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Where did people die? An international assessment of a potentially positive relationship between economic development and the severity of COVID-19 outbreaks
Marigo, Jean-Baptiste ; Bertoli, Paola (advisor) ; Semerák, Vilém (referee)
This paper studies the relationship between development and COVID-19 severity at the country level, expressed as total deaths per million inhabitants. The original perspective of this work is to consider that economic development factors could have a causal effect on COVID-19 deaths, instead of studying the inverse relationship. Bayesian Model Averaging procedures are used to select the most relevant predictors from a set of 21 candidate variables, using cross-sectional data from 01/01/2020 to 10/30/2022. This method solves the uncertainty issue on a topic where many potential factors could be included. In the end, four variables are selected based on their statistical significance, on the size of their standard deviation, and on other interpretability considerations. Ranked by order of importance, these predictors are the median age, overweight prevalence, democracy index, and (hydroxy)chloroquine variables, although the latter suffers from certain weaknesses. As three of these variables are characteristic of development, these robust results suggest that as a country develops, it becomes more vulnerable to outbreaks such as the COVID-19 one. This paper therefore concludes that public health policies should focus on these variables to mitigate the impact of development on the severity of future...
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The Effect of Face Masks on Covid Transmission: A Meta-Analysis
Lušková, Martina ; Havránková, Zuzana (advisor) ; Bertoli, Paola (referee)
The effect of face masks on Covid-19 transmission is crucial for the health of populations. Nevertheless, its economic consequences cannot be overlooked. To perform a quantitative meta-analysis, 258 estimates from 44 primary studies were collected together with more than 30 variables mirroring the differences among the studies. Publication bias was examined by implementing various statistical tests resulting in mild evidence for the phenomenon. We contribute to other meta-analyses on the topic by employing the Bayesian and Frequen- tist model averaging to identify the drivers behind the heterogeneity of the estimates. The results suggest that temperature, geographical latitude, and panel data structure have a highly statistically significant and positive effect on the risk of transmission associated with mask-wearing. Moreover, a pos- itive effect was identified for healthcare set-up. In contrast, performing an aerosol-generating procedure shifts the risk in the negative direction. JEL Classification I1, I11, I19, Keywords meta-analysis, Covid-19, face masks, pan- demic, Covid-19 transmission, publication bias, Bayesian model averaging Title The Effect of Face Masks on Covid Transmis- sion: A Meta-Analysis
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Diet after retirement: Does working after retirement matter?
Hrušková, Barbora ; Votápková, Jana (advisor) ; Bertoli, Paola (referee)
Barbora Hrušková Abstract A balanced and healthy diet can prevent chronic and cardiovascular diseases, can- cer deaths, and other serious health problems. Following a healthy diet is therefore essential during all stages of life and old age is no exception. This thesis examines the impact of working after retirement on the diet of retirees using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The propensity score matching and the logit methods are performed and robust standard errors are ap- plied. Our analysis reveals that retirees who start working anew after being already retired and unemployed for some time, have by 9 pp higher probability to increase their consumption of meat, fruits & vegetables, compared to their counterparts who do not start working. No significant differences are found regarding the impact of starting to work on the change of consumption of dairy products, legumes & eggs. However, we further conclude that the probability of eating meat every day is lower by 4 pp for retirees who are working after retirement, compared to retirees who are not working after retirement. Therefore, we point out that to get a complete picture of how the diet changes based on post-retirement work, it is ideal to also observe the data regarding diet prior to retirement.
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Impact of health expenditures on infant mortality in Africa
Bajer, Vladimír ; Šlegerová, Lenka (advisor) ; Bertoli, Paola (referee)
Each year, the infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births in Africa is more than 15 times higher than in the Czech Republic. This thesis investigates whether infant, neonatal and under-5 mortality rates could be lowered by an increase in health expenditures in Africa. We used data from 49 African countries for the last 20 available years, i.e., from 2000 to 2019. Applying the fixed effects estimation method for panel data, we examined the health expenditures as aggregate total current spending, and also separately as domestic private, domestic public and external. Our analyses showed significant negative relationships between both total current and external (i.e., direct foreign transfers and foreign transfers distributed by a government) health spending and infant/under-5 mortality. Additionally, under-5 mortality is also significantly affected by domestic private spending. On the contrary, no significant relationship between neonatal mortality and any health expenditure was found. Previously performed studies claimed that domestic public spending decreases studied mortalities too. However, our results imply that the effect of domestic public spending has disappeared and transferred instead into external and private health funds. Thus, it is crucial to invest in these segments more to lessen...
