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Essays in Applied Economics
Travova, Ekaterina ; Menzel, Andreas (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee) ; Ananyev, Maxim (referee)
The first chapter investigates the use of high-powered incentives for civil servants in the public sector by analyzing possible manipulations of drugs seized by Russian police. First, using a bunching estimator, I document a significant excess mass of heroin cases above the punishment threshold. Next, combining the bunching with an event study framework, I study the incentives for police officers to manipulate, and find evidence consistent with the motivation arising from officers' performance evaluations. Further negative consequences of inappropriate incentives are inequality in the enforcement of law and prolonged sentences for offenders. The second chapter investigates the influence of the Orthodox Church network in Post- Soviet Russia on individual political preferences and election results. I use the numbers of monks and nuns from Orthodox monasteries operated in the Russian Empire before the Revolution as historical religious markers to construct a Bartik-style instrument (1991). I find that a denser Church network increases the average local approval rating for the current president and the share of votes cast for the government candidate in presiden- tial elections. Further analysis of mechanisms shows that, today, the extending Church network is increasingly less able to attract people to attend...
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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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Does Money Guarantee Success in Football?
Milenovský, Martin ; Cahlík, Tomáš (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
E ciency wages theory says that better-paid workers are more productive. However, in sports it is often neglected as success is still attributed to greater talent, or luck than simply to a higher wage bill. Dealing with the issue of wages in sports is one of the most essential topics of sports economics. In the thesis we confirm that wages are statistically significant in explaining variation in performance in English, German, Czech, and Slovak top football leagues as well as in specific Northern American Major League Soccer. We conclude that the more restrictions and player transfer barriers there are, the smaller the role of wages is in determining performance. Apart from wages we deal also with transfer fees and find out that their role is overestimated by media and in reality their e↵ect is more disruptive than helpful. JEL Classification Z20, Z21, Z22, J30, J31, J39, L83 Keywords football, wages, wage budgets, transfers, pay- performance, professor salaries Author's e-mail martin.milenovsky@gmail.com Supervisor's e-mail cahlik@fsv.cuni.cz
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The Structure of Electricity Market of the Czech Republic and the Impact of the Legislative Proces on the Market Participants
Kšírl, Jakub ; Kracík, Jiří (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
The object of this thesis is the electricity market in the Czech Republic and its legislation, specifically the fundamental law of energy legislation i.e. the law no. 458/2000 Coll. (Energy law). The first part is devoted to history and reasons for the establishment of new energy law, its structure and new changes brought by the law. The next part describes the current structure of electricity market, participants in the electricity market and their relationships with each other. The fourth part focuses chronologically on the amendments of the Energy law, their impact on participants of the electricity market and on the powers and duties of state regulators. The last part concentrates on the price of electricity for end users, especially on the regulated part of price and it describes the ancillary market.
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Ekonomická sladěnost České republiky s eurozónou ve světle finanční krize
Hájek, Jan ; Mertlík, Pavel (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
This paper deals with the issue of synchronization of the Czech economy and the economy of the eurozone. The OCA theory which is key theoretical basis for the analysis contained in the paper is briefly described in the first part. In the second part cyclical and structural synchronization is evaluated by the means of correlation coefficients of the development of GDP, industrial production, inflation and interest rates. The obtained results show sufficient level of synchronization, impacts of the financial crisis also rather contributed to the current level of synchronization. Arguments for and against synchronization are discussed in the third part as well as mutual dependency of the both economies. Two quarters time lag of the Czech GDP growth rate behind the eurozone is discovered in the pre-crisis period. At the end OCA- index for the Czech Republic is recalculated, the value of the OCA-index for the Czech Republic is the lowest among tested countries.
