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Irrationality in the decision- making of an individual as an economic entity in the territory of the Czech Republic
Böhm, Tomáš ; Zeman, Martin (advisor) ; Babin, Jan (referee)
The main objective of this thesis is an in-depth analysis of the decision-making process on issues of economic nature for individuals in the Czech Republic. The degree of rationality occurring in consumer behavior is evaluated based on lessons learned. The theoretical section is concerned with the economic aspect of the decision-making process, which mainly includes knowledge of neoclassical theory, whose basis is the cardinal and ordinal concept of utility maximization. Subsequently there are introduced the alternative approaches to decision making, focusing on the subjective aspects of human reasoning. Using the mutual synthesis of these approaches, the author draws a term behavioral economics, specific elements of which constitute a substantive content of the whole work. The practical section verifies the hypothesis that the decision-making contradicts the theory of rational individual conduct. Data collected through the questionnaire is subjected to analytical procedures by which the stated hypothesis was verified.
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Economy of Chile in 1960s and 1970s with Accent on Market Reforms after 1973
Strejčková, Klára ; Pekárek, Štěpán (advisor) ; Ševčík, Miroslav (referee)
This bachelor thesis puts the stress on the analysis of economic reforms approved in Chile in the 60's and 70's years of the 20th century. The focus of this work is profoundly dedicated to the analysis of two important macroeconomic indicators: developments of inflation and trade exports, bearing in mind the context of the coup in 1973 which is seen as a direct consequence of the communist rule of the Salvador Allende's Cabinet (1970-1973). The Allende's Cabinet strove to transform the Chilean economic society into a socialist one. The bachelor thesis has validated a hypothesis stating that the pro-market reforms approved after 1973 led to diversification of the Chilean export as well as a gradual and progressive stabilization of the country's inflation that had reached as 350 % during the socialist Allende's government. This work brings a comparison of two very different economic doctrines that formed Chile in the 70's of the last century. There is being compared a socialist government approach, having focused on nationalizing of the private sector, to the liberal government's approach aimed at decreasing the public sector, privatization as well as tearing down international trade barriers.
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Segmentation of the detergent market
Bulantová, Barbora ; Koudelka, Jan (advisor)
This Masters Thesis is focused on detergent market in the Czech Republic and its market segmentation. The goal of this thesis is to find differences and similarities between consumers and to uncover the segments which are internally homogeneous and externally heterogeneous, and to suggest a marketing approach for each segment. Theoretical part of this thesis is about theoretical explanation of the market segmentation process, different approaches to segmentation and methods of segmentation. There is also a description of the detergent market in the Czech Republic. The analytical part is focused on segmentation process itself. The segmentation is based on both primary and secondary data. The revealed segments are then described in detail. There is a suggested marketing approach how to effectively address each segment.
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Urbanization in China: Sustainability of Chinese Cities
Králíková, Petra ; Stuchlíková, Zuzana (advisor) ; Neumann, Pavel (referee)
The aim of the master thesis is to characterize development trends of Chinese urbanization since the establishment of People´s Republic of China until today, approaches to these trends and evaluate their sustainability. Thesis includes four main parts. The first part introduces main urbanization theories: Stages of Urban Development, Differential Urbanization, and Environmental Kuznets Curve. The second part characterizes the development of Chinese urbanization, defines two main determinants of the future development and tries to cover different potential future scenarios. The third part deals with Chinese urban policies, such as five-year-plans, Urbanization plan and reforms. After that, the sustainability issue is evaluated. Last part of the thesis deals with urbanization trends and policies in Chongqing municipality.
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Private equity fund greenhouse business plan focusing on the financials
Bartoš, Jan ; Krause, Josef (advisor) ; Machek, Ondřej (referee)
The thesis analyses and discusses the creation of a business plan inside a private equity fund. The business plan deals with the development and management of a fully illuminated and heated greenhouse and focuses mostly on the financial part, due to reasons explained in the thesis. In the theoretical section, the author discusses the developments in the entrepreneurship and private equity field and follows by describing the important terms concerning a business plan, its structure and the approach to its creation. The practical section deals with the circumstances in which this business opportunity is considered and covers the business plan itself, specifically the market analysis, marketing approach, operational side and financials in detail. The aim of this exercise is to validate the market expectations and economic rentability of the whole project. To this end the author utilizes several standardized criterions for investment assessment.
