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Grant support and doctoral studies: analysis of the Grant Agency of the Charles University data
Korbel, Václav
Only about half of the doctoral students in the Czech Republic finish their studies. Students have both insufficient financial and non-financial support from universities. One way to support students in their research and studies is through grant competitions. This is the first study in the Czech Republic to study the relationship between grant support of doctoral students and their further studies. Specifically, we study the effect on graduation rate and study length at the Charles University. We analyze the effects for all students aggregately and divided into field sections. The grant agency is divided into field sections based on the field of research (social sciences, natural sciences, and medicine). We use data from the Grant Agency of Charles University from 2010 to 2013. One third to half of the doctoral students apply for grant support during their studies. Only one third of projects are supported. We match similar students with and without grant support in the analysis. We use matching procedure, which searches for similar students, who received grant support, and students, who applied but did not receive grant support based on their characteristics and their research project characteristics. Our empirical strategy does not guarantee to estimate the causal impact. We interpret our results as a non-causal relationship of grant support on further studies of doctoral students.
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Stigma as a self-fulfilling prophecy? An experiment in the Czech prisons
Cingl, L. ; Korbel, Václav
Prison inmates face many problems after their release which may hinder their reintegration into society. Discrimination from the society can lead among the inmates to the creation of a stigma of an ex-inmate. In such a situation, the history of the prison sentence is a source of shame and prejudice from the side of society. It can further lead to a loss of motivation and self-confidence, and ultimately to an increase in the probability of recidivism. The goal of our project was to investigate whether inmates currently serving a sentence expect stigmatization from people out of prison. Another goal was to test whether a light-touch psychological intervention targeting the self-confidence can reduce the effects of stigma. We tested our research questions on a sample of 297 male inmates from 15 Czech prisons using methods of experimental economics. Inmates made decisions involving trust and altruism in situations which simulate interactions with the general society so that we could measure the expectations of inmates about the attitudes they have. Our results show that inmates do not expect stigmatization. On the contrary, they expect a similar level of trust and even a more altruistic behavior from the general society than towards non-prisoners. Since inmates do not expect to be stigmatized, the psychological intervention did change neither beliefs nor behavior. The fact that prisoners do not expect stigmatization can be regarded as positive for their future reintegration. On the other hand, some inmates reported overly optimistic beliefs\nregarding the behavior of the general society. It could be one of the reasons why they do not prepare adequately for the release and subsequently recidivate. Further research should shed light, whether overly optimistic beliefs can negatively affect prospects for reintegration.
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Gender differences under competitive pressure: Evidence from skittles
Bílek, Jan ; Korbel, Václav (advisor) ; Šťastná, Lenka (referee)
Gender differences under competitive pressure: Evidence from skittles Jan Bílek Abstract Nowadays, performance in stressful situations has become essential in everyday lives. Moreover, many of these situations happen under competition. Recent literature suggests that there might be a gender gap in behavior under such competitive pressure. This paper studies this phenomenon in the previously unexplored field of skittles. We investigate whether men and women players score differently when facing better players, i.e. are put in higher competitive pressure. Based on our results, we cannot reject the hypothesis that men and women react similarly under competitive pressure. The alternative specifications provide a suitable evidence for existence of gender differences in reaction to the actual score of an opponent in the game, although the limitation of these specifications is an endogeneity problem and thus the results have to be interpreted with caution.
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The school homework load in the Czech Republic and in international comparison
Korbel, Václav ; Münich, Daniel
This study does not aspire to detect any causal effects of HW on pupils’ school outcomes nor any other desirable or adverse aspects of HW. Nevertheless, we show that the estimated (non-causal) relationship between HW load and pupils’ results is substantially different depending on whether we look at differences between countries, between schools or within schools. We thus illustrate that simplified or even ignorant presumptions about these relationships may lead to mistaken conclusions, for example that greater HW loads causally worsen pupils’ results, which it might be tempting to assume on the basis of international comparisons. This study’s findings reveal that Czech pupils have a very low HW load in comparison to pupils from other countries. This does not, however, automatically mean that Czech teachers should start to give their pupils more HW. First of all, there is no evidence, even from other countries, that greater HW loads automatically improve learning outcomes. Second, debates about HW load tend to disregard other key questions related to the amount of HW suitable in the local educational context. While providing answers to these questions is beyond the scope of this current study, these should be the subject of further research and expert debate. Good teachers should, furthermore, be capable of assessing the suitability or otherwise of setting HW in their particular local and educational contexts.
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Three Essays on Unethical Behavior
Korbel, Václav ; Chytilová, Julie (advisor) ; Glätzle-Rürtzler, Daniela (referee) ; Ibañez-Diaz, Marcela (referee) ; Münich, Daniel (referee)
This dissertation consists of three essays that explore how unethical behavior develops in adolescence. All three essays use a methodology of lab-in-the-field experiment, but each investigates questions related to unethical behavior from a different perspective. The research presented in this thesis focuses on unethical behavior in two populations: the general population of adolescents and juvenile delinquents. Combining findings from the general and problematic population of adolescents helps us to understand what factors contribute to delinquency and more importantly, what factors may attenuate it. In the first essay, we investigate whether adolescents cheat more when making a decision in groups compared to deciding as individuals and whether the process of group formation matters. The results show that, in general, groups cheat more but the results are driven primarily by younger adolescents while there is no difference between individuals and groups among older adolescents. Interestingly, the process how groups are formed does not play a role. This suggests that tendencies to cheat develop still in the adolescence and that the context in which decision is made, is important. The second essay studies how willingness to obey rules differs between juvenile delinquents and adolescents from the...
