|
|
The impact of entrepreneurship on economic performance in Central and Eastern Europe
Chiselita, Doina ; Benáček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Svoboda, Karel (referee) ; Korosteleva, Julia (referee)
Entrepreneurship is viewed by scholars and policy makers as an important factor contributing to increased levels of economic performance. New businesses are conduits of innovation, connecting resources and ideas within the economy and fostering competition. Central and Eastern Europe is a special case regarding entrepreneurship, due to its communist legacy. The surge in entrepreneurial activities caused by the process of market liberalization ultimately affected economic development in the area. This thesis acknowledges the importance of studying entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern Europe, and aims to analyse the impact of new business formation on economic performance in the region. To do so, the thesis creates a comprehensive guide of theoretical frameworks linking entrepreneurship to measures of economic performance and applies them to the Central and Eastern European area. The thesis also develops an empirical study using regression analysis with regional Eurostat data, which shows that new business formation has a significant, positive impact on GDP levels in Central and Eastern Europe. The results also indicate that entrepreneurial activity should be regarded by policy makers as an important factor that leads to increased economic performance, in addition to measures of research and...
|
|
|
Electoral Geography of Post-communist Countries
Sokol, Petr ; Hnízdo, Bořivoj (advisor) ; Brunclík, Miloš (referee) ; Kouba, Karel (referee)
The thesis "Electoral Geography of Postcommunist Countries in Central and Eastern Europe" deals with the topic of electoral geography, which is a part of the political geography. The basic hypothesis of the paper is based on opinion that the postcommunist countries experienced the twenty years of development in the postcommunist period which made their electoral geography very similar to one in Western Europe. This hypothesis is proved by three different areas of electoral geography. The first part is composed by the analysis of the electoral geography of the founding elections in the 17 postcommunist countries (including the GDR). In the paper is proposed after the research of all 17 countries the categorization of founding elections on the basis of electoral geography. The second part examines the electoral geography of capitals. The research is focused on the size of the lectorate in the capital compare to the whole country, on the diverhgence of electoral results in the capital and in the whole state and on strength of the party families in capitals. Folowing these three areas is proposed the catehorisation of the postcommunist capitals into the five groups. The third part deals with variability of the electoral results inside the state.
|
|
|
Analysis of the Investment Development Path in the Central and Eastern European Countries: Can they move further?
Paul, Tomáš ; Seidler, Jakub (advisor) ; Kukačka, Jiří (referee)
The thesis analyses the investment development path (IDP) of CEE countries and discusses their movement to its later stages, which is conditioned by in- crease in outward foreign direct investment (FDI). Providing evidence on data until 2012, it enables to test the impact of global financial crisis on the validity of IDP and the stages reached by particular CEE countries. Moreover, the thesis explores the effect of inward reinvestment of earnings on the ability to move to later stages through the relationship with outward FDI, which has not been tested in the literature yet. The thesis on a cross-sectional basis shows that: a) CEE countries follow IDP; however, when using subsamples, it holds only for more developed ones; b) contrary to literature before crisis, CEE countries did not reach the third stage of IDP, which suggests that crisis could have caused movement back along their IDP; c) reinvestment of earnings positively influ- ences outward FDI. According to the latter, countries with high reinvestment of earnings and inward FDI stock are identified and is concluded that they are likely to enter the third stage of IDP. However, further research is needed as also other determinants are relevant for outward FDI, not only reinvestment of earnings.
|
|
|
What Drives the Sovereign Bond Spreads in Central and Eastern Europe?
Růžička, Josef ; Baxa, Jaromír (advisor) ; Paulus, Michal (referee)
This thesis is devoted to spreads of sovereign bonds in central and eastern Europe relative to German government bonds. In the first part, a widely used government bond spread model is presented. It turns out that its assumption may be relaxed. Next, we show how spreads, inflation and exchange rates interact. Subsequently, we investigate the relationship between spreads and other macroeconomic variables by econometric methods. The most important factors affecting bond spreads in the region are public debt, GDP growth, openness of the economy, current account balance, and inflation. Bond markets in CEE put more weight on total level of public debt than on budget deficits. The effects of these variables differed before and after the year 2008. Two subgroups of central and eastern European countries with similar spread determinants were identified: the first group is formed by Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, while to the second one belong Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, and Romania. Uncertainty on global financial markets increases bond spreads in CEE as well as in western Europe. Bond spread determinants of the two groups differ from those of western European countries.
