13th November 2016

Aspen Institute Prague/Forbes: Czech Republic: The Shape We're In - study, conference (updated)

Together with Forbes Czech Republic, Aspen Institute Prague organized the second edition of the conference, which aims to provide a complex overview of the political, economic and social development of the Czech Republic in a long-term perspective. They focused on the following areas: Economic Potential, Quality of Life, National Security, Education and Governance. More details on the conference are available here (in English).

Read the study and a summary by Roklen24 (in Czech), saying that Czechs are among the happiest nations in the Central European region, but convergence with EU's top performers has been stagnating. It is suggested that the ambition of the Czech Republic to follow the economic success of Germany is too big a challenge and that the country could rather try to catch up with countries such as Estonia or Slovakia, for example. The Czech Republic could focus on the improvement of quality of institutions, and educational system, the lack of qualified labor force, and the problems with the effective allocation of capital resources to spur growth within the domestic ecnomy. The vision of creating of highly urbanized economy based on entrepreneurship, innovation and technology by a more intensive domestic capital activation is still relevant, but it is necessary to change the way of thinking and the approach to reforms. Some more thoughts are available here (in Czech).

Members of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic