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Internet and mobile phone diffusion and its determinants
Kračmerová, Veronika ; Polák, Petr (advisor) ; Serdarevič, Goran (referee)
This thesis examines determinants of an Internet and mobile phones diffusion and potentially different impacts of these determinants in case of developing and developed countries. For this purpose panel data from 199 countries for period from 1995 to 2012 are used. There is a number of variables including economic, technological, political and human capital factors. Benefits of this thesis are that the research uses updated dataset and it also adds new variables into its econometric model. This thesis also examines in detail the adoption of information and communication technologies in the Czech Republic, which has not been published previously. One of the conclusions is a finding that penetration of mobile phones and the Internet is faster in developing countries than in developed countries. Fixed effects method in the global testing also showed that the economic wealth of a country is an important determinant for the Internet only for developed countries, while for the mobile phones the GDP is a significant variable in both groups of countries. Analysis of the Czech Republic brings different results for both technologies, but the unemployment rate, which was added to the basic model, has proven to be an important determinant for both the Internet and mobile phones. Key words: Mobile phone,...
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Comparison of criminal behaviour development in the CR with trends in rich countries
Pokorný, Petr ; Cahlík, Tomáš (advisor) ; Polák, Petr (referee)
This bachelor thesis explores crime development in rich countries and compares it with crime development in the Czech Republic. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to statistically verify thoughts discussed in The Economist magazine about the downward trend in crime development in rich countries. In the first part of the thesis, terms related to crime are defined. Subsequently, rich countries are deter- mined. In the second part, the crime development in the rich countries is explored through a fixed effect model estimation of panel data. In the third part, crime de- velopment in the Czech Republic is analyzed by using a simple regression model and an autoregressive model. In the final part of the bachelor thesis, an econometric model analyzes factors that generally affect crime, especially wealth of countries. The arguments about the downward trend in crime development in rich countries are supported by statistical examination. 1
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Willingness to contribute through crowdfunding in the Czech Republic
Vernerová, Rebecca Salome ; Polák, Petr (advisor) ; Schwarz, Jiří (referee)
This Bachelor thesis aims to examine the public's willingness to crowdfund through various Czech online platforms and to find what factors influence this willingness. The method of data gathering was an online question form; the results were analyzed using ordered logit. The dependent variable "willingness to contribute" was sorted by size into four categories. In the final model, these four variables have proven to be significant with positive coefficient: Provize (the contributor researched how much of the donation is deducted by the platform), Sam (the contributor discovered the project on his own), Podnikani (the contributor's favourite categories included business), Dobrovolnictvi (the contributor volunteers for charity). With negative coefficient, these variables: Prispel (the contributor had previously donated via crowdfunding platform), Clanek (the contributor discovered the project through an article in media) and Vzdelavani (the contributor's favorite categories included education). The results have further shown that the only two demographical factors influencing willingness to contribute are sex and age. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Modeling and Forecasting Volatility: Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina
Hečimović, Emir ; Polák, Petr (advisor) ; Hausenblas, Václav (referee)
iv Abstract The purpose of this thesis is to research stock market volatility in Bosnia and Herzegovina and provide comparison with regional and European stock markets. We employ symmetric and asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models in order to estimate the conditional volatility of benchmark stock market indices in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SASX-10, BIRS), former Yugoslavia region (CROBEX, BELEX15, SBI TOP) and Europe (EURO STOXX50). Additionally, we analyze the evolution of conditional standard deviations for selected markets and develop dynamic GARCH volatility forecasts for SASX-10 and BIRS. Our results suggest that Bosnia and Herzegovina markets are characterized with relatively high persistence and long memory in volatility. However, compared with regional and European markets, SASX-10 and BIRS exhibit lower persistence. Although significant leverage effect was found both for regional and European markets, asymmetric modeling produced insignificant and negative leverage effect for SASX-10 and BIRS time series. Bosnia and Herzegovina stock markets display moderate to low levels of synchronization with regional and European stock markets. In general, SASX-10 was found to be more volatile than BIRS. The latter is, surprisingly, the least volatile among all...
