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Empirical analysis of Czech think tanks and their role in public policy
Frič, Martin ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Mikolášek, Jakub (referee)
This thesis studies the ability of Czech think tanks to take part in a public policy process. It also analyses Czech think tank's performance in terms of attracting the public, the ability to attract policy makers and evaluates Czech think tank's transparency. To obtain results the thesis uses quantitative analysis. Data used in empirical part were obtained mostly from online sources. Data used in part dealing with the think tank's ability to attract policy makers come from a self-conducted online survey. According to my results, Czech think tanks are not yet able to take part in public policy process. This result comes from high variation in Czech think tank's transparency. Empirical research also evaluated institutions which fight against corruption as the most transparent ones. Furthermore, empirical research evaluated a think tank established by former Czech president to be the best in case of attracting public and media attention. This work may serve think tank's representatives, which may use it to detect weaknesses in the performance of their institutions. Moreover, donors will receive an overview of work conducted by think tanks in the Czech Republic.
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The Financial Secrecy Index: An Information Theory Approach
Galuszka, Lukáš ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Malovaná, Simona (referee)
The objective of this thesis is to evaluate alternative weighting systems to determine if they have the potential to improve the current weighting system of the Financial Secrecy Index (FSI). The FSI, a measure of countries' contributions to global financial secrecy, currently weights its 15 qualitative components equally. A web-based opinion survey conducted in January and February 2016 among academics, journalists, experts and other persons familiar with FSI serves as the baseline for assessing new weights. The new weights derived from the survey results are not significantly different from the equal weights in 14 out of 15 components. The survey results suggest that widely held opinion is consistent with equal weight assumptions. Statistical model selection criteria from information theory that penalize model complexity prefer in majority of cases the simple model over the more complex one even though more complex model provides better goodness-of-fit statistics. Alternative methods and analysis such as Principal Components Analysis is performed and discussed. The present work finds that, statistically, the weights should not diverge from the equal weighting system in use currently. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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A Survey of Czech Economists: What Do They Think?
Sikora, Jakub ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee)
Traditional consensus surveys show that economists continually cannot reach an agreement on certain key policies. According to the previous research, this is mostly attributable to the differences in the political views of the economists. This thesis aims to explore additional factors, which could potentially influence the level of consensus and what the underlying causes of different views are. The author conducted a web-based survey of Czech economists and received 116 responses; the questionnaire included questions related to the economic policy of the Czech Republic and to the background of the respondents. Subsequently, a detailed analysis of the results was performed and an econometric model was constructed. The author finds that differences in views are truly the main cause of dissent among economists while other factors mostly have a negligible impact. It seems that the tendency to have liberal (=laissez faire) opinions tends to go up with income, that women tend to be less liberal than men, and that economists raised in the countryside incline to have less liberal opinions. Moreover, it was shown that graduates from the University of Economics tend to have significantly more liberal views in comparison with the graduates from other universities, ceteris paribus. However, there is still much to be...
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Gender board diversity and its impact on firm performance in the Czech Republic
Černík, David ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Dvořáková Švejdová, Lenka (referee)
The purpose of this study is to examine the extent of gender inequality on boards of joint-stock companies and the relationship between gender diversity on board of directors and the return on assets in the Czech Republic. Using a panel data set of 204 Czech companies of various sizes over the years 2003 - 2011, we discovered that women are considerably underrepresented on corporate boards and that the gender board diversity has not significantly changed over the observed time period. The results of regression analysis showed a non-significant effect on return on assets for all our gender diversity measures, even after we accounted for endogeneity of the gender diversity variable in the form of fixed effects method and two-stage least squares estimator. Economic justification of potential legislation that should force the companies to appoint more women into board positions was therefore not found. Moreover, if companies account for underlying cost of implementing such measures, firm performance might be negatively affected in the short term. 1
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Taxation in Financial Sector
Hloušek, Jan ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Serdarevič, Goran (referee)
Charles University in Prague Faculty of Social Sciences Taxation in Financial Sector Jan Hloušek Abstract The purpose of this thesis is to review taxation in financial sector, discuss its objectives and compare its past and most recent implementations. Financial Activities Taxes, Financial Transaction Taxes, and Financial Stability Contribution are compared from theoretical point of view. Trends in profitability, volumes of derivatives, and equity ratios are presented for two groups in both Italy and France - banks that are subject to new Financial Transaction Taxes and those that are not. Using panel data on financial institutions, positive impact of FTT introduction on derivative volumes is found in France, and no significant effect is found in Italy.
