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The Efficiency of Public Expenditure, Evidence from the Czech Republic
Vraná, Veronika ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Schneider, Ondřej (referee)
1 Abstract Efficiency is an important concept for performance evaluation of decision- making units. This thesis studies efficiency of public spending and methods of its estimation. Firstly, a wide range of efficiency estimators are defined and compared. For the public spending efficiency analysis the most convenient es- timator is found to be the cost frontier approach of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). The second part of the thesis contains efficiency analysis of public spending in the 14 regions of the Czech Republic in the years 2003-2014. For the analysis current expenditure of regional offices is used as the input. Based on the investigation of regional services output index is formed and employed in the analysis. The estimation is performed using the cost frontier approach of the SFA as the main method. Various other efficiency estimators are then applied to the data in order to study robustness of the results. The thesis further discusses relative ranking of the regions and time evolution of efficiency scores using different assumptions and variety of methods. Lastly, several potential effects on the estimated efficiency are considered and analysed. JEL Classification D24, H41, H72 Keywords efficiency, regions, public expenditure, Czech Republic Author's e-mail verca25.vrana@seznam.cz Supervisor's e-mail...
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Flexibilita pracovního trhu, její měření a vliv na nezaměstnanost
Majerová, Barbora ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Klimešová, Andrea (referee)
In its theoretical part, this bachelor thesis is concerned with the possible definitions and types of labour market flexibility with a subsequent aim at numerical flexibility. The first part deals with OECD and World bank indeces, which measure numerical flexibility at national level. Since these are established on the measure of strictness of Employment protection legislation, a part of this study is dedicated to the development of labour law in the Czech republic. This is followed by a look at flexible forms of employment and organisation of working time, the development of which is related to the strategies that countries employ in their bid to achieve higher employment. The main target of this work is to create indeces which will measure internal and external numerical flexibility in all regions of the Czech republic. Their structuring is established on the methodology of Vassilis Monastiriotis who created such index for regions of Great Britain. The resulting index values are used in panel data. The hypothesis that a low vaule of flexibility results in a high rate of unemployment was tested and was confirmed only with the index of external numerical flexibility. Despite this result, it was found that the indeces are useful and may help us in understanding and explaining the situation on the...
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Pro-cyclicality of Fiscal Policy
Málek, Jan ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Martišková, Monika (referee)
There is large evidence that fiscal policy in many countries tends to pro-cyclicality. This phenomenon is often observed in emerging countries but might also be present in developed ones. It is unclear why so many countries follow apparently sub-optimal fiscal policy. First part of this thesis reviews existing literature concerning pro-cyclical behavior of fiscal policy. It shows in which countries and under which circumstances pro-cyclicality has been present. Furthermore, models explaining pro-cyclicality of fiscal policy are introduced. The remainder of this thesis surveys fiscal policy making in Europe. We show that after subtraction of automatic stabilizers from government budget and considering only discretionary part of fiscal policy, pro-cyclicality of fiscal policy is also present.
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Heavy Tails and Market Risk Measures: the Case of the Czech Stock Market
Bulva, Radek ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Bubák, Vít (referee)
One of the stylized facts about the behaviour of financial returns is that they tend to exhibit more probability mass in the tails of the distribution than would be suggested by the normal distribution. This phenomenon is called heavy tails. The first part of this thesis focuses on examining the tails of a distribution of returns on Czech stock market index PX. Parametric and semi-parametric approaches to estimation of the tail index, a measure of heaviness of tails, are applied and compared. The results indicate that the tails behave in a way one would expect from an emerging market stock index. In the second part of the thesis, implications for two quantile-based market risk measures, Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall, are investigated. The main conclusion is that heavy-tailed alternatives should be preferred to the normal distribution in order to avoid serious underestimation of risks embedded in the underlying process. JEL classification: C13, C14, C16, G15; Keywords: Heavy Tails, Parametric and Semi-parametric Estimation, Statistics of Extremes, Extreme Value Theory, Market Risk, Value at Risk, Expected Shortfall.