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The Effect of System of Financial Reporting on Financial Performance of Business Corporation
Prokešová, Gabriela ; Strouhal, Jiří (advisor) ; Roubíčková, Jaroslava (referee)
This thesis deals with the effect of system of financial reporting on financial performance of business corporation. Czech accounting regulations and International financial reporting standards are compared within the framework of system of financial reporting. The effect on financial performance is then analysed through financial analysis. In theoretical-methodological part the terminology, approaches and methods used in individual systems are defined and then comparative analysis is performed. Theoretical definition of financial analysis follows and then basic information about business corporation is mentioned, which begins the practical part. Then financial analysis of the firm is performed whereas data are analysed separately for every system. The purpose of this thesis is to point out different values of indicators of financial analysis coming from differences of analysed systems of financial reporting through concrete business corporation and to explain their cause.
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Řízení IS/ICT se zaměřením na sourcing služeb informačního systému
Šebesta, Michal ; Voříšek, Jiří (advisor) ; Havlíček, Zdeněk (referee) ; Příklenk, Oldřich (referee) ; Král, Jaroslav (referee)
Research on outsourcing has been around for several decades, while recent evolution in the information systems discipline towards ICT service commoditization significantly changes the context of decision-making. Services that are available on-demand via the Internet allow organizations implementing functions they demand in a fraction of time. This trend represents a chance for organizations seeking to use advanced ICT services without a need of major investments. Problem is the current lack of guidelines and tools for managing ICT services and their outsourcing. Given the trends on the ICT service market, it is expected that much of the IT management in the future will encompass the ICT services and utilize service-level structures. Methods currently available are either too broad or encompass only small part of the whole problem. Ad-hoc or unsound decisions in this area might cause major complications in terms of quality, usability, integration, and consequently influence total cost of organizational IT. Organizations need to either revise existing models or propose and implement completely new models to manage their IS/ICT. This thesis deals with the management of IS/ICT with focus on the ICT services outsourcing. It discusses available sourcing models in the literature and links them to the various interconnected areas. Based on these areas, it presents an integrated view on IT outsourcing strategies. Most importantly the thesis proposes an original concept for decision-making about outsourcing of ICT services named the SOURCER framework. This approach utilizes the presented outsourcing strategies, and introduces a complex methodology and decision-making criteria that will assist organizations with selection of ICT services in order to maintain and manage a most suitable ICT service portfolio. The decision-making is based on four essential viewpoints: function, costs, time, and quality. These viewpoints are discussed, individually analyzed, and serve as a basis for further research. The whole framework is developed and validated according to Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM). Individual components are evaluated using a survey among a group of selected IT managers. Proof of concept is then established by a case study on framework use in a real organization. This case study covers strategy specification, business--IT alignment, specifying service architecture and its interconnections, outsourcing, and management of the ICT service portfolio.
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Clustering and regression analysis of micro panel data
Sobíšek, Lukáš ; Pecáková, Iva (advisor) ; Komárek, Arnošt (referee) ; Brabec, Marek (referee)
The main purpose of panel studies is to analyze changes in values of studied variables over time. In micro panel research, a large number of elements are periodically observed within the relatively short time period of just a few years. Moreover, the number of repeated measurements is small. This dissertation deals with contemporary approaches to the regression and the clustering analysis of micro panel data. One of the approaches to the micro panel analysis is to use multivariate statistical models originally designed for crosssectional data and modify them in order to take into account the within-subject correlation. The thesis summarizes available tools for the regression analysis of micro panel data. The known and currently used linear mixed effects models for a normally distributed dependent variable are recapitulated. Besides that, new approaches for analysis of a response variable with other than normal distribution are presented. These approaches include the generalized marginal linear model, the generalized linear mixed effects model and the Bayesian modelling approach. In addition to describing the aforementioned models, the paper also includes a brief overview of their implementation in the R software. The difficulty with the regression models adjusted for micro panel data is the ambiguity of their parameters estimation. This thesis proposes a way to improve the estimations through the cluster analysis. For this reason, the thesis also contains a description of methods of the cluster analysis of micro panel data. Because supply of the methods is limited, the main goal of this paper is to devise its own two-step approach for clustering micro panel data. In the first step, the panel data are transformed into a static form using a set of proposed characteristics of dynamics. These characteristics represent different features of time course of the observed variables. In the second step, the elements are clustered by conventional spatial clustering techniques (agglomerative clustering and the C-means partitioning). The clustering is based on a dissimilarity matrix of the values of clustering variables calculated in the first step. Another goal of this paper is to find out whether the suggested procedure leads to an improvement in quality of the regression models for this type of data. By means of a simulation study, the procedure drafted herein is compared to the procedure applied in the kml package of the R software, as well as to the clustering characteristics proposed by Urso (2004). The simulation study demonstrated better results of the proposed combination of clustering variables as compared to the other combinations currently used. A corresponding script written in the R-language represents another benefit of this paper. It is available on the attached CD and it can be used for analyses of readers own micro panel data.
