|
Míry podobnosti pro nominální data v hierarchickém shlukování
Šulc, Zdeněk ; Řezanková, Hana (advisor) ; Šimůnek, Milan (referee) ; Žambochová, Marta (referee)
This dissertation thesis deals with similarity measures for nominal data in hierarchical clustering, which can cope with variables with more than two categories, and which aspire to replace the simple matching approach standardly used in this area. These similarity measures take into account additional characteristics of a dataset, such as frequency distribution of categories or number of categories of a given variable. The thesis recognizes three main aims. The first one is an examination and clustering performance evaluation of selected similarity measures for nominal data in hierarchical clustering of objects and variables. To achieve this goal, four experiments dealing both with the object and variable clustering were performed. They examine the clustering quality of the examined similarity measures for nominal data in comparison with the commonly used similarity measures using a binary transformation, and moreover, with several alternative methods for nominal data clustering. The comparison and evaluation are performed on real and generated datasets. Outputs of these experiments lead to knowledge, which similarity measures can generally be used, which ones perform well in a particular situation, and which ones are not recommended to use for an object or variable clustering. The second aim is to propose a theory-based similarity measure, evaluate its properties, and compare it with the other examined similarity measures. Based on this aim, two novel similarity measures, Variable Entropy and Variable Mutability are proposed; especially, the former one performs very well in datasets with a lower number of variables. The third aim of this thesis is to provide a convenient software implementation based on the examined similarity measures for nominal data, which covers the whole clustering process from a computation of a proximity matrix to evaluation of resulting clusters. This goal was also achieved by creating the nomclust package for the software R, which covers this issue, and which is freely available.
|
|
Use of Interest Rate Models for Interest Rate Risk Management in the Czech Financial Market Environment
Cíchová Králová, Dana ; Arlt, Josef (advisor) ; Cipra, Tomáš (referee) ; Witzany, Jiří (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to suggest an appropriate approach to interest rate risk modeling in the Czech financial market environment in various situations. Three distinct periods are analyzed. These periods, which are the period before the global financial crisis, period during the financial crisis and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and calming subsequent debt crisis in the eurozone, are characterized by different evaluation of liquidity and credit risk, different relationship between financial variables and market participants and different degree of market regulations. Within this goal, an application of the BGM model in the Czech financial market environment is crucial. Use of the BGM model for the purpose of predicting a dynamics of a yield curve is not very common. This is firstly due to the fact that primary use of this model is a valuation of interest rate derivatives while ensuring the absence of arbitrage and secondly its application is relatively difficult. Nevertheless, I apply the BGM model to obtain predictions of the probability distributions of interest rates in the Czech and eurozone market environment, because its complexity, direct modeling of a yield curve based on market rates and especially a possibility of parameter estimation based on current swaptions volatilities quotations may lead to a significant improvement of predictions. This improvement was also confirmed in this thesis. Use of swaptions volatilities market quotations is especially useful in the period of unprecedented mone- tary easing and increased number of central banks and other regulators interventions into financial markets that occur after the financial crisis, because it reflects current market expectations which also include future interventions. As a consequence of underdevelopment of the Czech financial market there are no market quotations of Czech koruna denominated swaptions volatilities. I suggest their approximations based on quotations of euro denominated swaptions volatilities and also using volatilities of koruna and euro forward rates. Use of this approach ensures that predictions of the Czech yield curve dynamics contain current market expectations. To my knowledge, any other author has not presented similar application of the BGM model in the Czech financial market environment. In this thesis I further predict a Czech and Euro area money market yield curve dynamics using the CIR and the GP models as representatives of various types of interest rates models to compare these predictions with BGM predictions. I suggest a comprehensive system of three criteria, based on comparison of predicti- ons with reality, to describe a predictive power of selected models and an appropria- teness of their use in the Czech market environment during different situations in the market. This analysis shows that predictions of the Czech money market yield curve dynamics based on the BGM model demonstrate high predictive power and the best 8 quality in comparison with other models. GP model also produces relatively good qua- lity predictions. Conversely, predictions based on the CIR model as a representative of short rate model family completely failed when describing reality. In a situation when the economy allows negative rates and there is simultaneously a significant likelihood of their implementation, I recommend to obtain predictions of Czech money market yield curve dynamics using GP model which allows existence of negative interest rates. This analysis also contains a statistical test for validating the predictive power of each model and information on other tests. Berkowitz test rejects a hypothesis of accurate predictions for each model. However, this fact is common in real data testing even when using relatively good model. This fact is especially caused by difficult fulfilment of test conditions in real world. To my knowledge, such an analysis of the predictive power of selected interest rate models moreover in the Czech financial market environment has not been published yet. The last goal of this thesis is to suggest an appropriate approach to obtaining pre- dictions of Czech government bonds risk premium dynamics. I define this risk premium as a difference between government bond yields and fixed rate of CZK IRS with the same length. I apply the GP model to describe the dynamics of this indicator of the Czech Republic credit risk. In order to obtain a time series of the risk premium which are necessary for estimation of GP model parameters I firstly estimate yield curves of Czech government bonds using Svensson model for each trading day since 2005. Resulting si- mulations of risk premium show that the GP model predicts the real development of risk premiums of all maturities relatively well. Hence, the proposed approach is suitable for modeling of Czech Republic credit risk based on the use of information extracted from financial markets. I have not registered proposed approach to risk premium modeling moreover in the Czech financial market environment in other publications.