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Consequences of liberalization of electricity market
Kalabiška, Roman ; Polák, Petr (advisor) ; Valíčková, Petra (referee)
This thesis examines the impacts of liberalization of electricity market. The first part of this work provides theoretical overview of the liberalization process and electricity market design in Czech Republic. To understand how the european wholesale markets are integrated, I have performed correlation analysis of daily spot prices on selected power exchanges. On the basic of this analysis I confirmed that selected power exchanges are on different levels of integration and have higher dependency on regional level. The second part of the empirical part is focused on the impact of competition on czech retail market. The objective was to show that liberalization and following increase of competition in electricity market result into decrease of retailers' gross profit margins in the segment of housholds with ordinary consumption. The last part of this work is focused on the measurement of market power using the most famous methods of measuring market power, such as Lerner index and Herfindahl-Hirschman index. My calculations indicate that while market concentration has decreased in the long run, since 2012 it is slightly increasing. I have also learned that selected retailers are on similar level of market power. This work fills the gap in literature focusing on the issue of measuring market power...
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Willingness to pay for mobile internet in the Czech Republic
Doskočilová, Kateřina ; Polák, Petr (advisor) ; Luňáčková, Petra (referee)
Willingness to pay for mobile internet in the Czech Republic Abstract The main focus of this thesis is to examine consumers' willingness to pay for mobile internet in the Czech Republic. The data for the estimation were collected via a self-developed online questionnaire. Using the logit model, the factors, which significantly influences the WTP, were identified. These include: the ownership of a smartphone, perceived importance of availability of the internet connection, having a monthly mobile tariff and the way of using mobile applications. Additionally, the price, that the consumers' would be willing to pay for their ideal tariff, is examined and it is shown, that the level of education has a significant negative effect on this price.
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Analysis of meat demand in the Czech Republic
Dlasková, Karolína ; Ščasný, Milan (advisor) ; Polák, Petr (referee)
Meat and meat products form the highest share of Czech household expenditures for food. This thesis offers a complex view on the Czech meat market and studies in detail the determinants of meat demand. A review of the most frequently used demand models is included, from which the least squares log-log model is used for empirical analysis. The core of this thesis is the estimation of price and income elasticities of demand for various types of meat based on statistical data of household accounts from the years 2000 - 2012. The estimates are, with the exception of the price elasticity for beef, which equals 0.13, consistent with previous studies. Within the examined period, households manifest unitary income elasticity and own price elasticity of demand for meat equal to -1.2. The temporal evolution of elasticities varies for different types of meat. Important socio-demographical aspects influencing the demand for meat, such as age, education, whether the household is led by a female, and others, are also analysed.
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Unemployment in the Czech Republic and Job Search on the Internet
Zacha, Ondřej ; Polák, Petr (advisor) ; Macek, Petr (referee)
This thesis examines the relationship between Czech unemployment rate and job search related behavior of Internet users. The study uses a simple autoregressive model and augments it with search query data from two most popular Czech search engines, Google and Seznam as well as data on numbers of job vacancies and reactions to them from job search portal Jobs.cz. Our results show that data on number of job vacancies can moderately improve short-term forecasts ("nowcasts") of Czech unemployment rate in terms of RMSE and MAE, whereas search query data from Google and Seznam failed to improve predictive ability of the baseline model. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Willingness to pay for online content in the Czech Republic
Vala, Michal ; Polák, Petr (advisor) ; Kvaček, Jan (referee)
This thesis studies consumers' willingness to pay for online content in the Czech Republic. The study focuses on the newspaper industry in the online environ- ment. Data analysed in the study come from a self-conducted online survey. Using the logit estimation method, following variables were identified to signifi- cantly affect the probability of having paying intentions-Gender, Occupation, Internet usage, News usage, Past online payment, and Past newspaper pay- ment. Moreover, under no free newspapers scenario, a monthly subscription of printed newspapers was assigned with an average value of CZK 96.7, which is almost double when compared to the average of CZK 50.7 that would con- sumers pay for a monthly access to the digital edition of newspapers. JEL Classification D10, D12, L86 Keywords WTP, online content, newspapers, Czech Re- public Author's e-mail mic.vala@gmail.com Supervisor's e-mail polakpet@gmail.com
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Forecasting Term Structure of Crude Oil Markets Using Neural Networks
Malinská, Barbora ; Baruník, Jozef (advisor) ; Polák, Petr (referee)
This thesis enhances rare literature focusing on modeling and forecasting of term structure of crude oil markets. Using dynamic Nelson-Siegel model, crude oil term structure is decomposed to three latent factors, which are further forecasted using both parametric and dynamic neural network approaches. In-sample fit using Nelson-Siegel model brings encouraging results and proves its applicability on crude oil futures prices. Forecasts obtained by focused time-delay neural network are in general more accurate than other benchmark models. Moreover, forecast error is decreasing with increasing time to maturity.
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