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Use of Interest Rate Models for Interest Rate Risk Management in the Czech Financial Market Environment
Cíchová Králová, Dana ; Arlt, Josef (advisor) ; Cipra, Tomáš (referee) ; Witzany, Jiří (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to suggest an appropriate approach to interest rate risk modeling in the Czech financial market environment in various situations. Three distinct periods are analyzed. These periods, which are the period before the global financial crisis, period during the financial crisis and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and calming subsequent debt crisis in the eurozone, are characterized by different evaluation of liquidity and credit risk, different relationship between financial variables and market participants and different degree of market regulations. Within this goal, an application of the BGM model in the Czech financial market environment is crucial. Use of the BGM model for the purpose of predicting a dynamics of a yield curve is not very common. This is firstly due to the fact that primary use of this model is a valuation of interest rate derivatives while ensuring the absence of arbitrage and secondly its application is relatively difficult. Nevertheless, I apply the BGM model to obtain predictions of the probability distributions of interest rates in the Czech and eurozone market environment, because its complexity, direct modeling of a yield curve based on market rates and especially a possibility of parameter estimation based on current swaptions volatilities quotations may lead to a significant improvement of predictions. This improvement was also confirmed in this thesis. Use of swaptions volatilities market quotations is especially useful in the period of unprecedented mone- tary easing and increased number of central banks and other regulators interventions into financial markets that occur after the financial crisis, because it reflects current market expectations which also include future interventions. As a consequence of underdevelopment of the Czech financial market there are no market quotations of Czech koruna denominated swaptions volatilities. I suggest their approximations based on quotations of euro denominated swaptions volatilities and also using volatilities of koruna and euro forward rates. Use of this approach ensures that predictions of the Czech yield curve dynamics contain current market expectations. To my knowledge, any other author has not presented similar application of the BGM model in the Czech financial market environment. In this thesis I further predict a Czech and Euro area money market yield curve dynamics using the CIR and the GP models as representatives of various types of interest rates models to compare these predictions with BGM predictions. I suggest a comprehensive system of three criteria, based on comparison of predicti- ons with reality, to describe a predictive power of selected models and an appropria- teness of their use in the Czech market environment during different situations in the market. This analysis shows that predictions of the Czech money market yield curve dynamics based on the BGM model demonstrate high predictive power and the best 8 quality in comparison with other models. GP model also produces relatively good qua- lity predictions. Conversely, predictions based on the CIR model as a representative of short rate model family completely failed when describing reality. In a situation when the economy allows negative rates and there is simultaneously a significant likelihood of their implementation, I recommend to obtain predictions of Czech money market yield curve dynamics using GP model which allows existence of negative interest rates. This analysis also contains a statistical test for validating the predictive power of each model and information on other tests. Berkowitz test rejects a hypothesis of accurate predictions for each model. However, this fact is common in real data testing even when using relatively good model. This fact is especially caused by difficult fulfilment of test conditions in real world. To my knowledge, such an analysis of the predictive power of selected interest rate models moreover in the Czech financial market environment has not been published yet. The last goal of this thesis is to suggest an appropriate approach to obtaining pre- dictions of Czech government bonds risk premium dynamics. I define this risk premium as a difference between government bond yields and fixed rate of CZK IRS with the same length. I apply the GP model to describe the dynamics of this indicator of the Czech Republic credit risk. In order to obtain a time series of the risk premium which are necessary for estimation of GP model parameters I firstly estimate yield curves of Czech government bonds using Svensson model for each trading day since 2005. Resulting si- mulations of risk premium show that the GP model predicts the real development of risk premiums of all maturities relatively well. Hence, the proposed approach is suitable for modeling of Czech Republic credit risk based on the use of information extracted from financial markets. I have not registered proposed approach to risk premium modeling moreover in the Czech financial market environment in other publications.
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