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Metal Detecting Ownership and Non-Ownership Motives
Hrušák, Jan ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Kučera, Tomáš (referee)
This thesis addresses the phenomenon of hobby metal detecting in the Czech Republic, aiming to determine whether individuals' wealth influences the for- mation of detected finds collections. The mass spread of metal detecting in the Czech Republic since the 1990s has proven the significance of studying this activity. The phenomenon of metal detecting can be classified under contest theory, where agents make costly efforts to compete for a limited resource, which in this case is archaeological finds. From the standpoint of economics, a study about resources allocation, the metal detecting hobby can be an in- triguing topic for investigation. This thesis presents estimates of models based on five different datasets, each containing several thousands of observations obtained from a renowned Czech metal detecting website. The findings sug- gest that relatively wealthier metal detectorists are more likely to submit coins, but not artifacts. Given that coins form a relatively homogeneous group, the estimation results associated with coins might be applied to the formation of finds collections overall. Hence, the collecting of finds is likely to be negatively associated with an individual's socioeconomic status. JEL Classification D14, D61, D91, O33, Q01, Q32, Q34, Z13 Keywords hobby, private ownership,...
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The Geography of the populist vote in Slovakia
Dusková, Natália ; Pertold-Gebicka, Barbara (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The success of populist political parties depends on a complex system of fac- tors that influence the voters. Researchers connect the phenomenon to several socio-demographic characteristics such as age, income, or education. It is in- sufficient to only study individuals and predict their decisions based on the metrics we know about them and the place they live in. It is also beneficial to examine the regions' influence on each other. This is why we turn not only to OLS, but also to multiple spatial models with various demographic and eco- nomic variables at the county and municipality levels to explain support for populist parties in Slovakia. Data from the two most recent parliamentary elections, in years 2016 and 2020, are analyzed and we zoom on local election results of two Slovak populist parties: SMER and ĽSNS. Analysis results point towards existence of significant spillover effects among Slovak regions - directly in support for both parties, as well as coming from observed and unobserved vote share determinants. Keywords populism, populist political parties, spatial anal- ysis, spatial models, vote share, Slovakia Title The geography of the populist vote in Slovakia Author's e-mail nataliaduskova@hotmail.com Supervisor's e-mail barbara.pertold-gebicka@fsv.cuni.cz
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Gender gap in math score: does teacher gender matter?
Scharf, Šimon ; Pertold-Gebicka, Barbara (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
Even though quality and equal opportunities are regarded as generally desir- able in education, major differences in the study outcomes of girls and boys still exist. In this thesis, we try to assess the effect of a teacher's gender on the educational outcomes of pupils. Specifically, we use TIMSS data from 36 coun- tries to evaluate this effect on 4th grade students. To our knowledge, we are the first to utilize the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) approach to overcome the selection bias in this context. The results of the pooled analysis suggest that there is no significant effect of teachers' gender on girls but we observe a negative effect for boys. When considering each country separately, only in 4 countries do we find a significant effect of teacher's gender on students' test scores for boys. Of the 4 countries, only boys in Montenegro prosper with a same-sex teacher, while in 3 countries boys' achievement is hampered by a same-sex teacher. For girls, we find a robust positive effect in 4 countries and a negative effect in 3 countries. For both boys and girls, we find no significant robust effect of having a same-sex teacher in the majority of countries. Our findings contribute to the literature on the effects of teachers' gender, as well as, to the broader discussion of differences in the...
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Supervisory Boards of Joint Stock Companies and Employee Co-determination in the Czech Republic
Červená, Markéta ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Vacek, Pavel (referee)
The Czech regulatory framework for supervisory boards of large joint stock com- panies leaves significant space to configure company-specific setups in hands of shareholders. As a result, the design, composition and competences of a super- visory board in the Czech Republic can to a large extent vary from company to company. In addition to that, the regulatory framework has been subject to potentially impactful changes over the last decade, such as relaxation and follow- ing re-introduction of mandatory representation of employees in the supervisory boards for all large joint stock companies. This thesis explores a unique dataset with information on all, more than 250, Czech joint stock companies with over 500 employees that were subject to the re-introduced requirement on employee participation. The aim of this thesis is to shed light on supervisory board prac- tices in the Czech republic between 2009-2020. Special attention is paid to the question how these practices changed in light of changing legal requirements regarding the mandatory employee participation. First, a series of observations that draws from the examined dataset was provided on the topic, uncovering, e.g., that two-tier corporate governance structure remained dominant in the Czech environment; that education and gender of...
