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Political cycles: Do the politics buy their voters' ballots with higher expenditures?
Fischerová, Veronika ; Vostrovská, Zdenka (advisor) ; Procházka, Pavel (referee)
The present thesis is concerned with the existence of political cycles in European Union member states between 1990 and 2013. These cycles are of two types: political business cycles and political budget cycles. The analysis was performed by means of the fixed effects method (using first differences) along with a visual analysis of data. The results obtained from three types of data sets show that two years before elections, inflation grows at 0.47%, unemployment rate at 0.5%, and structural balance at 0.8%. One of the data sets reveals that structural balance is reduced by 0.39% in election years. The visual analysis clearly demonstrates that there exist political business cycles in Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Poland and Sweden. Political budget cycles have been proven to exist in Belgium, France, Cyprus, Malta, Germany, Slovakia and the United Kingdom.
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To what extent does excise tax lower alcohol consumption?
Fischerová, Veronika ; Lahvička, Jiří (advisor) ; Babin, Jan (referee)
This work considers the influence of excise tax on alcohol and the consumption of various kinds of alcoholic beverages. The focus is an area of the European Union between the years 1990-2009. The analysis uses fixed effects and first differencing. The results show that the growth in tax on spirits of 36 euros from the minimum (3 euros) to the maximum rate (39 euros) leads to a decrease in consumption of spirits by 24% and consumption of ethyl alcohol by 10%. If the intermediate products tax of 5 euros grows from the minimum rate (0 euro) to the maximum rate (5 euros), the consumption of ethyl alcohol will decrease by 12% and consumption of spirits by 21%. The growth in tax on wine of 5 euros from a minimum rate (0 euro) to the maximum rate (5 euros) leads to a decline in consumption of wine by 8.4%. The growth in tax on beer of 3 euros from a minimum rate (0 euro) to the maximum rate (3 euros) leads to an increase in consumption of spirits by 6.8% and consumption of wine by 86%, which means that spirits and beer and wine and beer are substitutes. The growth in real GDP per capita of 4100 euros leads to increased consumption of different types of alcoholic beverages by 3,7-9%.
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