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Economic Aspects of the Epidemic Crisis: The Czech Republic in Central Europe

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2020

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the chosen economic aspects of the current crisis, provoked by the spreading of the novel coronavirus, in the Czech Republic. In the first part, the attention is paid to the development of unemployment & inflation, to the repeated revisions of the State Budget Act for 2020 due to the negative impacts on the tax revenues and the need for expansive fiscal policy, as well as to the changes of the monetary policy of the Czech National Bank, which are characterised by the decreases in the basic interest rates.

In the second part, an analysis of an alternative economic discourse opposing to the radically restrictive policy is conducted. I inquire into the nodal points of this kind of reasoning on the examples of the former President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus and the former high representatives of the Czech National Bank Zdeněk Tůma and Mojmír Hampl.

This right-wing discourse, which was weak at the beginning, has been gradually strengthening, currently being the major alternative position in relation to the restrictive, interventionist and highly redistributive Government's policy.