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Development of interest rates in the mortgage market in the Czech Republic between 2006-2016
Ditrichová, Gabriela ; Strejček, Ivo (advisor) ; Klement, Josef (referee)
This bachelor's thesis is focused on the development of interest rates in the mortgage market in the Czech Republic in the decade between 2006 and 2016. A strong economic growth between 2006 and 2007, which had positive effects in the mortgage loan market, was followed by a deep slump in the form of global financial crisis unleashed by speculations in the real estate market in the U.S. The main aim of the work is based on the development of mortgage interest rates and the significant factors that affect their amount - to verify or disprove the hypothesis that interest rates respond to changes of these factors. The results confirm the hypothesis only in certain areas. The influence of changes of interest rates has been proven in the case of inflation and discount rates by usage of the econometric model. Factors that have not shown a significant direct influence of interest rates may have an indirect influence on their change.
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Marketing communication of commercial insurance companies on social media
Havránek, Jiří ; Gála, Libor (advisor) ; Molnár, Zdeněk (referee)
The diploma thesis deals with marketing communication of commercial insurance companies on social media. The aim of the thesis is to analyze the current state of the communication activities of commercial insurance companies on selected social media. Based on the identified state and detected interest in these communication activities by customers, recommendations are suggested for improvement of communication online commercial insurance companies to support the sales of insurance products. The first section defines the areas of insurance, marketing communication and social media. After that there is identification of activities that companies can perform on social media to increase brand awareness. These activities can be monitored, evaluated and after that optimized. In the second section there is identified the current state of commercial insurance activities on social media and detected interest in these activities from customers by using qualitative research. Based on these findings, draft recommendations are formulated on possible improvements to the current situation. The benefit of this thesis is the identification of the current state of commercial insurance activities on social media.
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The American Foreign Policy with the Middle East : from the earliest days to the Obama’s mandate
Petraud, Jean-Félix ; Eichler, Jan (advisor) ; Dubský, Zbyněk (referee)
The following dissertation is an attempt of analysis and understanding of the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East region and its evolution through time. Considering the fact that the Middle East region is or at least used to be a vital region for the United States national interests, the dissertation presents an exhaustive list of major events that have been major shifts in the US foreign policy in the region. The more or less chronological timeline allows the reader to have a better understanding of the evolution of the US foreign policy. The result of the dissertation is the identification of different patterns of foreign policy and to put the spot on the reasons of the changes of these patterns. Nevertheless, the history of the Middle East region and the incredible number of major events through the 2Oth century and the early 21st century make impossible to deal with all of them. Moreover, analysis and comments are based on academic research, but the dissertation remains subjective and may lead to discussions and debates.
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INSTITUTIONAL CARE
PAPÁČKOVÁ, Lucie
The aim of this bachelor thesis is to acquaint the reader with institutional care in the Czech Republic, performed in facilities belonging to the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Institutional care is one of the most important measures in which the State may intervene in family relationships. Minors have the legal right to secure a proper education and overall development. If the parents or family are unable to fulfill this legal claim, then the State is obliged to provide the child with an alternative rearing environment, either by assigning the child to the care of individuals or a facility for children requiring immediate assistance, and in the event of a necessity, also the most important measure: imposing institutional care. Priority is always given to individual care before institutional care, either with another individual, guardian, or foster parent. The Act also defines exactly where it's possible to proceed to extreme measures and impose institutional care. Given the severity of this measure, this decision only appertains to courts. No other governmental or non-governmental institution has such authority. This paper is aimed at introducing institutional care and the protection of children in the Czech Republic, especially highlighting the fragmentation of institutional care. The fundamental part of this paper describes the process of imposing institutional care, and especially its implementation in individual institutional facilities, differentiated according to the children's age, their physical and mental abilities, and the reasons why institutional care was decided on. The priority should always be the child's interest and welfare. This work also highlights the shortcomings of institutional care, particularly the lack of cooperation between the socio-legal protection of children and institutional facilities, the limited cooperation between government departments, the lack of suitable family recovery, and the small number of social workers and judges in the field. Finally, I also mention the achievements that brought about the transformation of institutional care, particularly the conversion to small family type facilities, surrounded by a network of services for the families of allocated children, the children themselves, and also other families who find themselves in a difficult situation. Not all children can be placed in foster care, not all families can be recovered. Especially for some older children and those who have gone through a specific life experience (abuse, repeated return from foster families), an institutional facility is an environment where they feel more secure and where they can fulfill their need to belong in a group of peers. In my work, I also want to draw attention to the current system of child care for children and youth, which does not address the period following the departure of young people from institutional care, although the stage of becoming independent is the most important for their future life.
