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Predatory Behaviour in Transportation Sector - "Czech Railways v. Leo Express" case
Slámová, Iva ; Vacek, Pavel (advisor) ; Schwarz, Jiří (referee)
It is important to control whether dominant companies in particular market sectors follow laws and rules and do not abuse their dominance at the expense of weaker companies. This behaviour is likely to damage current or avoid the entry of new competitors, shrink the competition and set the environment for price changes the consumer is exposed to. The thesis clarifies the theoretical aspect of this issue and tries to apply it on the real case from the railway transport sector in order to describe the procedure of defining relevant market and market share and investigating the abusive behaviour. A questionnaire survey among railway passeners is an integral part of the thesis. JEL Classification D21, D22, K21, L11, L12, L40 Keywords Predatory prices, relevant market, SSNIP test, railway transport, Czech Railways Author's e-mail Iva-Slamova@seznam.cz Supervisor's e-mail vacek@fsv.cuni.cz
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Economics of meaning - comparison of efficiency based on meaning
Kráčmer, Michal ; Mlčoch, Lubomír (advisor) ; Schwarz, Jiří (referee)
This work deals with a relatively new topic for economists. The connection between economic apparatus and the human need for meaning is pioneer, indeed. However, the work does not handle this topic by classical means of economics. The main topic of the work is to show that the human need for meaning is the main source of preference creation and human activity. The tool of analysis is a synthetic approach of various scientific branches. In the work is thus combined knowledge of biology, sociology, psychology, ecology and economics and their related branches. On this basis is constructed a new synthetic theory of the consumer's preference creation. The model has a big predictive and descriptive potential. From the results of the analysis stems that the human need for meaning could really be the key variable having influence in human decision making.
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Patent Trolls: Do Their Patents Differ?
Trlifaj, Šimon ; Schwarz, Jiří (advisor) ; Wang, Yao (referee)
The United States patent system is undergoing changes, with a sharply increasing number of patent litigations and applications. This Thesis aims at analyzing the role of Non-practicing entities-companies which engage in licensing and litigating patents, as opposed to producing-in the system. Using two unique datasets of 533,720 U.S. patents, I investigate what type of patents these entities uphold. Specifically, I focus on two proxy variables for patent value (forward citations for social value and renewal rate for private value), and analyze patents owned by one of the biggest Non-practicing entities, the Intellectual Ventures. In comparison to two control groups, the results provide some evidence that patents owned by this company: 1) do have an above-average private and social value, and 2) show smaller relation between private and social value. The results support existing research which suggests that Non-practicing entities possess higher proportion of "strategic patents", that are highly privately valuable mainly for their litigation potential.
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A Panel Data Investigation of the Military Spending - Economic Growth Nexus in the EU
Uchman, Krzysztof Jerzy ; Aliyev, Shahriyar (advisor) ; Schwarz, Jiří (referee)
The thesis examines the relationship between economic growth, investment, and military expenditure, utilizing a balanced data panel for 14 European countries over three periods: 1970 - 1991, 1992 - 2020, and 1970 - 2020. A vector autoregression model was applied to estimate the relationship for the European population. Regression of the 14 European countries over the entire period of 1970 - 2020 has yielded neither statistically significant autocorrelation nor cross-correlation between the studied variables. The same is true when regressing the 14 countries in the period 1992 - 2020. For the same group of European countries in the period 1970 - 1991 some statistical significance has been found in the autocorrelation between investment as a share of GDP and its lags. It appears that the introduction of a time break between year 1991 and 1992 (the fall of the Iron Curtain) has no impact on the studied relationship for the selected group of countries and the time period. The results of the thesis suggest no identifiable relationship between the variables for the chosen European sample of 14 countries.