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Corporate governance and M&A effectiveness
Akmatalieva, Chinara ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Novák, Jiří (referee)
This master thesis analyzes the transactions of merger and acquisition for three European countries as Germany, Netherlands and Austria with developed economies and how they are affected by corporate governance in the companies. In order to address, it collects 41 deals from 426 chosen transactions from the 1st of January 2010 to 31st of December 2019. Using method of event study with data from stock market it was examined the cumulative abnormal return on the shares of the acquiring company. Based on the results of the study, the optimum number of directors on the board, the board independence ratio and the length of the CEO's tenure have a positive relation to the effectiveness of mergers and acquisitions at the current level of corporate governance. In addition, guided by this research, it is possible to improve the mechanism of corporate governance in order to increase efficiency of mergers and acquisitions in Europe. Furthermore, an empirical model with cumulative abnormal return calculation tend to explain the impact of board structure, the number of independent members and the tenure of chief executive officer on mergers and acquisitions performance. JEL Classification C8, G3, G30, G34, M20 Keywords corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, event study, agency theory, board of...
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Spatial Analysis of Czech Parliamentary Election: Comparison of Spatial Econometrics and Machine Learning
Černý, Jakub ; Šťastná, Lenka (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
This thesis analyses the results of the Czech Parliamentary election in 2021 and attempts to explain the voting support of major political subjects by using aggregate data from Czech municipalities. Since the data evince spatial autocorrelation, it is necessary to specify a suitable spatial model. The thesis provides both empirical and economic evidence for the Spatial Durbin Error Model, which enables distinguishing the direct and indirect effects of particular independent variables and accounts for the spatial dependence of error terms. This method shows that variables describing the socio-economic characteristics of inhabitants, such as the share of entrepreneurs or people with university education, play the most significant role in explaining voting results and evince mostly the direct effects. On the contrary, variables describing municipalities, such as public spending or infrastructure, are more likely to impact the election result indirectly. Subsequently, the analysis is replicated using two tree-based machine learning algorithms and all models are evaluated based on their ability to predict the election results from unseen data. Even though machine learning methods estimate only relative variable importance instead of standard coefficients, this approach represents a perspective...
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Workforce Composition Effects on Covid-19 Spread: a SIR model and an Application to the Czech Regions
Škultéty, Oliver ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Chytilová, Julie (referee)
One of the main types of government intervention aimed at fghting the COVID-19 pandemic were the social distancing measures. This thesis presents a novel approach to examining the relationship between social distancing and workforce composition. The model used is a SIRD model with dynamically optimizing individuals. The model is estimated for each Czech region and cali- brated for the 'social distancing measure' so that the model predictions best ft the data. This measure is then compared in a regression with the share of skilled labour in each region. This thesis fnds that a large degree of variance of social distancing between regions can be explained by the workforce composition. 1
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Lockdown Policies and Firms' Investments in a Two-Period Macroeconomic Model
Fencl, Tomáš ; Gregor, Martin (advisor) ; Buliskeria, Nino (referee)
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of lockdown policies was often accompanied by some level of commitment toward its development or termination. This thesis introduces multiple gradually improving two-period macroeconomic models which induce a time inconsistency problem regarding the lockdown policy choice. The effect of the policymaker's commitment is studied and analyzed as a possible solution to this problem. Aside from thoughts concerning directly the construction of the models, for instance, the reasoning behind its short-term nature or the importance of the shape of input functions, this thesis evaluates the policy commitment as an efficient tool. It further emphasizes the importance of the commitment's credibility. 1
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Quantitative Link between Founder-CEOs and Total Shareholder Return
Chyba, Jakub ; Kočenda, Evžen (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
In our work we aim to study the effect of Founder-CEO presence in a company on excess shareholder returns. Hence, this work continues in the footsteps of asset pricing literature studying statistical effects of variables such as of Beta, Size and Price to Book ratio. We gather data on panel of NASDAQ 100 companies and note presence of firm and time effect in our data. In this situation we use two methodologies to try to tackle the issues in our data. Specifically, we employ Hausman Taylor approach and Fama Macbeth regression. We find some evidence in favour of Founder-CEO effect, yet overall we arrive to inconclusive results. Our Hausman Taylor approach arrives to positive statistically significant effect at Founder- CEOs, while Fama Macbeth arrives to insignificant effect. We note that different issues with endogeneity might be an important factor behind the difference, yet we argue that given our options the methods employed are valid choices.
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