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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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Application of Monte Carlo simulations in banking
Boruta, Matěj ; Teplý, Petr (advisor) ; Fučík, Vojtěch (referee)
Currently, banking is exposed to huge market risks. One of those risks is occurrence of negative interest rates in the EU. Nowadays, it is important to use sophisticated and modern measurement tools and approaches to measure and manage banking risks. One of those methods is Monte Carlo simulation. This bachelor thesis is aimed at analysis and prediction of 3-month maturity Prague Interest Offer Rate (PRIBOR) for 3, 6 and 12 months with using Monte Carlo simulations. It was found that this method is suitable for prediction market variables with low volatility. If anybody uses this method, it is necessity to have in mind all pitfalls and assumptions, that this method includes, as an adequate random generated number of scenarios, approximation of correct probability distribution, independence of dataset and not least, as far as possible, to focus on factors generating randomness of market variable and not the prices, that express rather consequences of randomness than its cause. Further, the Monte Carlo prediction was compared with prognosis of the Czech Nation Bank and it was found that Monte Carlo prediction is more accurate for short term predictions. 12-month prediction of Monte Carlo simulation discovered also possible occurrence of negative interest rate at 0,05% level of probability in compare to the Czech National Bank prognosis, where was no negative interest rate predicted.
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Antioxidant, anti-proliferative and immunomodulatory effect of fruits, vegetables and mushrooms in vitro
Doskočil, Ivo ; Havlík, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Orsák, Matyáš (referee)
Recently there has been an increasing interest in discovering of new species of plants and mushrooms which have antioxidant or anti proliferative activity. The interest is caused by the fact that these species have medicinal and food utilization. These properties of plants and mushrooms can be used when dealing with many diseases which may be connected with oxidative stress (inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and tumour disease, etc.).
The thesis propounds characteristics of in vitro antioxidant and anti proliferative activity of 19 types of juices and 28 methanol extracts of fruits and vegetables, which are common parts of a diet. In the thesis there are also characteristics of 13 ethanol extracts of edible mushrooms of the order of Polypore (Popyporales). Antioxidant activity was quantifie by 2, 2 diphenyl 1 picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC), and inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) production. Cytotoxicity was measured by MTT (3 (4,5 dimethylthiazol 2 yl) 2,5 diphenyltetrazolium bromide. Immunomodulatory activity was determined by an assay of phagocytic activity of human neutrophil granulocytes. Further a total phenolic content (TPC) and total beta glucan content were investigated; these are considered to be the potentially active constituents participating in mentioned activities.
From the obtained results it is evident that juices (TPC = 1603.2 mg GAE/L; ORAC = 438.5 umol TE/g)
and a bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) fruit extract (ORAC 836.6 umol TE/g; DPPH = 404.6 umol TE/g) showed
the highest antioxidant activity of all tested samples of fruits and vegetables. Capsicum (Capsicum L.)
juices (TPC = 642.1 mg GAE/L; ORAC = 127.9 umol TE/g) and a radish (Raphanus sativus L.) extract
(ORAC 724.5 umol TE/g; DPPH = 52.2 umol TE/g) also proved to have the high values of antioxidant activity. From the tested fruits and vegetables the following inhibited to produce a nitric oxide: onion (Allium cepa L) juices (lowered the NO production by 57%), tangerine juices (Citrus reticulata Blanco)(by 52%), broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis italic) extract (by 21%), and orange (Citrus sinensis Pers.) extract (by 10%). Concerning edible
mushrooms, Lentinus tigrinus (Bull.) Fr. (TPC = 216.2 umol GAE/g of extract), Ganoderma lucidum (Curtis) P. Kras (TPC = 257.9 umol GAE/g of extract), and Royoporus badius (Pers.) A.B. De (TPC = 257.8 umol GAE/g of extract) presented the highest phenolic content. Sparassis crispa (Wulfen) Fr. (117.4 mg/g of extract) had the highest content of beta glucan. Substantial effect on phagocytic activity of granulocytes was noticed in connection with Neolentinus lepideus (Fr.) Redhead & Ginns, Polyporus squamosus (Huds.) Fr., and S. crispa. In connection with the latter of mentioned mushrooms, a moderate inhibitory effect towards HT 29 human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line
(IC50 = 107 ug/ml of extract) was noticed.
The results indicate that the tested plants and mushrooms can be beneficial when reducing the negative effects of oxidative stress. The oxidative stress has been recognized as a contributing factor to a whole range of diseases and the reduction of the oxidative stress may lead to the decrease in the possibility of the diseases´ progression. The results show the possible favourable effects on the human health. When evaluating the results, the following fact should be taken into consideration; the in vitro tests and screenings are considered to be the first phase of systematic research of the effects and serve for the choice of respondents for further detailed studies.
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Právní a zdravotně sociální aspekty činnosti OSPOD jako ustanovených opatrovníků v zámu nezletilých dětí
BORSKÁ, Jana
The Czech Republic as a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has vested the practice of state administration in the field of care for minor children to municipalities with extended powers, where the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of minor children is safeguarded by state authorities of social and legal protection of children (ASLPC hereinafter). These authorities are incorporated to the extent laid down by the Act on Social and Legal Protection of Children (Act No 359/1999 Coll., as amended). The position and roles of ASLPC and their competence and jurisdiction are also regulated by the same act. The position of workers of these authorities and its legal embodiment is equally important. Regarding professionality, there are high demands on these workers. In the Czech Republic, significant changes in legislature have been made over the past three years. These amendments have led to the strengthening of the rights of minor children and to the establishing of new tools for their protection. In connection with the adoption of new substantive regulation of family law, which is now exhaustively dealt with by the Act No 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code, new procedural rules have been established regarding protection of rights of minor children. Such procedural legislation includes (apart from the long-existent Act No. 99/1963, the Code of Civil Procedure) the Act No 292/2013 Coll., on Special Civil Proceedings. The decision-making regarding minor children has been vested mainly by the state into the competence of courts. The courts appoint the locally relevant ASLPC as a guardian who then represents the interests of minor children. The purpose, interwoven with and derived from the first one, was to explore the opinions of selected social workers of ASLPC and of district court judges regarding the defined problems occurring during the work of ASLPCs and courts while protecting the interests of minor children. These particularly include: the use of the tool of precautionary measure; problems of different territorial jurisdiction of courts and ASLPCs; processing of complaints regarding bias in various phases of the proceedings; professional training of workers of ASLPC It is evident from the proposals of both judges and ASLPC workers that it is necessary to unify territorial jurisdiction. The courts are suggesting the priority criterion of the address where the child mainly resides. ASLPC workers suggest the official permanent residence as the prime criterion. Bias causes problems in all phases of proceedings. It is obvious that courts take differing approaches towards the solution of this problem (some courts solve the problem of bias complaints filed by the parties while other courts do not) and for ASLPC workers it is difficult to assess how to act when such complaint is raised against them. The training of ASLPC workers - workers are obliged to educate themselves and their employer is obliged to finance such training. Not all ASLPCs are able to provide training in the required extent - due to financial reasons (the average costs of education of one employee pose from 9,169 to 13,400 CZK annually and they cover approximately 6 days of training). The heavy work-load caused by insufficient numbers of ASLPC employees prevents them from completing such compulsory training. As part of the examination of the "participation of a collision guardian in court proceedings" it has been found out that irregular participation of the worker in the proceedings (absence from participation in appeals proceedings); incomplete reports (directed to courts) from surveys in families. Based on comprehensive examination of the problems of territorial jurisdiction, it was recommended that requests are independently recorded and financial compensation is provided for ASLPCs who are requested to represent minors in front of courts, to draft proposals for precautionary measures.
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Characteristics of the working behavior of Czechs and Ukrainians
BYKOVA, Sofia
The aim of this work is to create a transparent and comparable characteristics of the work behavior phenomenon within the cultures of those states - what is common and what is different between them, or maybe incompatible .It is supposed to have some analysis of possible conflicts and their connection with the mentality. The primary reason of this aim choosing is the specialty I study. My work contains information that could be interesting and useful not only for me and my future job, but also for managers and other employees. Overview of examined issues contains specific points, such as the fundamentals of economic psychology and behavioral economics (symbiosis of psychological and economic opinion on motivation and rationality of individuals), theories of motivation and reaction to different occurrence, characteristic of the term "mentality", general points about the human impact of the world economy. For realizing the goals of my work the following hypotheses have been proposed - Czech and Ukrainian mentality have significant differences, though these cultures are close. - Ukrainian and Czech employees are able to work effectively in a team and find a "common language" in the workplace. The difference in mentality does not obstruct on it. - Employers could be interested in the Ukrainian employees taking into account their high concernment and motivation. All three of the hypotheses were confirmed by observed data and comparison of mentality characteristics. Czechs are often tolerant to other cultures, moreover Ukrainian culture is not much different and does not create difficulties in the working relationship. Based on the fact that the chosen company has no conflicts associated with work behavior and differences in mentality, it's hard to define my contribution to this organization work.
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