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Essays in Strategic Information Provision
Senkov, Maxim ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Ivanov, Maxim (referee) ; Matysková, Ludmila (referee)
In the first chapter, we show that a biased principal can strictly benefit from hiring an agent with misaligned preferences or beliefs. We consider a ``delegated expertise'' problem in which the agent has an advantage in acquiring information relative to the principal. We show that it is optimal for a principal who is ex ante biased towards one action to select an agent who is less biased. Such an agent is more uncertain ex ante about what the best course of action is and would acquire more information. The benefit to the principal of a better-informed decision always outweighs the cost of a small misalignment. In the second chapter, I study a game between an agent and a principal in a dynamic information design framework. A principal funds a multistage project and retains the right to cut the funding if it stagnates at some point. An agent wants to convince the principal to fund the project as long as possible, and can design the flow of information about the progress of the project in order to persuade the principal. If the project is sufficiently promising ex ante, then the agent commits to providing only the good news that the project is accomplished. If the project is not promising enough ex ante, the agent persuades the principal to start the funding by committing to provide not only good...
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Role Models, High School Management and Female Engagement in STEM: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Grosman, Jiří ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Jann, Ole (referee)
Title: Role Models, High School Management and Female Engagement in STEM: Evidence from the Czech Republic Author: Jiří Grosman, BSc Institute: CERGE-EI Supervisor: PhDr. Jan Zapal, Ph.D., CERGE-EI Abstract: The fact that the gender wage gap remains at least in part driven by women's self-selection out of profitable career choices has been an established fact in the labour economics literature. What has been given comparatively less attention by economists, however, are the motivating factors of such self-selection. In this thesis, I design an empirical strategy aimed to assess the strength of a particular driver of differential gendered choices: high school management, and the associated policy intervention. Specifically, I examine the STEM preferences of high school students using population data on Czech university applicants between the years of 2007-2021. By employing both matching and a difference- in-differences estimation framework to facilitate causal interpretation, I argue that school mentoring programmes, and the way the school is being run, can significantly affect the choices made by a non-negligible number of female students - an inference corroborated by the data and my subsequent analysis. Keywords: gender gap; STEM; high school; education 1
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Effects of Voter Privacy on the Public Choice: How Microtargeted Advertisement Affects the Election Results and Voters Behaviour
Illichmann, Vít ; Jann, Ole (advisor) ; Zápal, Jan (referee)
The thesis analyses the phenomenon of targeted political advertising and its influence on policy. In addition, it is concerned with incentives for candidates to breach the privacy of voters. To aid my analysis, I build a simple voting model with imperfect information, where extreme and moderate candidates compete to maximise their proportional electorate support. I show that the information aggregation process on the side of the candidate significantly changes voting outcomes, and insufficient privacy protection increases equilibrium support for the extreme candidate. Further, I show that the extreme candidate has a higher incentive to breach the privacy of the voters in comparison with his moderate opponent. The result of my analysis might have policy implications regarding the regulation of targeted political advertisements on social media. My results rely on the assumption of behavioural conformity of political discourse on social media, which is an empirically documented phenomenon. My thesis adds to a sparse strain of theoretical literature on targeted political advertising. Key words: Targeted political advertising, Online privacy protection, Policy polarisation, Social media, Micro-targeting 1 Introduction 1
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Naked exclusion with heterogeneous buyers
Chen, Y. ; Zápal, Jan
We investigate the effects of buyer heterogeneity in a market in which an incumbent firm prevents entry when it signs enough exclusionary contracts with buyers. With heterogeneous buyers several well-known results in exclusionary contracting with homogenous buyers are overturned and novel ones emerge. First, inefficient equilibria exist in which exclusionary contracts are signed but entry still occurs, and the loss of consumer surplus falls on small buyers. Second, sequential contracting may be more pro-competitive than simultaneous contracting in the sense that entry occurs under sequential but not simultaneous contracting. When this happens, sequential Pareto dominates simultaneous contracting.