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The Effect of Czech 2008 Flat Rate Personal Income Tax on Tax Evasion
Hrbek, Pavel ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Votápková, Jana (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to examine the effect of Czech's 2008 at rate personal income tax reform on consumption, income and tax evasion since there is a belief that personal income tax rates are partially responsible for high levels of tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported income as a proxy for tax evasion with the Czech microeconomic data from the 2006-2009 Household Budget Survey. Employing difference-in-difference approach, we find that the Czech at personal income tax reform has significantly decreased the gap between reported household consumption and income for households with only one economically active individual that experienced a reduction in marginal tax rates after the tax reform relative to households experiencing no change and that it takes time for households to adapt to new tax policy.
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Life satisfaction : (empirical evidence from the Czech Republic)
Vágnerová, Markéta ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Mlčoch, Lubomír (referee)
Main goal of my bachelor theis is to investigate life satisfaction in the Czech Republic and find explanatory variables influencing it, with an emphasis on economic indicators. It strives to compare Czech Republic with other states of the European Union, especially in relationship to main macroeconomic indicators. Some of the explanatory variables are discussed in detail in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5 are models on life satisfaction on two datasets. The results of the models are compared according to a type of data and on dependence on used econometric Metod. One of the key questions is, how much money "buys" happiness (resp. In our case life satisfaction).
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Unorthodox measures of economic performance
Křehlík, Tomáš ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Jeřábek, Jakub (referee)
Assessing long-term economic performance is persistent problem of current economics. Various methods exist, most often in form of indices (Sustainable society index, Ecological footprint, Urban Sustainability index, etc.), which however suffer from many issues (monetization, weighting). In recent years assessment method called NAIADE based on fuzzy logic and multi-criteria decision analysis has been developed. It deals with many problems of aforementioned indices. This approach has not yet been applied to data of many countries. Goal of my bachelor's thesis is to give overview of currently used indices, introduce multi-criteria decision analysis, perform computation of NAIADE and discuss rankings of the Czech Republic in international perspective.
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Consumption over the Life Cycle: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Cahlíková, Jana ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Hlaváček, Jiří (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to analyze life-cycle consumption using Czech microeconomic data from the 2000-2008 Household Budget Survey (HBS). Inspired by Gourinchas and Parker (2002), who analyzed life-cycle consumption on American data, we construct the Czech average household life-cycle consumption and income profiles. It is found that the Czech average consumption profile is increasing over the whole life-cycle and there is no hump-shape in the profile, contrary to the American results. Consumption tracks income early in life and a breakpoint in household behavior is identified at age 45. Czech evidence on household consumption is interpreted in the context of the Certainty-Equivalent Life-Cycle Hypothesis Model and in the context of the Gourinchas & Parker (2002) Model of life-cycle consumption under income uncertainty, which brings a significant value-added for interpretation of the Czech profiles. The household behavior is interpreted by varying strengths of the precautionary (assuring against income uncertainty) and retirement motives for savings over the life. It is found that the Czech household life-cycle behavior can be interpreted in the similar way as the behavior of the US households. JEL Classification: D11, D12, D91, E21 Keywords: Consumption, Life-cycle, Household Behavior,...
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Heavy tails and market risk measures : the case of Czech stock market
Bulva, Radek ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Bubák, Vít (referee)
One of the stylized facts about the behaviour of financial returns is that they tend to exhibit more probability mass in the tails of the distribution than would be suggested by the normal distribution. This phenomenon is called heavy tails. The first part of this thesis focuses on examining the tails of a distribution of returns to Czech stock market index PX. Parametric and semi-parametric approaches to estimation of the tail index, a measure of heaviness of tails, are applied and compared. The results indicate that the tails behave in a way one would expect from emerging market stock index. In the second part of the thesis, we introduce two simple measures of market risk, Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall, and compare traditional methods of their estimation with methods adjusted for presence of heavy tails. We conclude that reliance on the normal distribution in modelling the returns can lead to serious underestimation of risks inherent in the underlying process.
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The Effect of Czech 2008 Flat Rate Personal Income Tax on Tax Evasion
Hrbek, Pavel ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Votápková, Jana (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to examine the effect of Czech's 2008 at rate personal income tax reform on consumption, income and tax evasion since there is a belief that personal income tax rates are partially responsible for high levels of tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported income as a proxy for tax evasion with the Czech microeconomic data from the 2006-2008 Household Budget Survey. Employing difference-in-difference approach, we find no effect of the Czech at personal income tax rate on tax evasion for households with one economically active individual in the year 2008 relative to households experiencing no change.
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