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Determinants of Crime in Eastern Europe with a Focus on Czechia and Slovakia
Umlaufová, Anna ; Kalabiška, Roman (advisor) ; Schwarz, Jiří (referee)
This study examines whether determinants of crime, hypothesized in the eco- nomic theory of crime and tested in other global regions, also explain crime rates in Eastern Europe, which is often excluded in existing research. Using fixed effects estimation and controlling for social cohesion and law enforcement, the results suggest that increases in income per capita have a negative effect on homicide and violent crime, but the effect on sexual and property crimes is mixed. Furthermore, the significance and sign of the impact of income in- equality and unemployment differ across individual crimes. This study also investigates crime determinants specifically in Czechia and Slovakia. Contrary to the cross-country analysis, there appears to be little connection between aggregate income and the regional distribution of crime, indicating the impor- tance of social rather than economic factors. JEL Classification K42, O15, O52, P20, C23 Keywords Crime, Income distribution, Eastern Europe, Panel Data, Czechia, Slovakia Title Determinants of Crime in Eastern Europe with a Focus on Czechia and Slovakia
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Impact of Institutions on Cross-Border Price Dispersion
Schwarz, Jiří ; Jurajda, Štěpán (advisor) ; Horváth, Roman (referee)
This thesis, building on existing studies on border effect, analyzes price dispersion among cities in the European region over the last twenty years (1990-2009). An extensive overview of the literature reveals that the authors completely neglect the entrepreneurial aspect of the arbitrage process, even though arbitrage is the main power behind the law of one price. Once we understand arbitrage as productive entrepreneurial activity, institutional quality should be one of determinants of arbitrage attractiveness and should, therefore, influence the price dispersion. To test this hypothesis I express the quality of institutions as one of the factors influencing total costs of arbitrage, together with population density in cities used as a proxy for competition intensity, and distance. The regression analysis proves that all three variables explain a part of observed price dispersion - the higher is the density and the better are the institutions, the lower is the predicted dispersion. This result can also be viewed as a small contribution to the emerging literature empirically testing the theory of productive and unproductive entrepreneurship.
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Islam and Economic Performance: A Meta-Analysis
Kratochvíla, Patrik ; Havránek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Schwarz, Jiří (referee)
Islam and Economic Performance: A Meta-Analysis Patrik Kratochvíla June 28, 2021 Abstract The ongoing economic supremacy of the West has prompted debates on the ability of non-Christian religions to generate economic growth. The academic literature focusing on the Islamic religion o↵ers multiple answers, leaving the matter unresolved and with no definite conclusion. Based on a quantitative sur- vey of 315 estimates collected from 41 relevant academic studies, Islam exerts a positive and statistically significant e↵ect on economic growth in 40% of cases, a negative and statistically significant e↵ect in 10% of cases, and virtually zero e↵ect in 50% of cases. Tests for publication bias indicate slightly preferential reporting against negative estimates. When I correct for this bias, I find that the mean e↵ect of Islam on economic growth is positive but economically small. I also construct 79 moderator variables capturing methodological heterogeneity among the primary studies and apply the method of Bayesian model averaging to deal with model uncertainty in meta-analysis. The analysis shows that the heterogeneity in the results is primarily driven by di↵erences in the sample com- position and the choice of control variables, and to a lesser extent by estimation characteristics and proxies for Islam employed. 1
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Theoretical conceptions of Czechoslovak transformation: Factors that influenced the creation of transformation strategy
Krausová, Tereza ; Doležalová, Antonie (advisor) ; Schwarz, Jiří (referee)
The bachelor thesis Theoretical conceptions of Czechoslovak transformation: Factors that influenced the creation of transformation strategy focuses on the Czechoslovak economic transformation in the early 1990s and describes the process of creating the Czechoslovak transformation strategy. The thesis answers the question of whether the selected topics and their discussions conducted on the pages of the scientific journal Politická ekonomie were reflected in the final transformation strategy and the implemented reform measures between the years 1991-93. The topics of labor productivity and economic growth, imbalance, price system and price liberalization were chosen for the analysis. First, the thesis focuses on the descriptive analysis of the journal's articles from 1989-93 that discuss selected topics, and maps in detail the development of their content and the opinions of their authors. In the following chapter, the thesis compares findings from the descriptive analysis with measures presented in the final Czechoslovak transformation scenario and with the practical policy in 1991-93. Based on the comparison, the thesis concludes that in the case of the topic of imbalance, the opinions of the authors coincided with the planned measures and there is, therefore, a possibility that a discussion of...
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Economic freedom and economic growth: A Meta-Analysis
Sardinero, Víctor ; Havránek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Schwarz, Jiří (referee)
The association between economic freedom and economic growth has been largely explored by researchers and the overall ndings indicate a signi cant and positive relationship. The empirical literature, however, is subject to suer from bias. In this paper we collect 16,070 estimates from 69 studies and using recently developed meta-analytic techniques investigate the eect of publication and speci cation biases on the reported results. While our baseline analysis re- ports some evidence for publication bias, but not very strong and robust, and con rms the speci cation bias reported by previous reviews, we also nd that these results are aected by the inclusion of three in uential outliers in the data set. Once we trim these studies, there is no evidence of speci cation bias anymore and we nd evidence of a robust and strong publication bias. Further, after controlling for the bias, we nd that the true eect of economic freedom on growth is substantially smaller than the eect reported by the empirical literature. JEL Classi cation O43; P10; P12; C52 Keywords 'economic freedom', 'economic growth', 'publi- cation bias', 'speci cation bias', 'meta-analysis' Title Economic freedom and economic growth: A Meta-Analysis
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