|
|
Does money laundering determine the direction of FDI?
Gjika, Rubi ; Paulus, Michal (advisor) ; Janský, Petr (referee)
Does money laundering determine the direction of FDI? Rubi Gjika The goal of this thesis is to investigate the relationship of FDI and money laundering through a Gravity model approach. Overall empirical results of the thesis suggest that FDI originating from highly developed European economies are insensitive to money laundering motives. However, its findings diverge only for developed destination countries and they suggest that for this group, jurisdictions officially listed as money laundering centers attract significantly more FDI stocks than other countries.
|
|
|
Comparative Analysis of Indian States
Mačejovský, Alexander ; Cahlík, Tomáš (advisor) ; Irinkov, Pavel (referee)
The crucial role of elementary education for development of individuals and the society can be hardly overrated. Yet in spite of all proclaimed efforts of Indian government focused on achieving universal school enrolment of 6 to 14 years old children, there are still more out-of-school children in India than in any other country in the world. Previous literature dedicated to the problem of elementary education enrolment and retention in India concentrated mainly on the influence of household and individual characteristics on enrolment decisions. The role of school quality received less attention. This thesis aims to bring more light on the effects that supply-side factors have had on enrolment rates in states and union territories of India throughout the 2008/09-2015/16 period. In addition, their impact on progress and retention of students in elementary education is also examined. The findings indicate that investing in building new classrooms or in textbooks incentives has been an effective approach in enhancing the examined outcomes, while factors like small schools or low education of teachers are among problems requiring special attention. Surprisingly, higher number of teachers has no evident positive relation with higher enrolment or retention of students, which might suggest an urgent need for...
|
|
|
Corporate Social Responsibility and Stock Market Performance: CSR Impact After the Financial Crisis and the Role of Primary CSR Activities
Pinteková, Aneta ; Kukačka, Jiří (advisor) ; Štěpánek, Martin (referee)
This thesis analyses the relationship between corporate social responsibility and com- panies' stock market performance in the post-financial crisis period. A new measure of social responsibility is used, called Thomson Reuters Environmental, Social, Governance, and Controversies Score. The results of the Fixed Effects regression show a significant, positive impact of the Score on the financial results of companies. Socially responsible activities are further divided into those closely related to the specific type of business of examined companies, called primary, and into those that are not dir- ectly related to the companies' business core, called secondary. Such distinction has not yet been made in the academic literature. Empirical results suggest that if companies aim at increasing their share prices also via the corporate social responsibility channel, they are encouraged to select their socially responsible initiatives strategically. The im- pact of the primary responsible activities on the corporate stock market performance is significantly positive, while the secondary responsible activities do not affect the financial results substantially. JEL Classification: A130, G110 Keywords: corporate social responsibility, CSR, business ethics, stock market perform- ance, fixed effects
|
|
|
Various Estimation Techniques of the Gravity Model of Trade
Davidová, Lucie ; Benáček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Havránek, Tomáš (referee)
This diploma thesis deals with alternative estimation possibilities of the gravity model in trade. We provide the reader with a synthetic methodological overview of the technical problems with the estimation of gravity equations. Consequently, we test for the heterogeneity of data sets used in gravity models of trade which leads us to a conclusion that behavioural patterns of exporters and importers built in the datasets are very complicated and a single generalized specification of gravity equation can lead to bias in estimates and/or to similarly generalized conclusions that hide important robust idiosyncrasies in behavior present in some subsamples of economic agents. Both the theory of estimation techniques and dataset heterogeneity are applied in the empirical part estimating Austria's export function.
|
|
|
Distributional Effects of Inflation in the Czech Republic
Linhartová, Petra ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Křehlík, Tomáš (referee)
Consumer price index captures the changing costs of the consumer basket of a typical household. Despite differences in spending patterns, change in con- sumer price index is used as a measure of inflation for the whole population. The aim of this thesis is to assess how close to the official inflation rate house- holds are and determine which groups have significantly different inflation. Using the Czech data from the Household Budget Survey over the 1990-2012 period we calculated specific inflation for each household in our sample. We first found out that on average only two thirds of households are close to the official inflation rate, which led us to the construction of subgroup price indices. In the empirical part, we examined the effect of household characteristics on inflation by applying the fixed effects estimation. We found that low-income households, pensioners, households in urban areas and households with few members have higher than average inflation.
