Filip Hrůza

From the general perspective, municipalities are economic organisations like private companies with their legal subjectivity, own revenues, and property. To better understand their financial management, it is desirable to conduct relevant empi...

This book is about a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the specific issue of municipal financial health, and to that aim the authors have conceived of it on the onion principle. Althou...

This article deals with the border effect phenomenon affecting the mobility of inhabitants in border regions. It aims to identify the determinants of the border effect in transport at the municipal level, considering the distance from the border, the populations and the characteristics of the closest bordering country. The survey in the Czech Republic eventually involved 675 representatives of municipalities who answered questions on inter-municipal mobility. The results confirmed that the most substantial handicap was population size, with small populations corresponding to the limited use of public transport when travelling beyond a given border. The results confirmed that the characteristics of the state or region that shares the border must be considered when assessing border regions. Therefore, the solution to the problems of individual border regions cannot be viewed with a single instrument. It is necessary to consider substantial differences resulting from the economic level of neighbouring countries.

Inter-municipal cooperation is an alternative form of cooperation that enables municipalities to jointly achieve goals and interests related to a wide range of selected problems of partner municipalities. It can be seen not only as a tool for solving pressing issues of the existence and functioning of municipalities and cities, but also as a tool for improving the quality of life and services of citizens belonging to the units that are implemented. The aim of this contribution is to point out the current situation in the field of general cooperation in the Slovak Republic, as well as the perspective of interested parties on this form of cooperation. The contribution is an output of the Interreg SK-CZ project (MOSINVI 2020-2021), while its processing was based on the analysis of a questionnaire survey, which was carried out with the help of respondents included in the categories of representatives of municipalities and cities. The answers of these respondents were the basis for the creation of conclusions and recommendations.

Inter-municipal cooperation is not solely about the cooperation of two or more municipalities. Professional networking or another kind of membership or cooperation could be also positive incentives for strengthening municipal cooperation. Czech Republic belongs to countries where there is not only one national professional association of municipalities with regional structures and this could offer the questions about their influence on inter-municipal cooperation. In this paper we use data from a full sample of Czech municipalities to reveal the role of variables including professional networking activity, regional structures and financial conditions on the existence or development of municipal cooperation. The results of regression analyses provide indistinct explanations. Membership in one national association increases the probability that the municipality will begin or sustain membership in a voluntary association of municipalities (VAM), while membership in another association tends to decrease the probability for engagement in VAM. Since the distribution of municipalities in the territory is not uniform, and individual municipalities have different socio-demographic and territorial characters, we decided to explore the basic characteristics of the municipality such as non-financial and financial indicators. Further, for small municipalities, we were not able to verify the hypothesis that they would be more likely to cooperate due to lack of resources or more adverse financial conditions.