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Environmental Refugees, the XXI Century Imperative Challenge
Alves Pereira, Marisa ; Benáček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Salamon, Janusz (referee)
There are new challenges, facing the 21st century and one of them is the discussion around climate change and global warming. This phenomenon brings with it a deeper problem, which is the fact that millions of people have their lives strongly damaged as a consequence of the climate changes. There is no international instrument that protects these climate victims, which in this thesis are referred to as environmental refuges. This thesis focused on trying to evaluate solutions to the problem of environmental refugees. To achieve this we first had a look at the different types of forced migration since it would define which type of solution would suit this type of refugees the best. We had a look at the "Oustees" which are the people who are forced to move due to development projects in the different countries. Then we had a look at Bangladesh as one of the case studies since it is one of the countries at higher risk of suffering the adverse consequences of climate change, which forces many people to move internally or to cross the border to India. We were able to conclude that cross border migration increases tensions between countries and between social groups of the receiving communities. Since these people need protection and since these types of tensions threaten peace and security in some...
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Examining the impact of reforms on economic growth: The case of transition economies
Zhupaj, Lorena ; Horváth, Roman (advisor) ; Benáček, Vladimír (referee)
This paper aims to investigate the impact of reforms on economic growth in a sample of transition economies of Central Eastern Europe, South Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States from 1989 until 2010. We employ a panel data methodology and run a Haussman test to distinguish between a fixed effect and a random effect model. In addition, we take into account the role of reform reversals and examine their contribution in the growth dynamics. Reform downgrades are very common since in some cases progress in reforms has been stalled or even reversed due to political instability, wars, economic crises, etc. We model the reforms downgrades following the previous work of Merlevede (2003) using a different methodology and extending our period of estimation. Furthermore, the relationship between other explanatory variables (i.e. initial conditions, fiscal balance) and growth is further explored in the empirical estimation. JEL Classification O57, P21 Keywords transition economies, reforms, reversal Author's e-mail lorena_zh@hotmail.com Supervisor's e-mail roman.horvath@gmail.com
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Determinants of FDI location across European Countries: role of economic and non-economic factors in decision-making by means of econometric analysis of panel data for 1995-2010
Brázdová, Martina ; Benáček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Bobková, Božena (referee)
This thesis provides an insight into factors that determine FDI inflows. Our focus is on FDI inflows directed to European countries and we study the FDI phenomena both from theoretical and practical view. We extend the literature that highlights the importance of FDI- institution link, and hypothesise that countries with better institutional quality should attract more foreign direct investments. This is in accord with expectation that good institutions create better investment environment in terms of lower costs of doing business and lower risk. The main purpose of this thesis is to complement previous studies that have covered this topic, but did not account for years of financial crisis. The key part analyses panel data for 33 European economies in the period from 1995 to 2010. A model of FDI determinants is constructed and estimated using panel data estimation techniques. The empirical part has revealed that even though some of the institutional variables are significant, they remain rather additional in explaining FDI flows; whereas the traditional economic variables are clearly significant. Our results are intuitively consistent with theoretical expectations and show that market growth, low trade restrictions, good infrastructure and low labour costs are key FDI drivers. Other important...
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Central Bank Interventions and Their Influences on Exchange rates: The Case of TURKEY
Ucar, Ferit ; Vacek, Pavel (advisor) ; Benáček, Vladimír (referee)
This study attempts to analyze the efficiency of intervention policy in Turkey during the period between 4.1.2005 and 31.12.2012 with a sub period which is between 4.1.2007 and 31.12.2010. For our study purpose, therefore we investigated how interventions with pre-announced auctions as a whole influence the exchange rates. Further, we analyze whether there is an asymmetric effect among the buying and selling transactions with respect to their impact on the exchange rates. In the study, the E-GARCH model is employed to find the asymmetric effect. The final object of this study is whether buying auctions which are conducted to serve for only purpose of increasing international reserves influence the exchange rates. We evaluate the efficiency of transactions in the same direction of central bank statements. In conclusion, the findings did not amount to any significant impact of total transaction on exchange rates. The study findings also suggest that there is asymmetric effect among the selling and buying transactions. The amounts of selling transaction have a negative impact on both level and volatility while buying auctions did not have any significant effect on them. As a new research result, we found that buying auctions served well with respect to their contributions to reserves while they do not...
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Economic Efficiency, Competition and Equilibrium in Heterogeneous Production
Průša, Jan ; Benáček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Pertold-Gebicka, Barbara (referee) ; Klein, Peter G. (referee) ; Daraio, Cinzia (referee)
This thesis provides a bridge between two strands of efficiency literature. As we describe in the first part, the theory of efficiency is generally focused on equilibrium and mild devia- tions from it. In contrast, empirical studies document large variations in efficiency that are persistent in real economies. We describe two theoretical concepts as driving forces behind fluctuating performance of companies. Firstly, efficiency is derived from competition and is dynamic by its nature. As production happens in time, changing supply and demand conditions induce the ne- cessity to continuously adjust production processes. These changes are implemented under conditions of uncertainty, which directly leads to regular inefficiencies, implying that out- of-equilibrium situations are normal rather than rare. Secondly, standard models typically rely on price exogeneity to separate technical and allocative components of overall economic efficiency. We point out that this assumption is likely to fail due to extreme heterogeneity of the units of analysis. We elaborate in detail on the significance of heterogeneity in efficiency models, especially the heterogeneity of capital. As a result we demonstrate how various combinations of heterogeneous assets imply further swings in efficiency. We show that integrating both...
