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Evaluating Research at Levels from National to Institutional
Staros, James V.
Choosing appropriate research metrics is critically important whether one is responsible for research evaluation at the national level, institutional level, or the even the level of the individual researcher. I will discuss how research metrics are employed in several influential national research evaluation systems in the United States, how peer review is employed in the distribution of national research funding, and how individual institutions can evaluate their research programs to better align them with available funding and with national rankings.
Slides: idr-410_1 -  PDF
Video: idr-410_2 -  MP4
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The system and the financing system of psychiatric care in the Czech Republic in the period 2010-2016
Křížová, Natálie ; Lukášová, Tereza (advisor) ; Bartůsková, Lucia (referee)
The bachelor thesis focuses on mental health, which is becoming a socio-economic problem these days. Since there is a constant prevalence of patients with mental illnesses and thus an increase of a burden in the economic system, this work explains the system of psychiatric care, which is crucial for the future development of mental health of Czech population. Based on the analysis of the issue it is evident that the effort to manage the care system to community care will do not contribute to the reduction of treatment costs, but on the other hand, will facilitate the accessibility to psychiatric facilities for patients. The funding of psychiatric care is not based on the national health system, which influences the direction of a large part of the funds for treatment in psychiatric hospitals.
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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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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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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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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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Multicriteria games
Tichá, Michaela ; Dlouhý, Martin (advisor) ; Lachout, Petr (referee) ; Čičková, Zuzana (referee)
Theory of multicriteria games is a special field of game theory, when one or more players have at least two payoff functions and want to maximize simultaneously. The work introduces a number of new findings. It examined the concept of finding equilibria in pure strategies in noncooperative multicriteria game. It is possible to find all the equilibria in pure strategies by full search and solving two linear programs for each point. Furthermore, two linear programs are formulated for verifying that a selected point is the equilibrium of the game or not. In the noncooperative games is also introduced the concept that with knowledge of the equilibrium of bimatrix game determines preferences of the players. Although finding the equilibrium point of the bimatrix game is nonlinear problem, finding the preferences is linear problem. The latest findings in the noncooperative games is a generalization of the concept that solves multicriteria game by assigning weights to each criterion of each player. The work demonstrates that it may not be necessarily linear weights, but it can be more general function that describes the player's preference. The remaining part is devoted to knowledge in cooperative games. There is considered that the players know their preferences and are able to express them by weights. The game with known preferences is defined and solved with the use of bargaining theory. Then it is generalized to a case where players have more payoff functions, from which they can choose. Finally, the multicriteria case of voting game is defined. It is designed completely new concept, which selects the winning coalition in the voting game. This concept is then applied to the real situation after the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2013.
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Communications Intercultural Aspect in Working Environment of a chosen Firm
Jenšovský, Šimon ; Hiršová, Miloslava (advisor) ; Balgová, Dagmar (referee)
The thesis covers cultural differences among employees of a multi-national corporation in relation to communication and task execution. Thesis aims to construct a theoretical framework to map these cultural differences and apply gathered insights in practical research targeting the effect of cultural differences on communication and task execution. Research questionnaire replicates Hofstede's work and also builds on practical application of Hofstede's work by several authors. Research data were gathered via digital questionnaire. Data refinement and evaluation was conducted using frequency description and statistical methods of structure comparison. The thesis provides a set of practical recommendations as a result. These are aimed to help reduce or possibly eliminate negative effects of cultural differences in the workplace.
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Evaluation of Land Exhibition's 2013 impact on economy of Vyšší Brod Cistercian Abbey.
Veretina, Alena ; Kouba, Vojtěch (advisor) ; Dianová, Markéta (referee)
The bachelor thesis Evaluation of Land Exhibition's 2013 impact on economy of Vyšší Brod Cistercian Abbey focuses on the national cultural heritage the site of Vyšší Brod Cistercian Abbey. Main goal of this thesis is cultural-economic evaluation of the abbey and possibilities for increase of attractiveness for tourists. Theoretical part describes history of the abbey, its uniqueness, possibilities and constraints of animation processes in the area. Practical part elaborates about the impact of particular project realized in the area of the abbey - Land Exhibition held in 2013. Vyšší Brod Cistercian Abbey was one of four objects of Upper Austria / Southern Bohemia Cross-border Land Exhibition. Thesis analyses impact of the project from a perspective cultural history and economy.
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International involvement in the peacebuilding process on Sri Lanka
Mojžíš, Michal ; Havlová, Radka (advisor) ; Burešová, Jana (referee)
The final months of Sri Lankan civil war, the 26 year military campaign between the Government of Sri Lanka and the insurgent separatist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, are marked by allegations of war crimes committed by both parties of the conflict, including attacks on civilians, summary executions of prisoners, enforced disappearances, restrictions on humanitarian assistance and recruitment of children. Since the attempts to put the Sri Lankan issue on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council failed on the unwillingness of China and Russia, the UN bodies in Geneva have taken a leading role in promoting the peacebuilding process on the island. The thesis aims to analyse the impact of the Geneva-based human rights bodies, in particular of the United Nations Human Rights Council, on the process of reconciliation in Sri Lanka, for which is crucial that the alleged violations of human rights in the last months of the civil war would be properly investigated and that the perpetrators would be held accountable. In order to put the activity of the UN Human Rights Council into broader context, the paper will examine the political development in Sri Lanka since the end of the civil war in 2009 as well as the failed efforts of Sri Lankan governments to launch the process of reconciliation.
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