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Model of EU international trade - assigning countries into subgroups in panel data
Tichý, Filip ; Hušek, Roman (advisor) ; Kodera, Jan (referee) ; Vošvrda, Miloslav (referee)
I model foreign trade among European countries by applying gravity equation model on panel data. The aim is to investigate exchange rate volatility impact on foreign trade and to test for the presence of the so-called Rose effect in relation to the Euro currency area. I develop a novel complex approach to the estimation of the gravity equation when the assumption of homogeneous reaction within the group of studied countries is relaxed. New methodology, tests and implementation is proposed. I develop several heuristic methods that permit effective clustering of countries in a selection of subgroups. The clustering process is iterative: in each step, countries are redistributed in new subgroups and the process is terminated, when no subsequent superior redistribution is possible. Finally, the effective selection of subgroups of countries is chosen to minimize an appropriately defined objective function. Results of the proposed heuristic tests suggest that no dominant method exists. Therefore, an algorithm of chaining of alternative heuristic methods is proposed. After the solution is achieved with one method, an alternative method is imposed and the search for the optimal solution continues, until the objective function reaches its minimum. The proposed methodology is applied to estimate the gravity equation of foreign trade with the extension that permits to assign countries into optimally selected subgroups using the newly introduced algorithms.
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