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The hot hand fallacy
Augustin, Michael ; Korbel, Václav (advisor) ; Šťastná, Lenka (referee)
The "hot hand" effect describes the phenomenon when an athlete makes a considerable in his performance following a series of successes. In the professional literature was the "hot hand" effect considered a fallacy until 2014, when a substantial bias was discovered in the original test method, and a new set of statistics, which controlled for the bias, was introduced. The aim of this work is to test the occurrence of "hot hand" using new methods and to create a performance analysis of both genders. Furthermore it will be proven that the "hot hand" is not a privilege of the best NBA players in the world, but can also occur in semi-professional leagues such as the Czech NBL. The first part of the thesis presents the theory of "hot-hand fallacy" and its important implications in the world of economics and finance. There is also a key review of the "hot hand" literature. In the second and third parts, the biased data and the methodology of the "hot hand" literature are presented, and a new method for controlling this bias is introduced. The results of individual analyses confirm the significant findings of the "hot" and "cold" hand and demonstrate the effectiveness of the new unbiased test. Results discussing the performance test according to gender and the possibilities of further testing are to be...
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Discrimination of Slovak people in the Prague rental housing market - A field experiment
Holková, Jana ; Korbel, Václav (advisor) ; Špolcová, Dominika (referee)
Discrimination is a broadly discussed issue. The housing market is no exception and we may observe many examples of discriminatory behaviour. Discrimina- tion in various subjects (e.g. race, gender) was a target of a large number of experiments. However, researches regarding discrimination between two nations are lacking. The thesis presents a field experiment on discrimination of Slovaks in the Prague rental housing market and further examines the effect of work- ing status on the discrimination rate. The experiment uses eight male fictitious identities which reveal their national affiliation through a language of the request (Slovak or Czech) and their names typical for Slovak and Czech nationalities. The request specifies working status of a potential tenant (student or full-time worker). Data indicates that applications in the Slovak language have about 10 percent lower chance of receiving a positive response than Czech applications, which is significant on 1 per cent level. Students compared to workers received about 6 per cent fewer invitations for a flat viewing. Even though students have slightly lower response rate than workers, the difference is insignificant. Keywords Discrimination, Housing market, Rental housing market, Field Ex- periment, Response Rate, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Internet 1
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Efficiency in general medical practice in the Czech Republic
Vajskebr, Filip ; Votápková, Jana (advisor) ; Korbel, Václav (referee)
This bachelor thesis analyses technical efficiency of general practitioners in the Czech Republic. It exploits unique dataset that comprises information about health care activ- ities of 107 general practitioners that operate in 79 different municipalities over the period 2015-2017. First, Principal Component Analysis was utilized to deal with high dimension- ality of medical outputs. Second, two stochastic frontier regression models were employed, one of which accounts for heterogeneity of the sample by including efficiency effects vari- ables. Even though both models estimate mean technical efficiency to be approximately 83 %, efficiency ranking of individual general practitioners differs across models. Included efficiency effects have statistically significant impact on technical efficiency. In particular, general practitioners situated in rural municipalities are less efficient, higher competition in a municipality discourages efficiency and general practitioners providing health care to adults are more efficient. 1
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The salary level of teachers in the Czech Republic and its impacts
Kinzlová, Kateřina ; Pertold-Gebicka, Barbara (advisor) ; Korbel, Václav (referee)
The aim of the present paper is to examine the salary level of teachers in the Czech Republic and its possible impacts on the teaching workforce. It has been shown that teacher salaries are substantially lower than salaries of similarly educated workers in the Czech Republic and are among the lowest in the European Union. Because of the strong link between salary level and profession's attractiveness to young graduates, there have been concerns about low interest in the teaching profession and the high dropout rate for young teachers. Using most up-to-date data available, the paper shows that there has been positive development in teacher salaries in recent years, but that the raise is of a similar scale as that in other areas. The paper builds up an analysis of the dropout rate for young teachers based on data on the teaching workforce. The paper finds that the dropout rate is very significant and may result in teacher shortages in the near future. The current data on teacher salaries highlights the importance of their improvement as a major factor of change in order to increase the attractiveness of the teaching profession.
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How do people perceive income inequality? A Czech case
Havelková, Kateřina ; Korbel, Václav (advisor) ; Želinský, Tomáš (referee)
The widespread concern that the gap between the rich and the poor is continuously ex- panding prompts the stimulus for further examination. Standard theory suggests that the level of income inequality has a significant effect on policies with redistributive elements. However, empirical studies propose that rather than the actual shape of income distri- bution, individual perceptions of income distribution define the public finance models. Individuals tend to misperceive income inequality, yet there is little evidence regarding the origins of these perception biases. The bachelor thesis examines one of the possible theories that attempt to explain roots of misperceptions. The geographic reference group theory suggests that people project their local findings onto their estimates of overall income inequality. To test this hypothesis, we used the Gini coefficient with respect to country's districts as an explanatory variable and the subjective inequality index (Per- ceived inequality index) as a dependent variable. The empirical findings, nevertheless, provide little support for the geographic reference group theory as all regressions showed a highly insignificant relationship between district inequality and perceived inequality. The evidence suggests that respondents, who live in districts with high...
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