Articles by Pavel Kohout
Incentives and Deadly Disease
The threat of bird flu has stirred up an enormous amount of free publicity for Tamiflu, which is manufactured by the Swiss company Roche. Few people know, however, that Roche did not develop the drug; it only purchased the license....
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Oil, Money and Confidence
Russia is generally associated with bad news rather than good. After all, it's perhaps the only country in the world to have a whole ministry dedicated to emergency situations. However, Russia is not only the Yukos scandal, Chechen terrorists...
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Good Old Fashioned Fiscal Discipline
Government budget deficits are a worldwide problem. Ondrej Schneider, an economics lecturer from Prague's Charles University, recently proposed a solution. Schneider outlined the idea of an independent non-partisan regulatory body, which would oversee fiscal policy
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Taxing Infertility
Among the proposals being put forward in the Czech Republics debate over reform of the pay-as-you-go pension system are ideas to promote birthrates via both tax advantages and tax penalties. According to one such proposal, backed by the Christian Democrats,...
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Golden Years
Many politicians think the problem of pension systems deficits can be solved by just changing the parameters of the pay-as-you-go system. They believe it's necessary only to raise the social security tax rate, cut the replacement ratio or postpone...
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Hail Sovereignty
The word "sovereignty" is a twisted one, and so is the general understanding of it. It made its first appearance in medieval Latin in late 13th century as "supremitas". Its original form in classical Latin was "suprema potestas" -- supreme...
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Where Have All the Children Gone?
In the third century AD there was a prophet called Mani. He preached a doctrine of conflict between Good and Evil. He saw the material world as the devil's creation. Marriage and motherhood was a grave sin in his view,...
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A Minister-Free Health Care System
Imagine an economist taking the place of a surgeon at an operating table. Such an inhumane experiment would undoubtedly result in a serious bodily harm for the patient. Now let us picture another experiment: a Ministry of Health managed by...
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TCS EUROPE ESSAY CONTEST WINNER:
Information may have the value of life or death, of creating a good life or a half-life. A recent visitor to a Czech web forum illustrated this with a personal comment: "My wife's uncle suffered from glaucoma. He visited...
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Why al-Qaeda Will Dominate the European Union
In a few decades, radical Islam will ultimately dominate the European Union, and perhaps most of the world. It has already become a dominant force in the UN, which is reflected in the results of voting against Israel's anti-terrorist...
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