The “Academic Lessons for Economic Policy” conference took place on May 12 in the building of the Institute of Economic Studies in Opletalova Street in Prague. Attracting great interest from students, experts and the general public, the conference also celebrated the 20th
The faculty is one of the youngest at the university. It was founded June 1, 1990, and the first students were enrolled in the academic year of 1990/1991. The year 2010 marks the 20th
The Institute of Economic Studies organized the conference to commemorate the anniversary.
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“We are gathering at this conference at a time full of turbulent economic changes. For many students, these might be the first big changes they are experiencing. In such times, there may be many potential policies that are totally contradictory. It is therefore helpful to reflect more deeply on what steps to take in this critical period. This is an attempt at a platform for such reflection”, said the conference chair in his opening remarks.
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Among the participants were scholars from Charles University who, besides teaching at the Institute, also put their ideas into practice, either by designing economic policies or by working in the commercial sector, and therefore have to face the changes on an everyday basis. Members of the two conference panels – one called Barriers of Economic Growth and the other Lessons from the Financial Crisis – included Zdeněk Tůma, governor of the Czech National Bank, Vladimír Dlouhý, Pavel Mertlík, Oldřich Dědek, Mgr. Michal Skořepa, PhD., or Tomáš Sedláček. Professor Michal Mejstřík, director of the Institute of Economic Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences, chaired the conference.
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Two of the topics discussed focused on education and research. Mr. Jiří Havel had a talk called “Education and School Policies”, Mr. Daniel Münich, the head of the goverment's Research and Development Council advisory committee for social sciences and humanities, tried to explain the pros and cons of the new research evaluation system, the so-called coffee-grinder. According to him, the most significant disadvantage is the lack of variance of evaluation factor among fields of research. Then he called on Czech scholars to publish in impacted journals rather than writing monographs. |
(Lucie Kettnerová)
Translation: Jaroslav Švelch
