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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.
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Economic Well-Being Beyond GDP: Implementing the Recommendations of the Commission on the Measure of Economic Performance and Social Progress
Burton, Liam ; Paulus, Michal (advisor) ; Baxa, Jaromír (referee)
Gross Domestic Product has historically been the dominant, often sole, yardstick regarding a nation's economic development, growth, and well-being. This paper acknowledges GDP's shortcomings and aims development more rounded metrics to better measure well-being. The aim of this thesis is to advance the work done by 2009 Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress by reassessing the twelve recommendations made by Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi and attempting to apply them to a new dashboard of metrics. JEL Classification I31 E01 E21 Keywords well-being, economic performance, GDP, Stiglitz Commission, quality-of-life, social progress Abstrakt Hrubý domácí produkt je historicky dominantní metrika v souvislosti s národním hospodářským rozvojem, růstem a blahobytem. Tato práce potvrzuje nedostatky HDP a jejím cílem je vývoj více vyvážené metriky k lepšímu měření blahobytu. Zaměřuje se na prohloubení práce Stiglitze, Sena a Fitoussiho z roku 2009 (Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress), přehodnocuje jejich dvanáct doporučení a pokouší se je aplikovat na kolekci možných měření společenského rozvoje.
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Observing Globalization using the Gravity Model of Trade
Dobiáš, Adam ; Paulus, Michal (advisor) ; Benáček, Vladimír (referee)
This thesis investigates application of the gravity model of international trade on measuring a distance coefficient, which is known to be a proxy to globalization. This estimation is performed on a dataset containing information on EU 27 countries through the years 1996 to 2014. The presence of 10 post- communist countries enabled the author to perform the estimation on transformative economies, which had been isolated from their western trade partners for over 40 years. The division of the dataset into the Western and Eastern Blocs enabled measurement of convergence of the intra-blocs trade - the second goal of this thesis. This measurement was done through newly introduced intra-blocs trade variables that enabled measurements of both directions of trade. Through the application of this model on 10 sections, these measurements could be performed on single trade components. The analysis shows a substantial heterogeneity between single sections both in distance coefficient and inter-blocs trade. An increase in the level of globalization was observed in 9 out of 10 sections and convergence of some sections between the blocs was also found. Finally, globalization was found to progress with varying speed within single SITC sections during periods of economic crises. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Costs and Usage of Medical Devices in the Czech Republic
Kaláb, František ; Paulus, Michal (advisor) ; Votápková, Jana (referee)
Geographic differences in healthcare costs, usage and practice are documented by research from the United States and Western Europe, yet, there is limited information on this topic in the Czech Republic. Spatial variation often seems unexplained by the demographic, health or economic characteristics of the population which points to inefficiencies in the healthcare system. We bring three main contributions: a first study dealing entirely with medical devices; we improve previously used models with a set of environmental indicators and; we work with an entirely new sample which has not been used before. Based on 2012 claims data on medical devices we present a geographic analysis of spending and further analyse spending and usage of three widely used and economically relevant devices. Further, we estimate regression model in order to assess the role of unwarranted variation in spending, which we subsequently expand on the three studied devices. We find significant variation in the per capita spending and usage of healthcare devices at the level of regions and districts, with more than a threefold difference in the relative spending between the regions in the lowest and the highest spending quintile. Moreover, only 38% of the district difference between the highest and lowest spending quintile was explained...
