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Empirical analysis of Okun’s law in Iceland
Zajíček, Zdeněk ; Slaný, Martin (advisor) ; Chytilová, Helena (referee)
This thesis deals with empirical analysis of Okuns law in Iceland. Okuns hypothesis of negative relationship between real GDP and the rate of unemployment is being tested on two models, difference and gap, using OLS estimation. Also there are two filtration methods used (Hodrick-Prescott and Baxter-King) for gap model estimation. The results of all models showed weak relationship of variables, but proved the hypothesis. In the following part, the same procedure is being used on Finlands data, to get comparison of coefficients. Results for Finland showed weaker bond of variables than in Iceland, but the Okuns hypothesis still holds. Last part is focused on finding the sensitivity of rate of unemployment to changes in added value of each economical sector in Iceland using the production approach model. This model gave inconclusive results due to insufficient data available.
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Valuation of company Lesní společnost Broumov Holding, a. s.
Sichrovský, Chananel ; Štamfestová, Petra (advisor) ; Toušek, Jan (referee)
The aim of this master thesis is to estimate the value of the company Lesní společnost Broumov Holding, a. s. as of the valuation date 01/01/2016. The thesis consists of two main parts, theoretically-methodological and related practical part. For accomplishing the objective, the strategical and financial analysis were made, also the main generators of the value were identified and scheduled and the financial plan was composed. The valuation itself was realized by three different methods that were afterwards calculated together which resulted into final estimation of the company's value, that reaches 147 024 thousand Czech crowns. The thesis is usable as a full overview of the company's situation and may be also helpful to the owners as a base for price negotiations, in case of potential investor's interest in buying it.
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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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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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Differences between men and women in the Czech labour market
Stroukal, Dominik ; Kadeřábková, Božena (advisor) ; Pavelka, Tomáš (referee) ; Němec, Otakar (referee)
This thesis consists of five articles that apply current world research on labor economics at the Czech Republic and confirms the significant differences between men and women in this market. It shows that gender has a significant influence on the preference on the labor market and, consequently, on employment and health. First, the thesis shows that preferences are relevant determinant of career and then we study the difference in preference of salary for men and women. Subsequently it shows that gender plays a significant role in explaining the relationship between homeownership, and unemployment, as well as unemployment and health. The first chapter was able to demonstrate that the preference for a career has a positive influence on the choice of career. The influence of higher education on prioritizing career proved to be positive and significant. Probability of a career choice is reduced by the presence of children, however, is not dependent on their number, which is contrary to the theory of preferences. The second chapter shows that Czech women prefer more non-monetary rewards than men. It has also been shown that people with university education are same in the preferences of non-monetary rewards regardless of the gender of the respondents, however, compared to the world's research, the Czech higher education increases this preference. It turned out that women prefer risk less than men. The third chapter demonstrates that although the housing market undermines labor mobility and employment in the Czech Republic at the regional level, therefore, that in regions with a higher rate of home ownership is higher unemployment, at the individual level, the owners of housing are unemployed are less likely. The estimates are significantly different for men and women. Men living in owner-occupied housing have a higher likelihood of employment than women. At regional level, however, this thesis shows that the high rate of home ownership increases unemployment for both men and women, in the long run only to women. The fourth chapter showed that men transition to homeownership reduces the likelihood of unemployment next year. For women, this relationship has proved to be insignificant. In addition, as insignificant showed the opposite relationship, the transition from unemployment to the newly acquired home ownership. The last chapter shows that the change in the working status to unemployment will increase in the future probability of worse health. Influence in less than two years, however, proved to be significant. An important conclusion is that men have a significantly stronger relationship between health and unemployment than women.