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Health technology assessment od digital diabetes therapeutics
Klásek, Jan ; Votápková, Jana (advisor) ; Bertoli, Paola (referee)
The prevalence of Type 2 diabetes mellitus is increasing all around the world. This chronic disease leads to a decrease in quality of life and brings a significant financial burden to the national health systems. While diabetes not being completely reversible, it can be well controlled by introducing and maintaining healthy living habits. Nowadays, such intervention can be deliv- ered through digital devices with less medical staff time needed. This thesis investigates the cost-effectiveness of the lifestyle intervention delivered by a mobile application on a German study sample of 42 patients. The analysis is performed using a discrete-time Markov chain for the different lifetimes of the model. The robustness of the results is checked using both deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analysis. Results suggest that digital intervention can be considered cost-effective in both the short and long-term compared to the current standards of care. 1
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Healthy Ageing and Healthcare Expenditure
Mach, Petr ; Bryndová, Lucie (advisor) ; Bertoli, Paola (referee)
In the recent decades, a significant demographic shift is underway, with increasing life expectancy and falling fertility rates, causing a change in the age structure of populations. This introduces a problem for the sustainability of many modern social systems, which rely on funds from the economically active population to pay for the increased expenses of the elderly population. Over the last few decades, two scenarios that would alleviate the problem have been proposed. One is the compression of morbidity or healthy ageing, which assumes that a large part of the gains in life expectancy will be spent in good health, thus reducing the pressure on the healthcare system. The other being the concept of death-related costs hypothesis which assumes that a large portion of the older populations healthcare costs is tied to the death of the individual, which would mean that the increasing life expectancy would just shift the existing healthcare expenses to older age at the same rate as the increase in life expectancy. This thesis provides information on the situation in the Czech Republic, and whether any of these scenarios are present in the data from the last 20 years, which could be relied on to improve the healthcare system financing in the following years. The analysis of the average Czech...
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Obesity uncovered: the case of the Czech Republic
Veselá, Barbora ; Bryndová, Lucie (advisor) ; Bertoli, Paola (referee)
iv Abstract This thesis uncovers the long-term development of overweight and obesity prevalence in the Czech Republic and finds the associations with relevant lifestyle risk factors and determinants of health. Periodically collected interview and examination survey data from 1993 to 2019 are standardised and used to perform a pooled analysis to inspect trends within the cross-sectional units. The binomial logistic regression is used to estimate changes in the odds of being overweight given a set of socio-economic and lifestyle-related predictors, and to inspect time trends in their magnitude and significance. Adjustment to historical data is calculated to account for methodological changes in BMI classification scheme to ensure comparability of survey outcomes. In addition, the response bias in self-reported anthropometric measurements is confirmed and quantified. Finally, the most recent data (2019) for obesity rates are updated accordingly to reflect this finding. The true prevalence of overweight in the Czech adult population is calculated to 75.8% for men and 58.8% for women, which is higher than interview survey results by 7.7 and 9.6 percentage points respectively. These adjusted results may be utilised by users of survey outcomes to build their analyses on validated data, together with other...
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The Effect of Covid-19 on Economic Growth: Cross-Country Determinants
Juřena, Matyáš ; Havránek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Bertoli, Paola (referee)
Not only does the COVID-19 pandemic threaten the health of millions of people worldwide, it has also thrown the global economy into a recession. Moreover, differences in the expected decline of countries' economic output exist. Thus, the objective of this thesis is to identify the cross-country determinants of the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. An extensive dataset of 34 explanatory variables describing the characteristics of 145 countries is analyzed. To address the inherent model uncertainty present in the cross-country analysis of such magnitude, we apply the econometric method of Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA). Consequently, we have identified the best regression model, which includes five explanatory variables with reasonable interpretations. To our knowledge, this thesis is the first work studying the cross-country differences in the output decline caused by the coronavirus pandemic. However, a more detailed analysis of the effects of policy measures on the duration of a recession and the speed and size of the expected future recovery is suggested, once data is available.
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Radniční periodika a komunální volby v České republice: Pomáhají veřejně dotované noviny zastupitelům ke znovuzvolení?
Boháček, Jiří ; Bertoli, Paola (advisor) ; Dušek, Libor (referee)
In the Czech Republic, town halls are allowed to issue printed newspapers to inform the residents about local events. The newspapers are funded from municipal budgets and free for the residents, often delivered directly to the mailbox. Apart from being useful source of information, the newspapers may serve also as a platform for election campaign of the incumbent politicians. This fact was the main reason for the amendment of the Press Act in 2013, directing municipalities to issue unbiased news with enough room for all the political stakeholders. The present study uses various secondary data to examine the effects of town hall newspapers on voting decisions during municipal elections held between 1998 and 2014. Econometric analysis finds significant and positive relationship between presence of a newspaper and performance of incumbent politicians. Comparison of election results from 2014 with previous election years suggest that the Press Act amendment has not had substantial impact on this relationship.
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Letecký průmysl v globální perspektivě
Veselý, Martin ; Jílek, Josef (advisor) ; Bertoli, Paola (referee)
The hypothesis claims that full service carriers (FSCs) will be forced to change their operating models. Additionally, the trends which form aviation market of the future are explored. The investigation is based on a financial assessment of ten important airlines incorporated in four different regions across the globe, between 2005 and 2014. According to the findings the trend of liberalization will continue, thus FSCs will continue losing market share to low cost carriers (LCCs) and as such, they will be made to change the way they operate in order to survive. The future aviation market is defined by a reshuffle of demand towards emerging countries, further rationalization of operating models and consolidation.
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