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The determinants of access to finance: evidence for transition economies
Cazachevici, Alina ; Horváth, Roman (advisor) ; Benáček, Vladimír (referee)
Charles University in Prague Faculty of Social Sciences Institute of Economic Studies MASTER THESIS The determinants of access to finance. Evidence for transition economies Author: Alina Cazachevici Supervisor: Roman Horvath, Ph.D. Academic Year: 2012/2013 Abstract The thesis provides an empirical analysis of impact of country-level and firm-level determinants on access to finance in transition economies. Generalized Ordered Logit model is applied on survey data for transition countries, combined with financial market indicators. The results show that higher concentration in banking sector, as well as higher financial deepening have a positive impact on access to finance, while volatile macroeconomic environment, higher implication of foreign-owned and state- owned banks seems to be perceived as increasing obstacles in accessing external financing. Combining indexes for liberalization in banking sector and liberalization of securities markets proved that before liberalization process firms had better access to finance. One of the possible explanations is that before liberalization state banks were forced by politicians to issue more loans, while after reforms the political pressure was removed, imposing stricter conditions for loan granting. Inclusion of corruption variable yields expectable results that...
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Regulation of International Trade: The Struggle of Multilateralism in the Era of Regionalism
Coňk, Daniel ; Cahlík, Tomáš (advisor) ; Benáček, Vladimír (referee)
Daniel Conk 5 January 2012 Thesis Abstract This thesis is an empirical research on the impact that preferential trade agreements have on the welfare of individuals and nation-states. As the number of preferential trade agreements has been growing steadily, the on-going clash between regionalism and multilateralism will be a key topic throughout the research. Fair trade movements have been becoming more popular over the fast few years as some organizations have strived to raise consumers awareness regarding the great disparities among the profit margins of the producers or farmers in developing countries in comparison to those of the merchants and distributors in developed countries. Even though quantitative data will be used in order to portray the growing economic inequalities present in today s world, arguments will also be supported on grounds of ethics and morals relating to social justice.
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Rationality of child labour and its effects on labour market
Vislous, Václav ; Benáček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Bauer, Michal (referee)
Child labor is still a big issue in the developing world. However, with an expand- ing literature base, we can conprehend its sources and policies in which we try to affect it in a much more precise way. This thesis reviews relevant literature regarding child labor. The scope of this review covers historical origins of child labor during the Industrial Revolution, its basic economic modelling, coercive measures against child labor, the effects of globalization, international trade, transitory income shocks and credit constraints on child labor and education. The main contribution to the literature are the three lessons about child labor. First, the parallels between findings about child labor in today's developing countries and the Industrial Revolution are studied. Second, it is showed that in the case of an import ban on child labor produce, there is always a better solution for children. Finally, previously unstudied consequences of Conditional Cash Transfer programs on children's motivation for education are related. Keywords Child labor, history, international trade, globalization, transitory income shocks, credit constraints, education, food for education, coercive measures, intrinsic motivation
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The performance of the Czech Private Pension scheme: Current design and its position within CEE countries
Hlaváč, Jan ; Schneider, Ondřej (advisor) ; Benáček, Vladimír (referee)
This thesis focuses on the comparison of financial performance of the Czech voluntary private pension scheme with five other reformed private pension schemes in the region of Central Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Slovak Republic). The current state and the recent development of the Czech private pension scheme are analyzed in the first part of the thesis. In the main part of this work we construct the dataset of periodic scheme returns covering the last decade, and estimate the schemes Sharpe ratios (SR) for four reference benchmarks. To complement the analysis we also employ the Sharpe style analysis to evaluate the impact of managerial decisions of market selection/timing on the scheme returns. The findings suggest that except for Poland none of the schemes managed to beat its long- term domestic benchmark (10- year government bonds) as the SRs estimates turn out to be negative. The highest underperformance was found in the case of Czech Republic. The results of style analysis suggest a modest positive influence of the active managerial decisions on the scheme returns with respect to the passive investment strategies. JEL Classification G23, G28, O57, H55 Keywords: Private pension schemes, Czech voluntary pension scheme, financial performance, Sharpe ratio, Sharpe Style...
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Gravity model estimation using panel data - is logarithmic transformation advisable?
Bobková, Božena ; Benáček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Baruník, Jozef (referee)
This thesis investigates the question if the estimation of gravity model of in- ternational trade based on the logarithmic transformation of the model is ad- visable when panel data are employed for the estimation. We have derived theoretically that in the presence of heteroskedasticity the logarithmic trans- formation causes inconsistency of the estimated coefficients. According to the literature, we have recommended rather the Poisson pseudo maximum likeli- hood estimation technique for the empirical research of the gravity model. We have also provided an empirical analysis of Czech and German panel data sets based on the comparison of the performance of traditional and Poisson estima- tion approaches. This analysis confirrms Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimation method as a more proper method for estimating the coefficients of the gravity equation.
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