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Housing prices in Prague- their developments and prediction
Petr, Adam ; Hlaváček, Michal (advisor) ; Rippel, Milan (referee)
The housing prices in Prague had risen by more than 63% between 2002 and 2008. However since August 2008, when they reached their peak, they have been almost constantly falling. Most of the publications regarding housing prices are taking into account Prague as one of the Czech regions. On the contrary, this work analyzes housing prices in Prague and its 22 districts. In first part of this work the indicators of rent-to-price ratio, price-to-income ratio and new building development factors are considered to explain possible future development of housing prices. This is seemed to continue falling during the year 2011. The second analytical part tries to explain the housing prices according to specific locality features and macroeconomic aspects. The panel regression is used and it reveals that the most significant attributes are the macroeconomic features.
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The Influence of the State Debt on defense spending in Selected NATO States
Hodžic, Faris ; Izák, Vratislav (advisor) ; Ochrana, František (referee) ; Holcner, Vladan (referee)
The defense spending plays a significant role in the decision-making process of setting up a defense policy. The economy of a state, its performance and development rank among the main factors that influence the size of this public expenditure. At a time of economic stagnation in the Western European countries, the ongoing public debt crisis affects to a ever growing extent all areas of public spending, including the defense. This work aims to contribute to the current knowledge in the field of defense economy and public finance by investigating the influence of the state debt on defense spending. The first part of the work is dedicated to defining the economy of defense and providing a brief summary of its historical development, followed by a discussion of defense as a pure public good. This chapter analyzes the issue of public debt and explains how the major schools of economic theory approach this problem. The second part outlines the previous research in the field of defense spending and debt, their development and the potential relationship with macroeconomic variables. The third chapter presents and discusses the results of empirical research that is based on the theoretical assumptions and models introduced in the first two chapters. The analysis was performed on time series from the period of 1978 to 2011 (34 years) for seven NATO member states: Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, UK and USA. The empirical analysis was performed by the statistical methods of regression and panel regression. The primary hypothesis on the existence of a relationship between the public debt and defense spending was confirmed and the partial hypothesis that this relationship is negative was refuted.
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Determinants of Social Expenditure Levels in the EU
Roženský, Vojtěch ; Ochrana, František (advisor) ; Izák, Vratislav (referee) ; Nemec, Juraj (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to identify the determiants of social expenditure levels in EU member states and estimate the sensitivities. The analysis is based on the fixed effects model with robust standard errors. Seven out of the 24 variables, that have been tested, are statistically significant. Social expenditure levels are positively dependent on population ageing, unemployment rate and economic level, and negatively on economic growth. The openness of economy and public debt ratio are also robust. The presence of a christian party in government is also statistically significant, however, the coefficient is not theoretically consistent. The sensitivity of social expenditure level to the share of population aged 65 years and over on the total population, is about 0,30. It means, that on average, the rise in the share of the old by 1 percentage point, is followed by the rise of social expenditure level by 0,3% of the GDP. In case of unemployment rate, economic growth and the openness of economy, the sensitivity estimates are 0,3, -0,1 and -0,03. The sensitivities to the other three robust variables cannot be quantified due to a strong dependence on the exact model specification or a bias, caused by extreme values. The expenditure on pensions are relatively more dependent on population ageing, whereas other social expenditure are more sensitive to current position in economic cycle. The determinants in the old and the new EU member states are similar, with only one exception, as the expenditure levels in the new member states are less dependent on demographic structure. The model explains international differences and the changes during the period between 1990 and 2010.
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Cross-border lending contagion in multinational banks
Derviz, Alexis ; Podpiera, Jiří
This paper studies the interdependence of lending decisions in different country branches of a multinational bank. This is done both theoretically and empirically. First, it formulates a model of a bank that delegates the management of its foreign unit to a local manager with non-transferable skills. Second, it constructs a large sample of multinational banks and their ranches/subsidiaries and look for the presence of lending contagion by panel regression methods.
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