|
|
|
Methods of Robust Econometrics with Applications to Economic Data
Michalíková, Eva ; Víšek, Jan Ámos (advisor) ; Egger, Peter (referee) ; Lachout, Petr (referee) ; Grendár, Marian (referee)
This thesis if focused on the application of methods of robust econometrics to real economic data. We focuse on the issuies of international trade in Czech Republic and the problem of employment and growth of small businesses in Europe. We also focues on estimation of panel data by classical approaches (least squares, fixed effects, GMM) and bzy robust techniques. The first part of dissertation focuses on analyzing determinants of FDI in Czech manufacturing industry. The aim is to estimate a model where the stock of FDI is expressed as a function of several economic factors (K/L, profit per worker, R&D, Balassa index and others). We estimate these models by OLS, fixed effects and GMM. With regard to ambiguous results we used least trimmed squares as a diagnostic tool for detection of outliers. Elimination of two polluting industries out of the data set brings certain improvement in significance of some factors. The second part of dissertation we focus on an estimation of models of employment and net production in 28 European countries for small businesses as a function of economic and institutional variables by special technique of estimation. We describe robust version of within group fixed effects estimation. The aim of paper is to estimate a set of models and to test the properties of estimator. With...
|
|
|
Determinants of Austrian International Trade: Econometric Analysis Based on the Gravity Model
Davidová, Lucie ; Benáček, Vladimír (advisor) ; Hrbek, Pavel (referee)
The purpose of this thesis is to examine Austrian foreign trade and estimate this country's export function. The analysis is based on the gravity model in trade in log-log form, augmented by additional variables (adjacency, REER, institutional indices, etc.). Our panel dataset consists of 3396 observations of Austrian exports to 211 countries over the period of 1995-2011. First, we examine main export partners and SITC articles and we come to a conclusion that Austria is heavily oriented to Germany and SITC 7 (machinery and transport equipment). We employ FE and RE as estimation techniques and distinguish between them according to the Hausman test. We emphasise that panel data structure does matter and estimate the gravity equation twice - once as 17 cross sections and then as 211 time series. The most important determinants appear to be domestic and partner's GDP, bilateral distance, adjacency and a country being landlocked. Subsequently, we give different techniques to deal with zero and missing observations, and calculate relative trade potential realisation for year 2011. Most of the top-ten export partners seem to be over their potential.
|
|
|
The Impact of Migration on Economic Growth
Jančíková, Denisa ; Cahlík, Tomáš (advisor) ; Formánek, Tomáš (referee)
Human migration, the movement of people from one place to another with intention of settling there temporarily or permanently, is an integral part of development of human society. The beginning of the Industrial Revolution in late 18th century has resulted in economic growth and improvement of living standards. Countries, in which was industrialisation most intense attracted most immigrants. Second wave of migration was in second half of 20th century caused by development of communication technologies, which gave opportunities to less developed countries improve their economic development. This diploma thesis is aimed exactly on this period. Its goal is to research the impact of migration on economic growth and find out if the flow of migrants is beneficial for the economy or the exact opposite. The impact is examined by regression analysis on panel data for almost 200 hundred countries from whole world for time period 1955-2004.
|
|
|
The effect of retirement on physical and mental health
Svatošová, Markéta ; Stroukal, Dominik (advisor) ; Tříska, Dušan (referee)
By using panel data from SHARE this thesis shows, that retirement has a negative effect on indicators of physical and mental health. Results from using fixed effects models suggest that retirement leads to 0,85 points increase in chronic diseases, 0,3 points increase in difficulties associated with mobility and 0,07 points increase in body mass index. Also retirement increases the level of depression by 0,5 points. According to the results, the effect of retirement on memory is also negative.
|
|
|
Impact of 2008 - 10 economic recession on suicide in the Czech Republic
Celmanová, Barbora ; Rotschedl, Jiří (advisor) ; Čermáková, Klára (referee)
The thesis analyze the impact of 2008 economic recession on suicide rate in the Czech Republic. In the first step of analysis, time trends of suicide before economic recession are estimated. Historical trends had been declining for both sexes before recession. Based on these trends are estimated excess suicides in 2008 -- 2010 compare with the number expected suicides based on previous trends. In the second step of analysis, regression analysis using fixed effect is used to examine relationship between unemployment and suicides. It's found, that yearly fluctuations in unemployment are associated with annual changes in suicides among men. For women this relationship isn't significantly proved. The examination is conducted on 14 regions of the Czech Republic from 2000 to 2010. Main explanatory variable is the number of available job applicants that measures changes in unemployment. Other control variables are added to the models to eliminate fixed effects . The annual data for the male population shown, that in regions, where was the highest growth of unemployment rate, was also the highest increase in suicide.
|
guest ::