|
|
Speculation on oil markets and its impact on commodity's price
Melcher, Ota ; Taušer, Josef (advisor) ; Baláž, Peter (referee) ; Müller, Štěpán (referee)
This study aims to analyse the precrisis period on the oil markets with a primary objective of assessing the role of speculation in the commodity's price development and its volatility. First it depicts the rapidly increasing speculative activity on the futures market together with the parallel oil price surge. The speculation is initially proxied by non-commercial traders' positions and subsequently quantified by Working's T-index. The paper then uses speculative traders' positions and both spot and futures prices to test for Granger causality within the framework of VAR models. For the sake of consistency it also evaluates causal links between speculation and inventories level. Further the study investigates the speculation impact on volatility of oil prices by employing various approaches in volatility quantification including GARCH models. Contrary to expectations we find that the speculatio's impact on both prices and their volatility is rather insignificant. In the last chapter we therefore seek for an explanation of the oil price developments by examining the market fundamentals. The interaction of supply and demand finally gives substantial evidence for understanding the price developments in the precrisis period.
|
|
The theory of redistribution and its application
Mihalčinová, Hana ; Dlouhý, Martin (advisor) ; Valenčík, Radim (referee) ; Peško, Štefan (referee)
The theory of redistribution systems is a practical extension of a game theory, which deals with a redistribution within a social system of more than two players with di?erent performances and ability to create coalitions. This thesis is divided into three chapters. The ?rst chapter describes the known knowledge of a game theory. The second chapter deals with the theory of redistribution systems. Using an elementary redistribution system and its generalization group behaviour when dividing a payment, achieved by a collective performance, is described. This part introduces the extension of the redistribution system to a compound redistribution system with a fractal structure. Furthermore the theory of discriminatory equilibrium and the theory of commonly acceptable equilibrium are veri?ed using the elementary redistribution system and utility theory. The third chapter deals with an application to the allocation of funds among faculty departments. A game theory approach was used to reduce the game to a non-cooperative game of two players by using the forming of coalitions. Also the theory of redistribution systems was applied when a reduction was used to create a non-cooperative two-player game. This reduced non-cooperative game between two players was converted to a cooperative play of more than two players by changing the rules of the game and allowing a formation of coalitions. In the practical part both of these approaches are compared with real data and a current state.
|
|
Proposing the financial performance prediction index for decision support of the hospital management
Hajdíková, Taťána ; Černá, Anna (advisor) ; Lieskovská, Vanda (referee) ; Lazar, Jaromír (referee)
Dissertation thesis deals with the managerial needs in the area of financial health. Managers need a tool to reveal the impending financial failure or to assess the financial quality of the organization. They link their decisions to performance, ability to pay, employee productivity, financial resources and financial risk. In the theoretical part of the thesis it is necessary to explain the non-profit sector and its connection with the hospital environment. It is also necessary to introduce models used both in the Czech Republic and abroad, which share common elements. The basic aim of this thesis is to propose a financial performance prediction index for decision support of the hospital management, the owners of hospitals and insurance companies. To achieve the basic goal, three sub-goals must be accomplished. The first goal is to divide the hospitals into healthy and unhealthy by using the multi-criteria methods. The second goal is, based on an expert approach with the support of statistical methods, the selection of indicators appropriate for the hospital environment and the third goal is to find a suitable method for the determination of weighted representation of individual indicators in the proposed index and to assemble the final form of the new financial index for the hospital environment.
