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The Rebelling Material. Jiří Weil's 1920s Journalism and his Doctoral Thesis as a Revolutionary Gesture
Kittlová, Markéta ; Heczková, Libuše (advisor) ; Bauer, Michal (referee) ; Merhaut, Luboš (referee)
This Ph.D. thesis deals with Jiří Weil's affinity with the Russian revolutionary, avant-garde culture and studies the ways the affinity manifested itself in the author's journalism and dissertation. It focuses on various realizations of the revolutionary gesture which Weil's activities linked to the Russian revolutionary culture are accompanied by as well as on the discordance associated with the gesture. Weil's activities are examined from a "rebelling material" point of view defined, following on Bohumil Mathesius' observation, as a conflict between ideology and intuition that is characteristic of Weil's work. The manifestations of the conflict became the focus of the comparative analyses based on the research material consisting of the selected Weil's 1920s and, occasionally, 1930s journalist texts and his dissertation defended in 1928 under the title "Gogol and the 18th Century English Novel" at Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.
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How matching grants and their size affect behaviour and where
Caisl, Jakub ; Bauer, Michal (advisor) ; Štika, Pavel (referee)
In this work we focus on a large scale randomized field experiment described in Karlan & List(2007). Using direct mail solicitations to more than 50000 prior donors of a large U.S. non-profit organization, they examine the effects of matching grants on behaviour. They describe the effects of the matching grants in general, for the whole population, and find that matching grant size has no impact on behaviour. We use a different approach, dividing the population into subgroups by income and education and then measuring the effects of matching grant size on donating behaviour in these subgroups. We find significant heterogenity in the effects of grant size on behaviour. Also we try to apply the theory of social identity when interpreting the effects of matching grants.
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Microfinance: Fighting poverty vs. sustainable banking
Tesař, Martin ; Streblov, Pavel (advisor) ; Bauer, Michal (referee)
The thesis deals with microfinance institutions and their ability to serve very poor clients even without a continuous inflow of subsidies from donors. After disclosing the specificities that distinguish the clientele of these organizations from the clients of commercial banks in the developer world, the analysis of selected institutions from South Asia, includng the famous Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, is performed. Using the data gathered from their annual reports of these microfinance institutions, the individual dependence on subsides during one decade is evaluated. The final part of the thesis utilizes the similarities that appear in the individual axamination and the econometric analysis of the data for the extraction of the key factors and strategies that can help to decrease the dependence of this sector on donor financial support. The analysis finds that higher depth of outreach of an organization to the very poor does not inevitably lead to lower level of self- sustainability. The way to profitability may reside in appropriate interest rate policy and mobilization of savings.
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Human capital affects religious identity: causal evidence from Kenya
Alfonsi, L. ; Bauer, Michal ; Chytilová, Julie ; Miguel, E.
We study how human capital and economic conditions causally affect the choice of religious denomination. We utilize a longitudinal dataset monitoring the religious history of more than 5,000 Kenyans over twenty years, in tandem with a randomized experiment (deworming) that has exogenously boosted education and living standards. The main finding is that the program reduces the likelihood of membership in a Pentecostal denomination up to 20 years later when respondents are in their mid-thirties, while there is a comparable increase in membership in traditional Christian denominations. The effect is concentrated and statistically significant among a sub-group of participants who benefited most from the program in terms of increased education and income. The effects are unlikely due to increased secularization, because the program does not reduce measures of religiosity. The results help explain why the global growth of the Pentecostal movement, sometimes described a “New Reformation”, is centered in low-income communities.
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Essays on Information and Discrimination
Korlyakova, Darya ; Bauer, Michal (advisor) ; Lergetporer, Philipp (referee) ; Haaland, Ingar (referee)
Darya Korlyakova In the first chapter, we study experimentally whether public beliefs about ethnic discrimination, an emotionally loaded issue, are shifted more by information from experts or from ordinary people. We also examine whether people are inclined to choose the most influential sources. For this purpose, we combine, in a novel design, the random provision of information from different sources with endogenous information acquisition from the same sources. We find that individuals update their beliefs most in response to information from experts, namely researchers studying ethnic minorities and human resource managers. Exogenous adjustments in beliefs do not induce changes in attitudes to ethnic minorities. Consistent with the strength of belief updating, more individuals choose information from experts over information from ordinary people. This result suggests that, in the aggregate, people behave rationally as they favor a source that is perceived to be relatively accurate. The findings have implications for information-dissemination policies. In the second chapter, we shift the focus from the general public to racial minorities and study the effects of information provision on minorities' beliefs and behavior. There is a long-standing concern that expected discrimination discourages...
