Podpora rozvoje lidského kapitálu v regionálních souvislostech: metodické aspekty hodnocení, exogenní a endogenní faktory rozvoje, kritická reflexe veřejných výdajových programů

This dissertation is aimed at deepening the knowledge of human capital development in the Czech Republic and contains an analysis of the effectiveness of public spending programmes of cohesion policy. First of all, the thesis assesses the state of human capital stock at the level of districts of the Czech Republic. Next, the impacts of public spending programmes of cohesion policy are identified from the perspective of the supervisory authorities of the Czech Republic. The last part of the thesis analyses the degree of contribution of public spending programmes (in the field of R&D) to the creation of new knowledge capital in the regions of the Czech Republic, in the context of the original stock of human capital in these regions (knowledge capital in the thesis is represented by patents). The research carried out pointed to significant regional differences in the stock of human capital across the Czech Republic. On the basis of the identified stock of human capital, it was possible to divide the regions of the Czech Republic into three territorial clusters (developed metropolitan areas in the centre of the country, average rural areas and lagging border areas). A significant discrepancy was also identified between the views of the supervisory bodies (the Supreme Audit Office and the Evaluation Unit of the National Coordination Body) on the effectiveness of public expenditure programmes. The analysis of the degree of contribution of public expenditure programmes (in the field of R&D) to the creation of new knowledge capital in the regions of the Czech Republic was carried out on the dataset for the period 2010-2019. The data used in this analysis relate only to private companies. The results of the regression analysis point to the fact that the effectiveness of public support may not always be unambiguous. In areas with a high stock of human capital, public support for R&D does not have a statistically significant impact on patenting activity (or the creation of new knowledge capital). Private investment plays a decisive role here. In areas with a low stock of human capital, the opposite is true and public support is statistically significant. In average areas, both private investment and public support are statistically significant. The added value of the paper lies in the comprehensive analysis carried out, which has not been done to this extent in the Czech Republic to date. The research provides new and fundamental insights at the micro-regional level. The research also provides new insights into the functioning of public expenditure programmes in the Czech Republic, by allowing for the confrontation of findings from the academic literature with the outputs provided by Czech oversight bodies. The final part of the research is particularly unique in its methodology. According to the conducted literature search, there is no study in the academic literature that evaluates the impact of public R&D support on the creation of new knowledge capital with respect to the influence of the original stock of human capital in a given territory. Thus, the methodological approach used in this paper is probably the first applied approach of this type of analysis.