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Essays on Public Finance
Lichard, Tomáš ; Hanousek, Jan (advisor) ; Palda, Filip (referee) ; Fialová, Kamila (referee)
This dissertation analyzes two presently widely discussed topics in Public Finance: relationship between the shadow economy and tax policy, and the effect of financial transaction taxes on the functioning of financial markets. The first chapter describes presently used estimators of the size of the shadow economy, with a focus on microeconomic estimators. It illustrates problems with assumptions that a vast majority of recent studies use to identify underreporting (mainly the comparison of employed and self-employed) using data from four transition economies as an example. It shows that the most common assumption, that self-employed evade whereas employees do not is probably too strict in less compliant economies, where even employees have opportunities to evade through e.g. under-the-table wages or by moonlighting at unreported jobs. The second chapter develops an estimator of unreported income that relaxes some of these strict assumptions. Assuming only that tax-evading households have a higher consumption- income gap than non-evaders in surveys, an endogenous switching model with unknown sample separation enables the estimation of both the probability of hiding income and the expected amount of unreported income for each household. Using data from Czech and Slovak household...
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Essays on Interest Rates and Credit Risk
Vojtek, Martin ; Kočenda, Evžen (advisor) ; Palda, Filip (referee) ; Čihák, Martin (referee)
This dissertation addresses inefficiencies and problems in the financial markets of post-transition countries, which denies the use of standard estimation techniques. It focuses on interest rate markets and empirically analyzes the situation in the countries that joined the EU in May 2004. These countries underwent significant changes over the last two decades and markets in these countries are often not stable and not developed. In my dissertation I am conducting research in the areas where the empirical results are very scarce. A deeper understanding of the specifics in the markets of post-transition countries can be very helpful for example in designing policy measures touching these markets.
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Essays on Public Finance
Lichard, Tomáš ; Hanousek, Jan (advisor) ; Palda, Filip (referee) ; Fialová, Kamila (referee)
This dissertation analyzes two presently widely discussed topics in Public Finance: relationship between the shadow economy and tax policy, and the effect of financial transaction taxes on the functioning of financial markets. The first chapter describes presently used estimators of the size of the shadow economy, with a focus on microeconomic estimators. It illustrates problems with assumptions that a vast majority of recent studies use to identify underreporting (mainly the comparison of employed and self-employed) using data from four transition economies as an example. It shows that the most common assumption, that self-employed evade whereas employees do not is probably too strict in less compliant economies, where even employees have opportunities to evade through e.g. under-the-table wages or by moonlighting at unreported jobs. The second chapter develops an estimator of unreported income that relaxes some of these strict assumptions. Assuming only that tax-evading households have a higher consumption- income gap than non-evaders in surveys, an endogenous switching model with unknown sample separation enables the estimation of both the probability of hiding income and the expected amount of unreported income for each household. Using data from Czech and Slovak household...
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Essays on Governance and Economic Performance
Kochanova, Anna ; Hanousek, Jan (advisor) ; Palda, Filip (referee) ; Domadenik, Polona (referee)
This thesis examines the relationship between governance and economic performance from different perspectives. It is also related to private sector and countries' economic development. In the first chapter I focus on bureaucratic corruption and examine how it affects firm performance in Central and Eastern European countries. While previous research relies on the data from the BEEPS (Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey) solely, which suffers from excessive non-reporting of firm performance, I combine the data on bribery practices from the BEEPS with reliable and large firm performance data from the Amadeus database. Focusing on within-firm variation, I find that a higher bribery level negatively affects both the sales and labor productivity growth of firms. Nevertheless, conditional on a given level of bureaucratic corruption in a narrowly defined local market, a higher unevenness of firms' bribing behavior within such a market appears to facilitate firm performance. The chance of receiving benefits from bribery may be one reason why corruption does not vanish in spite of its overall damaging effect. In the second chapter, coauthored with Vahagn Jerbashian, we concentrate on the diffusion of telecommunication technologies as an instrument of reduction the costs of entry....
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"Soft" Concepts in Economics: Essays on the Role of Non-Cognitive Skills and Cultural Values
Lauková, Lenka ; Hanousek, Jan (advisor) ; Večerník, Jiří (referee) ; Palda, Filip (referee)
The admission process into secondary schools in the Czech Republic involves a high risk of ending up at an undesired school if failing to be admitted to one's preferred school. With future career outcomes largely dependent on the type of secondary school, the secondary school application decision is an important one. Empirical evidence gathered in this chapter is based on data on pupils participating in the OECD's PISA project and suggests that the education of parents and cognitive abilities matter for a pupil's application decision. A unique dataset available for the Czech Republic enables the examination of the role of non-cognitive skills in the admission process, and these are found to have an impact on a pupil's decision as well. The significance and the magnitude of the effect differs across districts characterized by the level of uncertainty associated with the admission process. The results of the analysis show important gender differences. One of them is that while non-cognitive skills of females operate in accordance with intuitive expectations: higher uncertainty associated with the outcome of the admission process in the district increases the importance of non-cognitive abilities with respect to decision-making; the opposite is true for males. In following chapter, we employ the...
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Essays on Interest Rates and Credit Risk
Vojtek, Martin ; Kočenda, Evžen (advisor) ; Palda, Filip (referee) ; Čihák, Martin (referee)
This dissertation addresses inefficiencies and problems in the financial markets of post-transition countries, which denies the use of standard estimation techniques. It focuses on interest rate markets and empirically analyzes the situation in the countries that joined the EU in May 2004. These countries underwent significant changes over the last two decades and markets in these countries are often not stable and not developed. In my dissertation I am conducting research in the areas where the empirical results are very scarce. A deeper understanding of the specifics in the markets of post-transition countries can be very helpful for example in designing policy measures touching these markets.
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Měření neformálního sektoru v transformačních ekonomikách použitím makroekonomických metod: nové důkazy
Hanousek, Jan ; Palda, F.
An easy and popular method for measuring the size of the underground economy is to use macro-data such as money demand or electricity demand to infer what the legitimate economy needs, an then to attribute the remaining consumption to the underground economy. Such inferences rely on the stability of parameters of the money demand and electricity demand equations, or at the very least on knowledge of how these parameters are changing. We argue that the pace of change of these parameters (such as velocity) is too variable in transition economies for the above methods of estimating the size of the underground economy to be applicable.
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