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Do Information Cascades Arise Easier under Time Pressure? Experimantal 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 paper I attempt to model propensity to herd and infer its relationship to time-pressure by conducting a laboratory experiment. I let subjects perform a simple cognitive task under different treatment conditions and levels of time pressure with the possibility to herd. The order of decision-making is endogenous and the task is not probabilistic. Rather, I impose uncertainty of private signal by different levels of time pressure. This is expected to make participants prone to imitate the behavior of others. Apart from that I examine the effect of reputation (also called endorsement effect) as an addition to the public pool of information, which is expected to increase the probability to herd. The main findings are that propensity to herd was not significantly influenced by different levels of time pressure. Information cascades arose, but never in a perfect form. Personality traits measured by the Big Five protocol contribute considerably to the explanation of the model, but their relationship is not straightforward. Heart-rate increased during performance of a task, but was not correlated to subjectively stated...
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Improving Investment Timing
Málek, Petr ; Novák, Jiří (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
This masters thesis is based on study of technical analysis of financial markets, i.e. analysis of dependencies between past and present price data, especially when it comes to "supports" and "resistances" or historical price levels where price recently tended to stop and reverse. First of all, summary of the most relevant literature on technical analysis is presented, together with literature on psychology of investing, behavioral finance and market efficiency. Following that, theoretical arguments in favor of possible edge in trading of technical levels are introduced and possible objections are addressed. This theory - in the form of several thousands of unique but similar trading strategies - is then tested on historical data of the most important financial assets. Results are compared to those of conservative buy-and-hold strategy and random trading. We reached the conclusion that trading based on technical price levels brings positive capital gains which are better than those achieved by random trading and buy-and-hold strategy. Parameters of our strategies influence the results in expectable manner more often than not.
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Archetypal analysis of students' behavior in banking sector
Malíčková, Jana ; Červinka, Michal (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
Archetypal analysis is statistical method used in market segmentation, however, it has minor results of application in economics. This method finds out typical behavior - archetypes. Every sample point consists of one or more archetypes and every archetype consists of few sample points. In this thesis, we explore behavior of college students at Czech universities in banking sector as there is no evidence of this research. In the model with four archetypes, the archetypes named the Pauper, the Buffett, the Elvis and the Sleeping Beauty arose.
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Financial Stress in the Czech and Slovak Republic: Measurement and Effects on the Real Economy
Malega, Ján ; Horváth, Roman (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
In the scope of this thesis, we estimate a financial stress index particularly for the Czech Republic with application for Slovakia, and examine its development during the period 2002-2014. The advantage of the index is primarily its ability to measure the current level of stress in the financial system incorporating information from various sectors of the economy and expressing it in a single-value statistic. We find a marked increase in financial stress at the beginning of the global financial crisis and European sovereign debt crisis with a decrease to nearly pre-crisis levels by the end of our study period. Next, we estimate vector autoregression models and find out that financial stress has systematic effects on unemployment, prices and interest rates, with the maximum response occurring approximately one to two years after the shock in the Czech Republic, and with a half-year delay in Slovakia. Specifically, an increase in financial stress is associated with higher unemployment, lower prices and lower interest rates, indicating its detrimental effects on the real economy. JEL Classification G17, G32 Keywords financial stress index, vector autoregression, impulse responses
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Evaluating the Effectiveness of Interventions to Promote the Education of Girls in Rural Cambodia
Hrabik, Brittney ; Cingl, Lubomír (advisor) ; Chytilová, Julie (referee)
0 Abstract The use of educational interventions to increase female educational attainment in developing countries has the potential to both provide women with more advantageous economic opportunities and contribute to economic growth. Achieving gender equality in education is an important first step towards achieving gender equality in the labor market. This thesis examines educational intervention programs that promote female education in rural Cambodia, and focuses in particular on conditional cash transfers. One such conditional cash transfer program in Cambodia is examined in more detail to determine its effectiveness. A qualitative evaluation was conducted in the form of focus groups and interviews with students, parents, and community members in the villages where the program was implemented. While the results of the study confirm the effectiveness of conditional cash transfers in increasing female attendance in school, the evaluation also revealed other factors that influence girls to stay in school. The study concluded that increasing the number of university-educated females in a girl's life through a mentoring program could have a positive effect on female educational attainment. Though further quantitative study is needed to investigate the effectiveness of such an intervention, this approach...
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