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Consumption over the Life Cycle: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Cahlíková, Jana ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Hlaváček, Jiří (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to analyze life-cycle consumption using Czech microeconomic data from the 2000-2008 Household Budget Survey (HBS). Inspired by Gourinchas and Parker (2002), who analyzed life-cycle consumption on American data, we construct the Czech average household life-cycle consumption and income profiles. It is found that the Czech average consumption profile is increasing over the whole life-cycle and there is no hump-shape in the profile, contrary to the American results. Consumption tracks income early in life and a breakpoint in household behavior is identified at age 45. Czech evidence on household consumption is interpreted in the context of the Certainty-Equivalent Life-Cycle Hypothesis Model and in the context of the Gourinchas & Parker (2002) Model of life-cycle consumption under income uncertainty, which brings a significant value-added for interpretation of the Czech profiles. The household behavior is interpreted by varying strengths of the precautionary (assuring against income uncertainty) and retirement motives for savings over the life. It is found that the Czech household life-cycle behavior can be interpreted in the similar way as the behavior of the US households. JEL Classification: D11, D12, D91, E21 Keywords: Consumption, Life-cycle, Household Behavior,...
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The Effect of Czech 2008 Flat Rate Personal Income Tax on Tax Evasion
Hrbek, Pavel ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Votápková, Jana (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to examine the effect of Czech's 2008 at rate personal income tax reform on consumption, income and tax evasion since there is a belief that personal income tax rates are partially responsible for high levels of tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported income as a proxy for tax evasion with the Czech microeconomic data from the 2006-2008 Household Budget Survey. Employing difference-in-difference approach, we find no effect of the Czech at personal income tax rate on tax evasion for households with one economically active individual in the year 2008 relative to households experiencing no change.
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Heavy tails and market risk measures : the case of Czech stock market
Bulva, Radek ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Bubák, Vít (referee)
One of the stylized facts about the behaviour of financial returns is that they tend to exhibit more probability mass in the tails of the distribution than would be suggested by the normal distribution. This phenomenon is called heavy tails. The first part of this thesis focuses on examining the tails of a distribution of returns to Czech stock market index PX. Parametric and semi-parametric approaches to estimation of the tail index, a measure of heaviness of tails, are applied and compared. The results indicate that the tails behave in a way one would expect from emerging market stock index. In the second part of the thesis, we introduce two simple measures of market risk, Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall, and compare traditional methods of their estimation with methods adjusted for presence of heavy tails. We conclude that reliance on the normal distribution in modelling the returns can lead to serious underestimation of risks inherent in the underlying process.
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Consumption over the life cycle : evidence from the Czech Republic
Cahlíková, Jana ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Hlaváček, Jiří (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to analyze life-cycle consumption using Czech microeconomic data from the 2000-2008 Household Budget Survey (HBS). Inspired by Gourinchas and Parker (2002), who analyzed life-cycle consumption on American data, we construct the Czech average household life-cycle consumption and income profiles. It is found that the Czech average consumption profile is increasing over the whole life-cycle and there is no hump-shape in the profile, contrary to the American results. Consumption tracks income early in life and a breakpoint in household behavior is identified at age 45. Czech evidence on household consumption is interpreted in the context of the Certainty-Equivalent Life-Cycle Hypothesis Model and in the context of the Gourinchas & Parker (2002) Model of life-cycle consumption under income uncertainty, which brings a significant value-added for interpretation of the Czech profiles. The household behavior is interpreted by varying strengths of the precautionary (assuring against income uncertainty) and retirement motives for savings over the life. It is found that the Czech household life-cycle behavior can be interpreted in the similar way as the behavior of the US households.
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Unorthodox measures of economic performance
Křehlík, Tomáš ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Jeřábek, Jakub (referee)
Assessing long-term economic performance is persistent problem of current economics. Various methods exist, most often in form of indices (Sustainable society index, Ecological footprint, Urban Sustainability index, etc.), which however suffer from many issues (monetization, weighting). In recent years assessment method called NAIADE based on fuzzy logic and multi-criteria decision analysis has been developed. It deals with many problems of aforementioned indices. This approach has not yet been applied to data of many countries. Goal of my bachelor's thesis is to give overview of currently used indices, introduce multi-criteria decision analysis, perform computation of NAIADE and discuss rankings of the Czech Republic in international perspective.
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