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Family economics in Sweden
Wdowyczynová, Lucie ; Mlčoch, Lubomír (advisor) ; Rečka, Lukáš (referee)
The Swedish form of the welfare state has a long history and is known especially for its generous social policy financed mainly from exceptionally high tax levies. At the beginning the Bachelor Thesis Family economics in Sweden shows the general relation between family and economics, and then it focuses on family policy in Sweden and puts it into the context of the development and the present form of the welfare state. It also explores the important sub-components of the Swedish system, which affect family policy and other family trends. The work among other things illustrates how high fertility combined with high rates of labour market participation and knowledge-based economy can be supported in Europe. At the same time, however, it stresses that the differences in social policy in various European countries are caused by many cultural, social and economic factors, and therefore their mutual comparison and unification is limited. Yet, while considering new reforms, we can at least learn from experience of other countries or take them as an example. This thesis also highlights the disadvantages of the Swedish model.
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Shadow Price of Air Pollution Emissions in the Czech energy sector - Estimation from Distance Function
Rečka, Lukáš ; Ščasný, Milan (advisor) ; Klimešová, Andrea (referee)
This thesis employs a parametric input distance function that incorporates both desirable and undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology. Based on the Shephard (1970) theory of duality, we derive the shadow prices of undesirable outputs in the Czech energy sector on the data over the period 2002 - 2007. The medians of our shadow prices estimates are 8374, 1198, 2805, 6051 and 8549 € per ton of PM, SO2, NOx, CO and VOC, respectively. We decompose shadow prices estimates and test the hypotheses that the marginal abatement cost decline over time; that marginal abatement cost rice with the declining emission level; and that marginal abatement cost rice with declining emission rate. Key Words: shadow prices, distance function, undesirable outputs, marginal abatement cost JEL classification: C61, D24, Q53
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Optimization of oil production by OPEC countries
Pilátová, Markéta ; Červinka, Michal (advisor) ; Rečka, Lukáš (referee)
Almost 4 years of low oil prices and excess supply call the relevance of OPEC for current oil market into question. Therefore to investigate its role, this thesis examines the optimum oil production of individual OPEC countries accenting the consequent profit. Firstly, Cournot's model is employed to find equilibrium price and output on the oligopolistic market. Secondly, model considering OPEC and Russia as the Stackelberg leader with competitors forming oligopolistic fringe helps to uncover the potential of the recent car- tel of OPEC and Russia. In both models, data from the year 2016 with different levels of elasticity ranging from -0.1 to -0.2 are utilized. Our re- search suggests that all OPEC members could have increased their profits by forming a non-cooperative oligopolistic market, where prices would reach up to 81.7 USD/bbl. Moreover, as a part of the cartel with Russia, OPEC could increase its joint profits by almost 27 % compared to the oligopolistic market, benefiting from coordinated output cuts followed by a steep growth in price. Thus we can conclude that either OPEC lost its power over the oil market or attempted to maintain its market share and drive higher-cost producers out of the market.
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Forecasting electricity prices in the Czech spot market
Černý, Kryštof ; Lebovič, Michal (advisor) ; Rečka, Lukáš (referee)
This master thesis is focused on analysis and forecasting of hourly and daily electricity price on the deregulated Czech daily electricity market. The methods used for estimating and forecasting hourly and daily prices are picked from the ARIMA-GARCH family of models and Neural Networks. For daily price data, the Redundant Haar Wavelet Transform decomposition of the time series is used in combination with ARIMA and Neural Networks models for forecasting. For hourly data, ARIMA and Neural Network models are considered. The forecasting results of daily data indicate that simpler models such as seasonal ARIMA outperform all other methods. Also the wavelet decomposi- tion of the daily series didn't prove useful in enhancing the forecast precision. For hourly data, the Multilayer Perceptron architecture of the neural network outperformed the ARIMA forecast. JEL Classification C20, C22, C45, C53, C65 Keywords Forecasting, Time Series, ARIMA, GARCH, Neural Net- works, Wavelet Transform Author's e-mail krystof.cerny@gmail.com Supervisor's e-mail lebovicm@gmail.com 1
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Analysis of the renewable energy support schemes in the EU: Can be an ECOlogical also an ECOnomical?
