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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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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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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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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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Consumption over the life cycle : evidence from the Czech Republic
Cahlíková, Jana ; Hlaváček, Jiří (referee) ; Zápal, Jan (advisor)
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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Elasticity of taxable income : survey of methods and analysis for Czech Republic
Kaucká, Kamila ; Mikolášek, Jakub (referee) ; Zápal, Jan (advisor)
Tax rate change influences taxpayers' behavior and hence taxable income and tax revenue of the state budget. Any such change can affect declared taxable income through its effect on quality or quantity of labor supply, savings, portfolio decisions, tax avoidance by legal means or illegal tax evasion. In this master thesis I focus on elasticity of taxable income as an estimate of these behavioral responses to a (personal income) tax rate change. First, I summarize theoretical background and fundamental analyses dealing with elasticity of taxable income. Further, I describe one of the methods, and its constraints, used for in empirical work on elasticity estimation known as "difference-in-differences". I apply this method and estimate elasticity of taxable income in the Czech Republic using several recent personal income tax reforms. Those estimates that are consistent with economic theory and common sense suggest, along with results from optimal taxation theory, that the top marginal personal income tax rate in the Czech Republic should not exceed 71.8%, but any lower tax rate is justifiable based on redistributive tastes of a government.
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Efficiency of public spending
Lebovič, Michal ; Krištoufek, Ladislav (referee) ; Zápal, Jan (advisor)
This thesis aims to offer a comprehensive introduction into the topic of efficiency measurement in the public sector. Firstly, usual definitions and concepts of efficiency are introduced. Attention is then turned to the description of various factors and problems specific for public sector that are crucial to efficiency measurement. It is shown that these factors preclude the use of general (private sector) efficiency measurement methods or demand their modification. The most common methods of analysis are then introduced and their relative advantages and disadvantages in the environment of public sector are explained. Finally the thesis outlines the possible uses and benefits of efficiency measurement, including the use in the economic policy-making, but also points out the limits inherent to this analysis in the current stage of development.
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Effective tax rate measures : (survey of methods, computations and comparison to statutory tax rates in the Czech Republic)
Kábrtová, Jana ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Hedbávný, Petr (referee)
Structure of tax systems of particular countries across the world features with great complexity and largely differ from one country to another. Statutory tax rates are not a good measure of the tax burden imposed by the tax nor are they a good tool for comparing of different tax systems or analysing the effects of changes in tax laws. To gather all these information we need to construct synthetic indicators as effective tax rates that are the main subject of this thesis. The effective tax rates can be calculated using several different methods. The first part of this thesis describes and summarizes these methods of computation of effective tax rates and points its strengths and weaknesses. The second part of the thesis then bases on my own effective tax rate's computations and compares effective tax rates in the Czech Republic with effective tax rates in Europe. The aim of this part is to find out whether the final tax burden in the Czech Republic is higher or lower than in EU-15 countries. Moreover I compare the effective tax rates with the statutory ones and describe the features of Czech tax system. The last part of the thesis is talking about the proposed tax reform with focus on the impact of this reform to effective tax rates.
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Central banks' voting records and future policy
Horváth, Roman ; Šmídková, Kateřina ; Zápal, Jan
Writers assess whether the voting records of central bank boards are informative about future monetary policy. First, they specify a theoretical model of central bank board decisionmaking and simulate the voting outcomes. Three different versions of model are estimated with simulated data: 1) democratic, 2) consensual and 3) opportunistic. Next, the model predictions are tested on real data on six countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States).
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