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Social and Medical Costs of Dupuytren's Disease
Losenický, Jakub ; Votápková, Jana (advisor) ; Paulus, Michal (referee)
The thesis investigates the relative cost-effectiveness of two treatment methods of Dupuytren's disease (DD) - surgical fasciectomy and injectable collagenase - and assesses the impact of the two health technologies on the budget of the Czech Republic. For this purpose, cost-minimization analysis (CMA) and budget impact analysis (BIA) are employed and, importantly, both social and medical costs are taken into consideration. Concerning the CMA, different patients are modelled with respect to personal characteristics such as occupation, type of work (manual, non-manual) and income. In the BIA, data on DD occurrence in the Czech Republic from the National Register of Hospitalised Patients (NRHOSP) are analysed. We found that collagenase is a cost-minimizing treatment for a big majority of employees and manually working SMEs. On the other hand, collagenase turned out to be more expensive than fasciectomy for most of the non-manual SMEs. All things considered, collagenase appeared to be cheaper for most of the model patients. We also discovered that if all the patients in the dataset were treated with collagenase, the Czech state budget would annually save 1,685,452 CZK. The average annual costs of fasciectomy and collagenase were 41,334,049 CZK and 39,648,597 CZK, respectively. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Global Imbalances Reflected in the Eurozone's Accounting
Pleticha, Petr ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Paulus, Michal (referee)
In this study I investigate the discrepancies between net investment income and development of net international investment position of the Eurozone. To examine these discrepancies, I use the concept of dark matter which enables quantification of such discrepancies. This study has two goals: to present an alternative view on the development of net international investment position in the Eurozone, and to test validity of the dark matter concept by inspecting its interaction with main economic driving forces such as exchange rate or energy prices. Previous research was mainly focused on the United States and did not study dark matter in broader economic context. To date, no systematic analysis has considered the origins of dark matter behavior. The results indeed present the stocks of dark matter behaving in predictable manner, although, contrary to my expectations, they seem not to be connected with exchange rate. The Eurozone's international investment position adjusted for the stocks of dark matter looks also more optimistically, pushing the concerns about global imbalances aside. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Credit Growth in CEE Countries: Empirical Analysis of Early Warning Indicators
Stříbný, Jan ; Geršl, Adam (advisor) ; Paulus, Michal (referee)
Excessive credit growth is often considered to be an indicator of future problems in financial sector. Basel III regulatory package has introduced countercyclical capital buffer to improve stability of the banking sector and proposed using credit-to-GDP gap as an indicator for calibrating the buffer. In BCBS methodology, Credit-to-GDP gap is counted as a difference between current value and a long term trend obtained from data series using Hodrick-Prescott filter. In this work we used out of sample estimation method to create models for a determination of equilibrium credit to households' assets ratio and applied the results to compute the deviation from the long term equilibrium. We found that these alternative indicators can give signals different to credit to GDP gap, computed by using HP filter or OOS method, and sometimes they could even identify accumulation of risk in cases, where credit to GDP fails. The indicators were especially superior to using HP filter on CEE countries. The weakness is, however, the determination of a clear threshold for the indicator, when the credit growth should be classified as excessive.
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Firms and Tax Havens: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Burianová, Markéta ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Paulus, Michal (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to provide a description of the phenomenon of tax havens in relation to the Czech Republic. The thesis begins with description of theoretical background of the problem. It provides definition, characteristics, and an overview of main uses of tax havens by Czech firms. This part is followed by analysis of Czech firms controlled from tax havens in order to determine what type of firms is most often leaving the Czech Republic. The analysis showed the largest interest from limited liability companies and companies operating in real estate. The next part of the thesis presents an estimate of tax loss arising from tax haven activities of Czech subjects. It is the first estimate of this kind for the Czech Republic. The resulting tax loss is estimated to be 21 billion CZK per year, which equals to approximately 10% of annual tax revenue from corporate and personal income tax. The thesis is concluded with an overview of counter-measures that are taken worldwide and in the Czech Republic as means of combating the rising phenomenon of tax havens.
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Cross-Country Analysis of Life Satisfaction
Stehlíková, Zuzana ; Janhuba, Radek (advisor) ; Paulus, Michal (referee)
This thesis examines the relations between subjective well-being and economic, politic and social characteristics of individual countries. We study the link between three components of subjective well-being - life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect and other country characteristics. First, we use the dataset containing countries from almost all countries of the whole world and then with a more detailed European dataset. For the analysis of life satisfaction, panel data models are used. The results indicate that we are able to explain better variation in life satisfaction by our set of explanatory variables in comparison with positive affect and negative affect. In the former dataset, we discovered that the most important determinants of life satisfaction are GDP per capita, health, freedom to make life choices, political conditions and social support. In the latter, European dataset revealed a strong negative correlation between tertiary education attainment and happiness. The results also indicate that female representation in national parliament is an important predictor of life satisfaction in European countries. This supports the idea that equality between men and women plays an important role in developed societies. Keywords Subjective well-being, Happiness, Life satisfaction,...
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Internationalization of Higher Education in Kyrgyzstan
Dogochieva, Tolgonay ; Kohoutek, Jan (advisor) ; Paulus, Michal (referee)
The aim of this research is to find general trends and rationales for internationalization of higher education in Kyrgyzstan. The conceptual framework for this work is based on concepts developed by Knight and de Wit, Knight (2004). It used qualitative research, including secondary data and interviews. Although not very widely but internationalization became part of Kyrgyzstan higher education. There are student and staff mobility programs; the country hosts branches of foreign universities. Kyrgyzstan universities are creating extensive networks with world universities. Bologna process played major role in incorporating Kyrgyzstan education system to the world educational community. Kyrgyzstan has acquired international standards in terms of two-level cycle and credit hours. Along with that higher education is still facing problems and challenges. Corruption and low quality are among them. The study found that the most important rationale for internationalization is educational rationale. It is believed that internationalization improves academic quality. Economic, political and cultural/social rationales are also important.
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