Podnikatelská aktivita a možnosti její podpory prostřednictvím veřejných politik

The thesis consists of a series of peer-reviewed journal articles focused on entrepreneurial activity and entrepreneurship in the context of public policies. The research objectives of the studies include analysis of determinants of entrepreneurial activity on different levels (for group of Nordic countries and Czech regions), investigation of the impact of entrepreneurship on economic development of the Czech regions, and evaluation of the two Czech public programmes promoting entrepreneurship/self-employment. First case offers an aggregated evaluation of the self-employment programme for unemployed individuals and the second analysis demonstrates the impact of soft loans and credit guarantees on financial performance of the newly established enterprises. Individual research articles are associated in an introductory chapter, which aims to provide reader with a structured summary on the studied topic. Contribution of all above mentioned studies lies in the effort to collect empirical data and to create knowledge to help stakeholders and policy makers to form evidence driven policies promoting entrepreneurship and self-employment.