René Wokoun,

The College of Regional Development in Prague, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic,

rene.wokoun@vsrr.cz

EVALUATION OF ENTREPRENEURS WITH A FOCUS ON OPERATIONAL PROGRAMME ENTERPRISE

AND INNOVATION (OPEI). RESULTS OF A QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY

Petr Kolařík,

University ofEconomics, Prague, Czech Republic,

 petr.kolarik@vse.cz

Jana Kolaříková,

University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic,

jana.tomesova@vse.cz

Abstract.The article is focused on the support of subjects from Operational Programme Enterprise and Innovation. The aim of the article is to analyse subjects applying for the financial support under the OPEI from the perspective of their legal form, number of employees and other indicators. The following hypothesis will be examined:

1.Financial support from OPEI is not distributed evenly among the individual regions (counties) – the highest number of projects (number of projects and the height of subsidy) was approved in the place of implementation in a structurally affected regions (hereinafter ISAR). In these regions, most projects, in terms of their number and the height of the subsidy, are realized in the "group" of economically weak regions due to the fact that they occupy the greatest territory of the ISAR – about 47% (14% of the Czech Republic Area).

2.There is a correlation between the amount of the subsidy from the OPEI and the unemployment rate in supported regions.

3.Subsidies contribute to development of entrepreneurship, i.e. the number of applicants who would not realize their project without the structural funds prevails.

We investigate the relationship among subsidy of the OPEI and unemployment rate by applying the ecometric approach, concretely panel regression estimates with Fixed Effects. The research itself was based mostly on analysing data from various databases (Albertina, CzechInvest, ČSÚ, MagnusWeb) and based on the questionnaire survey.

Received: April, 2016

1st Revision: July, 2016

Accepted: November, 2016

DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2016/9-4/17

JEL Classification: R11, R32

Keywords: entrepreneurship, OP Enterpriseand  Innovations, structural funds, support of SMEs.