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The impact of vaccinations on the development of Covid-19 pandemic
Kulhánek, Vít ; Kalabiška, Roman (advisor) ; Bauer, Michal (referee)
This thesis aims to examine the e ect of vaccination on the development of the Covid-19 pandemic. The three key variables are used as dependent vari- ables: the number of new cases, new deaths, and hospitalization. The dataset containing numerous countries and capturing periods from 2020 to 2022 was obtained, therefore a panel data estimator was employed. Moreover, the Czech Republic and Israel were selected for deeper investigation, and their data were filtered from the dataset. The data structure changed from panel data to time series, so OLS regression was selected as an appropriate method. In all mod- els, vaccination variables and also several others were included in lags because a time gap is necessary to increase individuals' immunity in the case of the vaccine. Last but not least, the excess deaths analysis is created and focuses on investigating excess deaths caused primarily or secondarily by the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, it predicts the amount of money not paid in the form of pensions till 2030 for the elderly who are included in the excess deaths. Fi- nally, it compares this amount of money with the expenditures associated with vaccine purchases. JEL Classification C01, C23, I10, I31 Keywords Covid-19, vaccination, panel data, time series data Title The Impact of Vaccinations on the...
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The relationship between populism and COVID-19 vaccination rates in the Czech Republic
Bazaykina, Anna ; Palanský, Miroslav (advisor) ; Bauer, Michal (referee)
The bachelor thesis raises the problem of how political preferences can affect the readiness of people to be vaccinated in the Czech Republic. The entire study is provided at district level. The study primarily focuses on populism as main factor which negatively influences on people vaccination activity. The research defines two major populist parties: ANO party and SPD party. The study includes theoretical and empirical approaches. Theoretical analysis explains what specific characteristics electorate of populist parties has and how these characteristics could be related with unwillingness to be vaccinated. Empirical analysis includes graphical analysis and regression model analysis. Graphical analysis helps to understand how cumulative vaccination rate (%) changes over time in different districts. In other words, graphical analysis visualizes how the difference in vaccination rate between populist and non-populist districts develops over time. Another graphical analysis which shows how rate of growth of vaccinated people (%) changes over time helps us to identify time trend. Time trend is needed to be constructed in order to build more precise regression model. Regression model analysis is used in the thesis in order to confirm the assumption that districts which express their support for...
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Are Women More Risk-Averse than Men? A Meta-Analysis
Černý, Patrik ; Havránek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Bauer, Michal (referee)
Are women more risk averse than men? While a large portion of economic literature confirms this phenomenon, the link between gender and risk aver- sion has not been found to be consistent. We investigate the difference in risk aversion between genders employing meta-analytic methods on 147 estimates collected from 25 primary studies, converted to partial correlation coefficients. We find positive publication bias in our dataset, suggesting that the reported estimates in primary studies are exaggerated. After adjusting for the publica- tion bias, men do not seem to be more risk-taking than women. In addition, we employ Bayesian Model Averaging to examine heterogeneity among the es- timates, controlling for additional 68 variables reflecting the design of primary studies. Based on the heterogeneity results, we find that the publication bias in our dataset is driven by 'lower quality' studies based on the RePEc ranking of economic journals. This finding also aligns with our robustness checks on sub- sets divided according to the quality of journals publishing the primary studies.
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The economic costs of conflict: A case study of the Russo-Ukrainian War
Hamráková, Júlia ; Baxa, Jaromír (advisor) ; Bauer, Michal (referee)
Since 2014, an armed conflict between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army in Donbas has been causing damage to the society, infrastructure, and eco- nomics of Ukraine. This thesis deals with the conflict in eastern Ukraine and focuses on its economic impact in the period from 2014 to 2020. Using the syn- thetic control method and the augmented synthetic control method, on a country level we evaluate the economic cost of the conflict in terms of the GDP per capita of Ukraine and Russia. On the regional level, we estimate the impact of the con- flict on the GRP per capita of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Moreover, we look for evidence of spillover effect on neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region and Kharkiv region in Ukraine and Krasnodar Krai, Belgorod Oblast, and Rostov Oblast in the Russian Federation. While the results indicate a significant gap in GDP per capita of Ukraine attributable to the war, the negative economic effect on the GDP per capita of the Russian Federation after accounting for the price drop of crude oil in 2014 and 2015 is only minor and too insignificant to interpret it with confidence. The findings further suggest a destroying effect of the conflict on GRP per capita of both Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The spillover effect of the war on neighbouring regional...
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Do information cascades arise easier under time pressure? : experimental approach
Cingl, Lubomír ; Bauer, Michal (advisor) ; Pertold, Filip (referee)
Information cascades as a form of rational herding help to explain real-life phenomena such as fads, fashion, creation of 'bubbles' in financial markets or conformity in general. In this thesis I model both the propensity to herd as well as the propensity to view public information that may lead to herding. I carry out a laboratory experiment where I let subjects perform a simple task under different treatment conditions with the possibility to herd. Researchers normally imposed the uncertainty about the private signal by providing a task probabilistic in its nature such as drawing balls of different color from an urn and the decision-making was sequential. I conduct an experiment where the order of decision-making is endogenous and a task that is not probabilistic, but I impose uncertainty of private signal by increasing time pressure. This is expected to make participants prone to imitate the behavior of others, even though the others will be exposed to the same conditions. The time-pressure is also expected to induce stress reaction, which I measure as a physiological proxy variable - the heart rate frequency. Participants after each task state the subjective level of stress they felt to be in. I compare these two indices of stress if they bring same results. I also account for personality differences by...
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