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Czech Wealth Inequality
Popelková, Kristýna ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Mareš, Jan (referee)
This paper delivers a complex picture of Czech household wealth. The main emphasis is placed on the role of wealth inequality, which is studied with the use of available data. The results suggest that the inequality in the Czech Republic is quite tangible and rather above-average in European context. Currently, the disparities in wealth holdings are further deepening due to expansion of lower and upper classes on behalf of middle class and wealth concentration in the hands of high net worth individuals. Income inequality commonly studied in empirical literature is lower than wealth inequality, the main source of this difference is housing wealth, which constitutes a dominating asset class in household wealth portfolio. Composition of both assets and liabilities is quite stable over time, currency and deposits are the leading form of financial wealth holdings and mortgage loans are the primary instrument responsible for households' indebtedness. Saving by Czech households is decreasing which raises concerns about the future of welfare-state structures that are under pressure of ongoing demographic trends, such as population aging and stagnation. In particular, state-funded pension system, whose unsustainability was detected, is an emerging issue and requires attention of policy authorities. Powered by TCPDF...
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Tax Expenditures: The Extent of Corporate Tax Breaks in the Czech Republic
Pankina, Anastasia ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Hejlová, Hana (referee)
Until 2014 the Czech Republic has never published reports on tax expenditures. This paper deals with the analysis of corporate income tax breaks, their estimation, reporting practice and effect on the state budget. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze and estimate the extent of corporate income tax breaks in the Czech Republic from 2008 to 2013. In order to compute tax expenditures we applied a revenue forgone method. According to our estimations, most of the corporate income tax expenditures in the Czech republic were growing gradually during the estimated period, except of tax breaks for expenses on R&D and investment incentives, which increased more than twice from 2008 to 2013. We assume that this increase is a consequence of government reforms oriented to promote R&D and inflow of investments in the Czech Republic. Also, we compared our results with previous study on this topic and discussed the differences. In 2012 corporate tax expenditure in the Czech Republic accounted for about 1.6% of total state revenue from taxation, the comparison with estimates from other EU member states and US indicated that commonly this number does not exceed 2%. Moreover, during our analysis of corporate income tax breaks in different countries we noticed that high and sharp increases of total tax...
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Determinants of the Demand for Tax Haven Operations: Empirical Evidence from the Czech Republic
Burianová, Markéta ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Švarcová, Natálie (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to explore the firm-specific determinants of the demand for tax haven operations by Czech firms. Our objective is to better understand the firms' incentives for tax haven use, and furthermore whether there exists cross-haven heterogeneity in those incentives. The thesis examines the firms' tax haven investment behaviour by analysing firm-level data for 15,530 Czech firms for year 2013. To the extent of our knowledge, this has been the first research of its kind devoted to Czech firms. The evidence suggests that larger, more profitable firms with larger international presence are most likely to use tax havens. The analysis also indicates that higher firm indebtedness is associated with greater likelihood of establishing tax haven operations. This would suggest Czech firms engage in profit shifting through the use of debt financing. Furthermore, service firms were found to be more likely to use tax havens than manufacturing firms. This contrasts with previous research where R&D intensity was a leading indicator of tax haven use. Additionally, we found significant cross-haven heterogeneity in the determinants, particularly in the sector-specific characteristics. In our sample, service firms favoured Cyprus and the Netherlands, while manufacturing firms preferred Luxembourg...
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The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Palanský, Miroslav ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic Miroslav Palanský Abstract This thesis estimates the value of political connections in the Czech Republic and it is divided into two parts. The first one explores the recently extended, most advanced publicly available data set on political party financing in the Czech Republic, covering the time period 1995-2015. We analyze basic patterns in party funding and their development over time. We focus primarily on private funding from both legal and natural persons. The data show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the volume of private funding across parties and over time, but contributions from the government budget remain the most important source of income for all larger parties. We analyze the available data on donations and discuss several issues regarding the notion that donors may view contributions as investment, yielding possible profits in the future. In the second part, we use the data set of corporate donations to construct a proxy variable for political connections and to estimate the effect of being connected to a political party on the financial performance of such firms. We find that the connected firms perform significantly better than the non- connected ones in the years following the establishment of the...
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Estimating the Misalignment between the Locations of Profits and Economic Activities of EU's Banks
Jelínková, Eliška ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Wang, Yao (referee)
Estimating the Misalignment between the Locations of Profits and Economic Activities of EU's Banks Author: Eliška Jelínková Supervisor: Petr Janský Ph.D. In this thesis we focus on the misalignment of European multinational banks' profits and the role of tax havens in banks' taxation. We use the existing literature and our newly collected data to estimate the difference between the location of banks' declared profit and the real economic activity in a given country. We estimate the impact of unitary taxation using an apportionment formula on banks' redistributed tax base as well as on overall tax base in a given country. We find that banks report their profits disproportionally to their economic activities in given countries. If profit were apportioned across countries on the basis of employees and turnover, approximately 60% of the profits would be redistributed on average each year. Then we focus on where the main part of a banks' profit goes and compare the results with an existing list of tax havens. We conclude that the low-tax countries play a significant role in profit redistribution of banks and that the related risk of base erosion and profit shifting is higher for large banks.
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