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Gender gap in math score: does teacher gender matter?
Scharf, Šimon ; Pertold-Gebicka, Barbara (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
Even though quality and equal opportunities are regarded as generally desir- able in education, major differences in the study outcomes of girls and boys still exist. In this thesis, we try to assess the effect of a teacher's gender on the educational outcomes of pupils. Specifically, we use TIMSS data from 36 coun- tries to evaluate this effect on 4th grade students. To our knowledge, we are the first to utilize the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) approach to overcome the selection bias in this context. The results of the pooled analysis suggest that there is no significant effect of teachers' gender on girls but we observe a negative effect for boys. When considering each country separately, only in 4 countries do we find a significant effect of teacher's gender on students' test scores for boys. Of the 4 countries, only boys in Montenegro prosper with a same-sex teacher, while in 3 countries boys' achievement is hampered by a same-sex teacher. For girls, we find a robust positive effect in 4 countries and a negative effect in 3 countries. For both boys and girls, we find no significant robust effect of having a same-sex teacher in the majority of countries. Our findings contribute to the literature on the effects of teachers' gender, as well as, to the broader discussion of differences in the...
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The impact of the EU ETS in the Czech Republic
Tomášková, Lenka ; Ščasný, Milan (advisor) ; