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Monthly unemployment reports during COVID-19
Grossmann, Jakub ; Münich, Daniel
These reports concisely summarize, describe, and comment on the evolution of unemployment in the Czech Republic during the covid-19 pandemics. The monthly reports are mainly based on the data from Czech unemployment offices and they are usually produced within one day after the data release.
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Financial support for students in higher education in the Czech Republic: a system overhaul is required
Münich, Daniel ; Kořínek, Otakar
Financial support for students in higher education in the Czech Republic has not received the attention it deserves over the past decade. Not only has the general public lost little sleep over this matter, but academics and politicians have largely ignored it, too. Information, statistics, and analysis of the targeting and impacts of current student financial support are at best piecemeal and at worst non-existent, which is symptomatic of the little public and policy interest in this matter. As a result, over the past few years there have been only a few minor tweaks made to the existing outdated and underfunded system. International comparisons show that the total amount of financial support for students in the Czech Republic is very low. A large share of that support is also provided across-the-board, meaning that support for the most socio-economically needy students and prospective students is very low. The average total monthly support provided both directly and indirectly to students under 26 years of age is between some 5,300 CZK [euro 200] for those from the poorest backgrounds and 2,700 CZK [euro 110] for others. Support for students aged 26 and above is only around 500 CZK [euro 20] per month, regardless of their economic background. In European comparison, the support for socio-economically weak students is extremely low. Only a very small proportion of students are eligible for publicly funded social scholarships, which provide only minimal financial support in any case. No data is currently collected on the demographic or social status of scholarship recipients. Similarly, there is no data measuring the extent to which children from poorer backgrounds are deterred from university study by the low level of available support. The amount of funding made available through social scholarships and the breadth of the pool of students eligible for them is not regularly increased in response to inflation or students' rising living costs, but is revised in connection with ad hoc raises made to the minimum wage and living wages.
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Teachers’ salaries in 2020 and beyond: will the Czech Republic rest on its laurels?
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, Vladimír
In relative terms, teachers’ pay in the Czech Republic was lower than in most EU and OECD countries until 2017/18. Thanks to an unusually fast pace of growth in the past few years, in 2021, teacher’s pay will almost reach the average for OECD countries and the EU, which is around 90% of the average salary for a university-educated employee in the national economy. Andrej Babiš’s outgoing government will thus fulfil its Summer 2018 program statement. The level of teachers’ pay is a factor in attracting interest in teaching as a profession. Raising interest is necessary not only in order to recruit sufficient numbers of teachers, but to allow selectivity into the profession, allowing for more emphasis on the quality of teaching. These are long-term processes that gradually build the overall quality of the country’s teaching staff, through continuous arrivals and departures from the profession. Therefore, the impact of the teachers’ pay rates on attracting interest in the profession, the quality of teachers’ work, and pupils’ educational outcomes can only be observed over many years, or even decades.
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Demographic Approach in Measuring Human Capital of Kazakhstan
Narkulov, Murat ; Pavlík, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Münich, Daniel (referee) ; Fiala, Tomáš (referee)
Demographic approach in measuring human capital of Kazakhstan Abstract This work is intended to provide reader with information about the value of human capital stock in Kazakhstan using well-known so-called education-based and lifetime labor income-based approaches. Author tries to research the reproduction model of human capital in conjunction with institutional factors in transition, such as socio-demographic, political and economic changes, historical development and the current level of human capital in KazakhstanThe main goal of this study is determination of main components of human capital development in Kazakhstan, especially from demographic viewpoint through the evaluations of modern reproduction of human capital in Kazakhstan. The results of estimations indicate that the human capital stock has significantly increased in Kazakhstan during the period studied (from 2003 to 2008) and that it surpass the value of physical capital in the country. The potential of human capital augmentation has been estimated as favorable for upcoming years in Kazakhstan. Key words: human capital, population quality, Kazakhstan, demography, working age-population, education.
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Empirical Essays on Unemployment, Inflation and Access to Human Capital
Franta, Michal ; Münich, Daniel (advisor) ; Blien, Uwe (referee) ; Galuščák, Kamil (referee)
This dissertation consists of three distinct topics within labor macroeconomics, applied microeconomics, and applied time-series econometrics. The first essay extends the standard methodology used in analyzing unemployment duration. The extension is applied on empirical data for the Czech Republic and France. Furthermore, unemployment dynamics are examined in terms of unemployment incidence and duration for the Czech Republic, 1992-2007. The second essay belongs to the field of the economics of education. It contributes to the discussion on the equal access to higher education. The theoretical (structural) model of an individual schooling decision is set up and the implied reduced form is estimated on a unique data set of all secondary school graduates in the Czech Republic in 1998. Finally, the third essay deals with the inflation dynamics. It draws on extensive research in the modeling of the inflation process in developed countries. Nevertheless, the focus is on developing countries where specific economic and consequently econometric issues have to be considered.