Andoková, Senta ; Cahlík, Tomáš (advisor) ; Rečka, Lukáš (referee)
The study compares FIT (Feed-in tariff) and RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) as the two most commonly used support schemes for renewable energy sources (RES) in the EU. It examines a relationship of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and by a practical experiment for public lighting in Prague the study proposes an ecological functioning of electricity grids in the EU with CO2 emissions reduction effect. The main contribution lies in the recency and originality of the econometric analysis and practical experiment. FIT and RPS analysis demonstrates that both schemes affect demand for electricity and increase its price. The econometric model was tested for 28 EU countries for 1990-2013. The results say that the EU is currently located on the downslope of the inverted U-shaped EKC with a turning point, after which the dependence begins to grow. Nevertheless, for the most of observations the turning point is too far to be a source of concern. Practical experiment has shown that installation of energy saving devices for electricity grids in the EU can bring satisfactory results in reducing CO2 emissions independently of state aid. More efficient use of existing energy sources, however, should rather serve as a complement to conventional support, phasing out with the development of RES technologies....
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Transition to a low carbon transport system: including time as a decision factor in transport modal choice
Mrkous, Jan ; Rečka, Lukáš (advisor) ; Ščasný, Milan (referee)
The aim of this bachelor thesis was to analyze the choice of transport modes depending on the value of travel time. For the purpose of this work, I limited the choice of travel modes to trains, buses and cars, as these modes of transport contribute to the transport of the population in the Czech Republic the most. This is a topic that can contribute to the optimization of transport at the national level. Through a robust literature search, I obtained data describing the value of travel time and then used it for modelling in the TIMES software. The model optimized people's use of various modes of transport based on their demands and the value of travel time.
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Impact of increased temporal detail in long-term dynamic energy system model with an increasing share of volatile renewable energy sources
Švec, Josef ; Rečka, Lukáš (advisor) ; Janda, Karel (referee)
Long-term energy systems often simplify temporal detail resolution. However, this simplification is not appropriate for systems with an increasing share of intermittent renewable energy sources (IRES). The low temporal resolution causes a systemic bias in the model's outputs. The model overpredicts the share of the IRES on the total generation. This entails an underprediction of the total system costs, underprediction of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and a bias in the energy mix. This could lead to an ill-informed energy policy and eventually cause a failure in the decarbonization of the energy sector. This thesis increases the temporal resolution of the TIMES-CZ model from 12 seasonal times slices and 3 daynite time slices to 24 daynite time slices and compares 8 scenarios with 1, 4 and 12 seasonal time slices. This thesis compares three representative days selection methods - simple heuristics, hierarchical clustering centroid selection method and historical day closest to the centroid selection method. The electricity generation of IRES and the total production in base year (2012) is the most accurately approximated by the 12 seasonal time slices selected by the hierarchical clustering centroid method.
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Three essays in energy and environmental economics
Rečka, Lukáš ; Ščasný, Milan (advisor) ; Knápek, Jaroslav (referee) ; Van Koten, Silvester (referee) ; Muchapondwa, Edwin (referee)
Three Essays in Energy and Environmental Economics Author: Mgr. Lukáš Rečka Supervisor: Mgr. Milan Ščasný, Ph.D. Academic Year: 2018/2019 Abstract This thesis consists of three articles that share the main theme - energy and environment. The dissertation aims mainly at the Czech energy system and analyses it development after the Velvet Revolution and its possible future development. The first article applies Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index decomposition to analyses the main driving forces of significant reduction in air quality pollutants during the transition of the Czech economy towards market economy in the 1990s. It continues then to investigate how the driving forces affected the emissions volumes during succeeding the post-transition period up to 2016. The second article reacts on the 2015 governmental decision to lift brown coal mining limits in the North Bohemia coal basin. The paper analyses the impacts of maintaining the ban on mining coal reserves and compares them with three alternative options that would each weaken the environmental protections of the ban. The impacts of each of these alternative governmental propostions are analysed on the Czech energy system, the fuel- and the technology-mix, the costs of generating energy, related emissions and external costs associated with the emissions....
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Optimization of oil production by OPEC countries
Pilátová, Markéta ; Červinka, Michal (advisor) ; Rečka, Lukáš (referee)
Almost 4 years of low oil prices and excess supply call the relevance of OPEC for current oil market into question. Therefore to investigate its role, this thesis examines the optimum oil production of individual OPEC countries accenting the consequent profit. Firstly, Cournot's model is employed to find equilibrium price and output on the oligopolistic market. Secondly, model considering OPEC and Russia as the Stackelberg leader with competitors forming oligopolistic fringe helps to uncover the potential of the recent car- tel of OPEC and Russia. In both models, data from the year 2016 with different levels of elasticity ranging from -0.1 to -0.2 are utilized. Our re- search suggests that all OPEC members could have increased their profits by forming a non-cooperative oligopolistic market, where prices would reach up to 81.7 USD/bbl. Moreover, as a part of the cartel with Russia, OPEC could increase its joint profits by almost 27 % compared to the oligopolistic market, benefiting from coordinated output cuts followed by a steep growth in price. Thus we can conclude that either OPEC lost its power over the oil market or attempted to maintain its market share and drive higher-cost producers out of the market.
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