Abstract:The paper examines development of economic balance and effi ciency of monetary and fi scal policy in the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the crisis with the help of empirical verifi cation of Robert Mundell's model of effective market classifi cation. Our main fi ndings show that although there was no direct 'loser' during the crisis, the Czech Republic seemed to have better coped with its economic imbalances due to the independence of its monetary policy. Slovakia, on the contrary, has preserved several problems on the side of external balance. However, as both countries show certain differences, it is impossible to assess whether the euro adoption had the same effect on both of them. In general, the paper contributes to the research on the Czech and Slovak economy and euro area membership.

The article analyses inflow of foreign direct investment into the Czech Republic. It describes the development in recent years and analyses the influencing factors. Foreign direct investments are a very important financial source in the Czech economy and therefore much attention is paid to the factors which attract the inflow of foreign long-term and non-debt capital. It is important especially for investors during their decision making process of expanding the business abroad. Among others, the most important lures are openness of the country, low labour cost, the exchange rate policy and the overall risk of the country.