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Esaays on Corporate Bankruptcy
Vychodil, Ondřej ; Münich, Daniel (advisor) ; White, Michelle J. (referee) ; Weill, Laurent (referee)
Research Journal Articles Working Papers Research in Brief Series Dissertations Other Publications Featured Article Dissertations Date: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 - 10:30 Ondřej Vychodil: "Essays on Corporate Bankruptcy" Dissertation Committee: Gérard Roland (chair) Libor Dušek (local chair) Evžen Kočenda Jan Hanousek Abstract: The dissertation consists of three chapters on corporate bankruptcy: In the first chapter (joint with Ondřej Knot), we develop a model of a debt-contracting problem under bankruptcy regimes differing by a degree of softness. In the model, the degree of softness is associated with the extent to which the absolute priority rule can be violated. We show that when the degree of softness can be set individually for each project, then the debtor's tendency to excessive risk-taking can be eliminated and the first best solution can be attained. When it is given exogenously by a bankruptcy law, then a completely tough law results in a lower distortion from the first best than a soft law with a moderate degree of softness. The second chapter documents that the recent Czech bankruptcy practice tended to delay the ultimate exit of a firm when it can be expected to have a harsher ex-post effect on the firm's employees. Bankruptcy duration is regressed on unemployment rate, size and other...
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Essays on Labor Economics: Labor Market Laboratory in Central Europe
Dinga, Marián ; Münich, Daniel (advisor) ; Blien, Uwe (referee) ; Moritz, Michael (referee)
The first part of this dissertation evaluates the impact of a large and territorially concentrated foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow on local labor market outcomes in the Czech Republic. A difference-in-differences technique is employed for estimating the impact of a joint investment of Toyota and Peugeot on local labor market indicators. The results indicate a positive and statistically as well as economically significant effect of a large investment project on the local unemployment outflow rate, which is driven mainly by increases in the aggregate unemployment exit hazard rates for unemployment durations smaller than nine months. However, the impact on long-term unemployed was negligible. Moreover, a simple cost--benefit analysis suggests that investment incentives paid from a state budget would pay off only in a horizon of twelve years. In the second chapter, I analyze the causal effect of investment incentives on regional allocation of FDI in the Czech Republic during 2001-2007. An institutional setup of investment incentives provided foreign investors with financial incentives depending on the particular district's unemployment rate. The identification strategy is based on a regression- discontinuity approach, as the scheme's design introduces three unemployment thresholds...
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Pre-school abilities: European comparative study
Neufussová, Monika ; Münich, Daniel (advisor) ; Federičová, Miroslava (referee)
Pre-school education improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills of children, and the positive effects persist to adulthood. The literature provides rich ev- idence of beneficial effects of pre-school, some of them even causal. However, most studies come from the US, and the research lacks a comprehensive pic- ture of European countries concerning pre-school education. I contribute to the research by providing a comparison of European countries regarding pre- school attendance, pre-school skills, and test scores in fourth grade. In Section ??, I focus on the Czech Republic. The results show that more educated moth- ers are more likely to send children to pre-school. In most countries, children with stronger pre-school skills achieve higher results on standardized tests in fourth grade, which supports the idea of the existence of the Matthew effect. In the Czech Republic, pre-school attendance may increase fourth-grade test scores by 0.3 SD. The most important pre-school skill is the ability to read, which is associated with an increase in fourth-grade math achievement of 0.2 SD. The results contribute to the literature on pre-school education in Eu- rope; however, they should not be interpreted causally, as they are essentially a description of the pre-school context in Europe. 1
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Gender Gap in Productivity Across Science Disciplines
Danylenko, Alona ; Jurajda, Štěpán (advisor) ; Münich, Daniel (referee)
Persistent gaps in publication productivity between men and women have been widely studied in social and economic literature since 1984, when Cole and Zuckerman referred to this discrepancy as a 'puzzle'. Existing studies on differences in publication productivity between men and women have considered different determinants of the gender gap, which partly, but not fully, explained the "gender puzzle". My study differs from the existing literature in terms of the coverage of the data used and the key questions asked: 1) what factors contribute to the gender gap in pub- lication productivity between male and female scientists? 2) what institutional factors facilitate productivity of female scientists? 3) how does the size of gender gap vary across disciplines? 4) which workplaces hire more women over time? The results of my research suggest that: 1) the size of gender gap is one-third less wide when field of specialization is controlled for; 2) women gain advantages in terms of higher productivity at larger workplaces, which cannot be explained by more stringent selection; 3) the smallest gender gap is observed in typically 'feminine' fields, such as Sociology, Medicine, and Education, while the largest gap is observed in Physics and Mathematics; 4) there is a path dependence in new female hirings, in...
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Economics of Skill Formation
Supik, Lukáš ; Münich, Daniel (advisor) ; Zacchia, Paolo (referee)
vii Abstract People are by nature social beings. Most of us have a complex social network that connects us with other people in numerous aspects of our lives: neighbours, co-workers or peers in schools, and friends. Moreover, it is widely believed that people's behaviour is to some extent affected by others in their social networks, which is known as peer effects. Therefore, a precise understanding of the behaviour of an individual necessarily includes understanding her interactions with others within her social network. The first part of this thesis, literature review, summarizes contemporary research on peer effects, shows which aspects of human behaviour may be affected by social interactions, and highlights the importance of peer effects research. In the second part, the estimation of the linear- in-means peer effects model, we provide a detailed description of the model, derivations of its alternative formulations, and show the identification conditions. The main contribution of the second part is that we provide a step-by-step analysis of the linear-in-means peer effects model and detailed proofs of theorems in one place. The third part provides an empirical analysis of peer effects in education in the Czech Republic. In particular, we examine how the test scores of pupils are affected by their...
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