Research background: The current changes in the global stock markets are related to the next wave of the industrial revolution ?Industry 4.0?. It is expected that the Industry 4.0 will lead to an acceleration of the innovation process and growth of volumes of tailor-made products. The stock markets started to react to the upcoming technological changes over the last decade, which are reflected by the changes in the composition of the major stock indices where the technological sector started to grow in importance. But innovations are not only connected with the specialized technological sector, but they are also of direct concern to the whole spectrum of economic entities. Besides the private investments that are usually allocated via the stock market, also the public sector investments play an important role. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between government expenditures on research and development (R&D) and stock markets (and GDP) in the US and in Germany. Methods: We use the tools of descriptive analysis as well as correlation and regression methods of estimation. Findings & Value added: Our research confirms that the collection of data on R&D on annual basis for Germany and the US is insufficient for analytical and systemic management purposes. The real effects of investments in the R&D are time lagged. The regression analysis of annual data confirms only the statistical importance of patent applications as well as interest rate and stock index as independent variables in explanation of variability of real economy growth during the 1985?2017 period. Our model did not prove the significance of government expenditures. We can explain it, among others, by the fact that governments do not pay sufficient attention to the challenges yet, which are associated with the Industry 4.0, especially in the US, where the government expenditures in R&D gradually decrease. The governments in both economies try to increase their support, but fiscal sustainability is a limiting factor.

The Halloween effect is one of the best known share market calendar anomalies. It is based on the phenomenon when the summer period (May -October) returns tend to be lower compared to the winter period (November -April) returns. This paper investigates the presence of the Halloween effect on share markets of 12 CEE countries. The results show that although the Halloween effect pattern can be found in the majority of the CEE share markets, it is statistically significant only in the case of Poland and Ukraine. The data also show that the Halloween effect tends to be stronger on mature share markets of Germany and the USA than on the CEE share markets as a group, however there can be found some exceptions, such as the Ukrainian, Russian and Estonian share markets. In most of the cases, the Halloween effect grew stronger after the global financial crisis of 2008 although there are some exceptions such as the Lithuanian and Russian share markets.

The second half of the 20th century brought breakthroughs in the field of science and technology, which significantly affected not only the growth of labour productivity and economic growth, but also brought changes in industrial structures and changes in share of individual industries in GDP. Even more strikingly, these changes have been reflected in the stock market, with leading companies from the field of information technology, which affect the flow and processing of information in revolutionary way. The onset of so-called internet economy at the beginning of the 1990s significantly changes also the structure of stock indices. Business services lure investors particularly into the area of financial services, which also show high degree of appreciation of the investment. New phenomenon nowadays is and expected changes in industrial structures not only in GDP, but also in the structure of stock markets will be brought by new phase of industrial revolution Industry 4.0. The aim of this paper is to quantify and analyse the current state and position of individual industries in the structure of GDP and stock indices and to outline new tendencies and to predict changes in these indicators with regards to the realization of 4th phase of industrial revolution.

Stocks and bonds represent the two most common assets in pension fund portfolios. For both pension fund participators as well as pension fund administrators it is necessary to examine the impact of stock and bond markets on the pension fund. This paper investigates the connection between stock, and, respectively bond market and pension funds. The relationship between the pension market and representative stock and bond market indexes was confronted. Research data based on pension statistics from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development were included in our research. A stronger impact was shown of the bond market on pension fund performance. The paper is divided into 5 chapters. In the first chapter, we introduce theoretical approaches along with essential knowledge in terms of a deeper analysis of research problems. The second chapter focuses on a literature review, with the third detailing the methods and methodology of research. The fourth chapter focuses primarily on achieving and interpreting the results of research in the context of the set objectives. In the fifth chapter, the achieved results are aggregated in the form of particular recommendations formulated after studying the issue.

The development over the last decade has offered a new perspective on the interaction between the stock market and the real economy. The growth of government debts together with the efforts to eliminate the negative impacts of the financial crisis resulted into a wider usage of new stimulation tools to kick-start the stock markets as well as the real economy. The recent experiences with various fiscal and monetary tools used in the USA and in Japan show that the most important tool is the growth of the money supply, i.e. quantitative easing. A lot of economists evaluate its positive results. Also the ECB initiated the quantitative easing in order to support the economic growth. The aim of this paper is to investigate the connection between the growth of the M3 monetary aggregate in the Eurozone and the growth of the Eurozone stock markets.