Purpose: The aim of the paper is to analyse the factors of sustainability of the public policy subsidising start-ups for the unemployed in Slovakia. Design/Methodology/Approach: The analysis assesses the sustainability of subsidies in the period 2012-2016 based on data provided by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Logistic regression was used to identify the key factors. Findings: Research shows that in times of economic growth, policies to support the self-employment of the unemployed are a particularly effective form of active labour market policy, especially in the more developed regions. On the contrary, when serving as a business support tool, they lead to very low survival rates of the subsidised companies compared to results of other studies. In terms of factors affecting this sustainability, the length of unemployment, the amount of support, as well as regional characteristics emerge as the most significant. Practical implications: The results allow for a better definition of the conditions for providing subsidies to the unemployed to start a business in the future, while also showing that this instrument leads to employment retention rather than to the promotion of entrepreneurial activities. Originality/value: The research was carried out under specific conditions that had been little explored so far. The policy was evaluated at a time of strong economic growth accompanied by a significant reduction in unemployment. Also worth noting is that it was carried out in a country with some of the most pronounced regional disparities, which made it possible to compare the impact of the policy in different starting conditions.

The presented paper deals with the regionalization of the electoral support of the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) in regional elections using methods and techniques of spatial data analysis. The aim is to answer the question whether the territorial distribution of Pirate electoral support allows this party to participate in governance at the regional level and thus influence the form of regional policy in individual regions. The results of the analysis show that the spatial distribution of Pirates’ electoral support in regional elections differed quite significantly not only from the pattern found in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament and elections to the European Parliament, but also between individual regional elections. This suggests the current lack of anchorage of Pirates’ electoral support in regional politics, but at the same time, it may have its origins in the second-order character of regional elections and the candidacy of many local and regional entities in regional elections. On the other hand, the results of the regional elections in 2020 meant that the Pirates received seats in all regional councils, but especially in nine of the thirteen regions they joined the regional government (similarly to two years earlier when they joined government of capital city of Prague), gaining the opportunity to influence, with regard to its priorities, the form of regional governance in most Czech regions.

The new programming period 2021 – 2017 brings a new philosophy of integration - in the emergence of integrated territorial strategies (ITS) and their financing through integrated territorial investments (ITI). The aim of the paper is, based on the above reasons, to evaluate the project activities of the microregion Termál considering the implemented projects in the programming periods 2007 – 2013 and 2014 – 2020 (ex-post evaluation) as well as the readiness of the area for financial resources in the programming period 2021 – 2027 (ex-ante evaluation). In terms of methodology, we used the comparative analysis of various information sources (mainly Programs of economic development and social development of municipalities, microregion Termál and databases of the Department of Strategic Activities of the Municipality of Nitra Region) and standard statistical and cartographic methods leading to data processing and visualization. The results provide information on the diversification of obtained and expected funds at individual municipalities and the whole territory. While in both previous programming periods, the focus was mainly on building social and technical infrastructure. At the beginning of the new programming period, expectations mainly focused on increasing territorial competitiveness by supporting industries using local resources and sustainable smart energy communities.

The research question is if an increase in pandemics corresponds with significant changes in mobility (supported by the public stay-at-home orders and willing decrease of movements) by the spheres of economic activities (parks (leisure time spending), grocery stores, workplaces, pharmacies, transportation stations, retail, recreation, and home) in the Czech Republic. The additional research question is if this pattern correlates with a high decrease in salaries and employment. This paper aims to answer these research questions. This research applies the graphical analysis and fixed-effects regression methods for high-frequency data for answering these questions. The main result is that an increase in the number of infected people significantly decreases human mobility and increases their visits to pharmacies and staying at homes. At the same time, the government support measures can be effective, because there is no huge drop in salaries and employment in the Czech Regions. This pattern contradicts the expectations based on the US patterns. The output of the regression analysis is that 2-5 thousand new infections a day can paralyze mobility in the entire region.

"Although there is a consensus on the need for an active employment policy, there are still differences in opinion on which tools should be used to achieve employment policy objectives. The aim of the paper is to examine whether the instruments of active employment policy in the EU countries using the LMP database have been effectively set up, as there is a clear difference in the allocation of public expenditure and how it is provided according to specific support programs. The results suggest that countries such as Austria, Sweden and Germany are examples of the right policy setting (from the allocation of funds to their evaluation). If we evaluate the position of Slovakia, according to the results of the studies, we can say that the most effective tools are in the field of education and therefore the volume of their funding should be increased. Instruments from the Employment incentives section, where Slovakia has the most funds, were found to be effective, but only on the short term, therefore we recommend reassessing the 51.80% stake in this section. The least effective instruments are in the Direct job creation section, in which Slovakia also invests the lowest amount of funds."