|
|
Usage of unstructured data in Business Intelligence
Rakhmanova, Malika ; Šperková, Lucie (advisor) ; Karkošková, Soňa (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to identify the main trends that are occurring in the market of Business Intelligence and related to unstructured data, to describe the possibilities for integrating unstructured data, to clarify what the impact on the company have the results that can be obtained using these solutions and how generally incorporate an analysis of unstructured data into BI. Another aim is to show the current situation of processing unstructured data on the example of BI system. The thesis is divided into several parts. First part is describing of the Business Intelligence area and the basic components of Business Intelligence, as well as identifying market trends. Then, there is the next part: separating the data into structured and unstructured. Here is the part about how you can access and analyse unstructured data and what is their place in BI systems. This is the end of a block of unstructured data and the beginning of a description of the enhanced version of BI. Finally, the current market situation and BI tools, which include unstructured data, are introduced. This section provides an overview of how BI tools approach to analyse unstructured data. Existed literature, professional and freely available Internet resources are used for writing the work. The purpose is to serve as a source of information for quickly orienting in the current situation, to serve as a guide to the world of BI solutions and to show potential users what are the options and functionality of these BI solutions.
|
|
The capacity of the European Union to form a common foreign policy: The approach towards Russia during the crisis in Ukraine
Grycová, Adéla ; Rolenc, Jan Martin (advisor) ; Cibulková, Petra (referee)
The thesis deals with the issues of framing and europeanization of the foreign policy of the European Union in the context of an actorness of the EU. These two theoretical concepts are applied on the case of an approach of the Czech Republic and European Union towards Russian Federation during the crisis in Ukraine. The aim of this thesis is to find out if the European Union is capabble of affecting the behaviour of a member state in order to create unified and operational foreign policy. The first chapter deals with teoretical definition of the two concepts and detailed description of the stances of Czech Republic and European Union follows in the second one. On the basis of these chapters the assessment is conducted. The last part firstly concludes if any attempt of influecing is present and secondly the success rate of the attempt is evaluated.
|
|
Application of Monte Carlo simulations in banking
Boruta, Matěj ; Teplý, Petr (advisor) ; Fučík, Vojtěch (referee)
Currently, banking is exposed to huge market risks. One of those risks is occurrence of negative interest rates in the EU. Nowadays, it is important to use sophisticated and modern measurement tools and approaches to measure and manage banking risks. One of those methods is Monte Carlo simulation. This bachelor thesis is aimed at analysis and prediction of 3-month maturity Prague Interest Offer Rate (PRIBOR) for 3, 6 and 12 months with using Monte Carlo simulations. It was found that this method is suitable for prediction market variables with low volatility. If anybody uses this method, it is necessity to have in mind all pitfalls and assumptions, that this method includes, as an adequate random generated number of scenarios, approximation of correct probability distribution, independence of dataset and not least, as far as possible, to focus on factors generating randomness of market variable and not the prices, that express rather consequences of randomness than its cause. Further, the Monte Carlo prediction was compared with prognosis of the Czech Nation Bank and it was found that Monte Carlo prediction is more accurate for short term predictions. 12-month prediction of Monte Carlo simulation discovered also possible occurrence of negative interest rate at 0,05% level of probability in compare to the Czech National Bank prognosis, where was no negative interest rate predicted.
|
|
Transformation of Network Data Reporting Process
Tolar, Tomáš ; Matuštík, Ondřej (advisor) ; Malinová, Ludmila (referee)
This thesis deals with transformation of network data reporting process in a Telecom company. The current process is MS Excel based and is inadequate and inefficient. The goal is to find the right tools and to implement them. The thesis is divided into three parts. First part is focused on theoretical background of reporting, i.e. Business Intelligence and other approaches. Second part explains general Network reporting principles and trends. In contrast with these theoretical recommendations, the actual level of the company's process is depicted. The last part of this thesis covers a practical implementation of selected applications. First, a choice is made within a variety of tools based on department's needs then the architecture is proposed and applications are implemented. The final part of the thesis provides an assessment of the benefits attained by this project.
|
|
Diversity, phylogeny and phylogeography of free-living amoebae
TYML, Tomáš
This thesis consists of seven published papers on free-living amoebae (FLA), members of Amoebozoa, Excavata: Heterolobosea, and Cercozoa, and covers three main topics: (i) FLA as potential fish pathogens, (ii) diversity and phylogeography of FLA, and (iii) FLA as hosts of prokaryotic organisms. Diverse methodological approaches were used including culture-dependent techniques for isolation and identification of free-living amoebae, molecular phylogenetics, fluorescent in situ hybridization, and transmission electron microscopy.
|
guest ::