|
|
|
Application of Related Variety Concept in Selected Countries of Central and Eastern Europe
Meislová, Kristýna ; Blažek, Jiří (advisor) ; Skokan, Karel (referee)
The study deals with application of related variety concept and other evolutionary economic geography approaches in the economic landscape of postsocialist states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The goal was to define different types of variety and explore the relationship between these varieties and economic development in CEE countries between 1993 and 2009. The analysis is based on the theoretical and analytical framework presented in studies realized in the most developed countries of Western Europe. The important finding is that this kind of research allow to conclude that different types of variety influence the economic development, but some of the results are different from those in prior studies. The porfolio effect of unrelated variety was not confirmed. However, the results show strong evidence that related variety stimulates employment growth and usually contributes to GDP growth of CEE countries. The results also indicate, that high variety of related sectors could be crucial for future development of new industries (especially in Central Europe). Keywords: evolutionary economic geography, related and unrelated variety, economic development, Central and Eastern Europe
|
|
|
Cross-Border Contagion: An Empirical Analysis of the Current Financial Crisis in Central and Eastern Europe
Žáková, Kristýna ; Geršl, Adam (advisor) ; Mertlík, Pavel (referee)
The objective of this thesis is to examine cross-border contagion effects during the 2007-09 crisis in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and from all the possible propagation channels, it chooses to focus on cross-border bank loans. It tries to discover which global and local factors had significant influence on the changes in bank loans from banks in source (lending) countries to banks, as well as households, corporations and government in host (borrowing) countries. The main research method is a panel data regression model. The empirical results suggest that both local and global factors had influence on the changes in cross-border loans, i.e. helped to spread the 2007-09 crisis to CEE. The significant local factors were macroeconomic and financial characteristics of both source and host countries, such as their GDP growth differential, interest rate differential, FDI, or profitability and health of the banking sector. The significant global factors were the expected market volatility and investors' risk appetite/aversion which was an indicator of "pure" contagion. The main contribution of this thesis lies in its focus on CEE and the analysis of investors' behavior based on their changing risk appetite.
|
|
|
Determinanty přímých čínských investic do zemí střední a východní Evropy
Belvončíková, Barbora ; Janíčko, Martin (advisor) ; Rod, Aleš (referee)
Chinese outward direct investment is surging and is unique in the sense that its development is much faster than of any other developing country. This thesis investigates the determinants of Chinese outward direct investment (ODI) in eight countries of Central and Eastern Europe throughout the years 2003-2014. Using panel data analysis, the regression model incorporates both traditional macroeconomic variables as well as institutional variables, testing thereby what are Chinese ODI driven by in those post-communist countries. The quality of institutional framework is represented by EBRD indicators, which seem to be more suitable for transition economies. Findings suggest that Chinese MNEs do not access Central and Eastern European countries primarily for market-seeking reasons, however the fact of being a member of the EU boosts Chinese ODI, since entering a member state market grants at the same time access to the whole EU common market and this fact is decisive for China. Also, R&D capacities play an important role in attracting Chinese ODI. On the other hand, Chinese ODI seem not to be associated with a good institutional environment of a host country, only large-scale privatization index is found significant and positively correlated with Chinese ODI inflow. Therefore, the findings of this thesis lead to the conclusion that macroeconomic factors are still more influential than the institutional ones when studying Chinese outward direct investment in Central and Eastern Europe.
|
|
|
Impact of the Financial Crisis of 2008 on Central and Eastern Europe
Řehořová, Michaela ; Svoboda, Roman (advisor) ; Michal, Michal (referee)
This dissertation deals with the development of the economies of Central and East Europe, which are also the new EU members. States, in the sequel of the global financial and economic crisis. In the theoretical part of, among other things, there is the issue of financial system crisis and subsequent economic recession, whic brouhgt long-term economic stagnation, substantial losses in production, consumption, investments, and foreign trade. The main dissertation shows, partly the situation in selected states of Central and East Europe before and during global financial and economic crisis, on the other, this dissertation is monitoring existing course according to basic macroeconomic characteristics of selected countries in this region. The result is a capture, valorization and subsequent summary of the macroeconomic characteristics, the analysis of Eurostat data and UNCTAD, showed the differencies between impact of financial and economy crisis on selected countries in Central and East Europe. According to the obtained data, which were analysed before 2014, it can not be said, that the economic recovery of selected countries was strong enough in order to keep all the values of macroeconomic indicators which were at levels that these countries reached before financial and economy crisis.
|
|
|
Exchange Rate Dynamics and its Effect on Macroeconomic Volatility in Selected CEE Countries
Audzei, Volha ; Brázdik, František
To understand the potential for forming an optimum currency area it is important to investigate the origins of macroeconomic volatility. We focus on the contribution of exchange rate shocks to macroeconomic volatility in selected Central and Eastern European countries. The contribution of the exchange rate shock relative to other shocks allows us to evaluate whether the Exchange rate is a source of volatility or a buffer against shocks as the theory suggests. The identification of the contributions is based on variance decomposition in two-country structural VAR models, which are identified by the sign restriction method. We identify countries where shocks are predominantly symmetric relative to the effective counterpart and countries where the contribution of real exchange rate shocks is strong. In general, for all the countries considered the results are consistent with the real exchange rate having a shock-absorbing nature. Finally, a significant role of symmetric monetary policy shocks in movements in real exchange rates is found for some of the countries.
Fulltext:  PDF
|
|
|
Foreign Direct Investment of PRC in Central and Eastern Europe
Vaňková, Kateřina ; Hnát, Pavel (advisor) ; Zapletal, Petr (referee)
The diploma thesis deals with the analysis of outward foreign direct investment of the People's Republic of China in Europe in general and with focus on Central and Eastern Europe. This work gives an overview of the main determinants that influence Chinese investor's decision and gives specifics and main features of Chinese FDI. The work also assesses the attractiveness of the CEE region in terms of FDI.
|
guest ::
