman selection model and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. The findings are to a great extent similar for the Czech and Slovak Republic...

This paper analyzes the inequality of personal earnings in the Czech Republic since the early transition from communism, using relative distribution method. It applies data from two surveys, Microcensus and Living Conditions, covering the period from 1988 to 2008. The trend suggested by many recent empirics, “hollowing of the middle”, was confirmed...

Šetření European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) je důležitým zdrojem komparativním statistických dat. Ačkoli je šetření harmonizováno Eurostatem, individuální mikrodata obsahují mnoho rozdílů mezi zúčastněnými zeměmi, které vznikají kvůli odlišnostem v národních podmínkách, ve způsobu sběru dat či v jejich zpracování. Cí...

This study analyses the income distribution within couples in the Czech Republic and ten European countries using the EU-SILC 2005 database. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database supplement the analysis with previous period (1986–2000). Women, on average, contribute less to a couple’s income than men. Among the included countries, wi...

This paper aims to quantify the impact of social benefits on labour market participation in the Czech Republic and provides a comparison with selected European countries. It applies the logistic regression to estimate the probability of labour market participation depending on social benefits related to net wage of the individuals, controlling for...

This paper aims to quantify the impact of social benefits on labor market participation in the Czech Republic. It applies the logistic regression to estimate the probability of labor market participation depending on social benefits related to net wage of the individuals, controlling for individual and household characteristics (age, presence of sp...

This paper aims to quantify the impact of the minimum wage on labour market performance in the Czech Republic. Using regional data for 1995-2004, it estimates the effect of the minimum wage adjusted for regional wage differential on the regional unemployment. Consequently, using detail individual data from 2004/2005, we analyze the annual hikes in...

This paper aims to quantify the impact of the minimum wage on labor market performance in the Czech Republic. Using regional data for 1995–2004, it estimates the effect of the minimum wage adjusted for the regional wage differential on regional unemployment. Consequently, using detailed individual data from 2004/2005, the authors analyze the annual...

This study is concerned with decomposing the gender pay gap in the Czech Republic. It aims not only to compare male and female wage-equations but also to uncover the gender pay gap structure. The decision of many women not to participate in the labor market can be influenced by potentially low wages. Their entry into the labor market could increase...