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The role of the midwife in the care of woman in puerperium
ŤOUPKOVÁ, Petra
This bachelor thesis deals with the role of a midwife in the care of a woman in the postpartum period. The thesis comprises a theoretical and a practical part. The theoretical part begins with the definitions of pregnancy, labour and postpartum period. These are followed by the description of physiological changes that take place in the postpartum period, i.e. involutional and mental changes. The thesis focuses also on the needs of women in the postpartum period, and a special attention is paid to areas related to hygiene care, nutrition, defecation, physical activity, breast feeding, pain, sexuality, and relationships in the postpartum period. The role of a midwife in these areas is emphasized. Also the importance of nursing education is mentioned and the nursing care of a woman after spontaneous labour and a woman after caesarean section is described. The theoretical part is concluded with the description of an irregular postpartum period, which covers the issue of bleeding, infections, lactation disorders and mental disorders. The aim of this bachelor thesis was to ascertain how satisfied women are with the care provided by midwives. Two research questions were asked: How satisfied were the women with the care provided by midwives in the postpartum period? What did the women expect from midwives in the course of the postpartum period and were their expectations met? A qualitative research method was used and the data were collected by means of a semi-structured interview. The interview was based on 17 questions prepared beforehand. The respondents had the possibility to retrospectively evaluate the care provided by their midwives in the postpartum period, their own expectations and fulfilment of these expectations. The research was conducted in the period from February to April 2014.
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Diagnostics for Robust Regression: Linear Versus Nonlinear Model
Kalina, Jan
Robust statistical methods represent important tools for estimating parameters in linear as well as nonlinear econometric models. In contrary to the least squares, they do not suffer from vulnerability to the presence of outlying measurements in the data. Nevertheless, they need to be accompanied by diagnostic tools for verifying their assumptions. In this paper, we propose the asymptotic Goldfeld-Quandt test for the regression median. It allows to formulate a natural procedure for models with heteroscedastic disturbances, which is again based on the regression median. Further, we pay attention to nonlinear regression model. We focus on the nonlinear least weighted squares estimator, which is one of recently proposed robust estimators of parameters in a nonlinear regression. We study residuals of the estimator and use a numerical simulation to reveal that they can be severely heteroscedastic also for data generated from a model with homoscedastic disturbances. Thus, we give a warning that standard residuals of the robust nonlinear estimator may produce misleading results if used for the standard diagnostic tools
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Modelling, parameter estimation, optimisation and control of transport and reaction processes in bioreactors.
ŠTUMBAUER, Václav
With the significant potential of microalgae as a major biofuel source of the future, a considerable scientific attention is attracted towards the field of biotechnology and bioprocess engineering. Nevertheless the current photobioreactor (PBR) design methods are still too empirical. With this work I would like to promote the idea of designing a production system, such as a PBR, completely \emph{in silico}, thus allowing for the in silico optimization and optimal control determination. The thesis deals with the PBR modeling and simulation. It addresses two crucial issues in the current state-of-the-art PBR modeling. The first issue relevant to the deficiency of the currently available models - the incorrect or insufficient treatment of either the transport process modeling, the reaction modeling or the coupling between these two models. A correct treatment of both the transport and the reaction phenomena is proposed in the thesis - in the form of a unified modeling framework consisting of three interconnected parts - (i) the state system, (ii) the fluid-dynamic model and (iii) optimal control determination. The proposed model structure allows prediction of the PBR performance with respect to the modelled PBR size, geometry, operating conditions or a particular microalgae strain. The proposed unified modeling approach is applied to the case of the Couette-Taylor photobioreactor (CTBR) where it is used for the optimal control solution. The PBR represents a complex multiscale problem and especially in the case of the production scale systems, the associated computational costs are paramount. This is the second crucial issue addressed in the thesis. With respect to the computational complexity, the fluid dynamics simulation is the most costly part of the PBR simulation. To model the fluid flow with the classical CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) methods inside a production scale PBR leads to an enormous grid size. This usually requires a parallel implementation of the solver but in the parallelization of the classical methods lies another relevant issue - that of the amount of data the individual nodes must interchange with each other. The thesis addresses the performance relevant issues by proposing and evaluation alternative approaches to the fluid flow simulation. These approaches are more suitable to the parallel implementation than the classical methods because of their rather local character in comparison to the classical methods - namely the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) for fluid flow, which is the primary focus of the thesis in this regard and alternatively also the discrete random walk based method (DRW). As the outcome of the thesis I have developed and validated a new Lagrangian general modeling approach to the transport and reaction processes in PBR - a framework based on the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and the model of the Photosynthetic Factory (PSF) that models correctly the transport and reaction processes and their coupling. Further I have implemented a software prototype based on the proposed modeling approach and validated this prototype on the case of the Coutte-Taylor PBR. I have also demonstrated that the modeling approach has a significant potential from the computational costs point of view by implementing and validating the software prototype on the parallel architecture of CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture). The current parallel implementation is approximately 20 times faster than the unparallized one and decreases thus significantly the iteration cycle of the PBR design process.
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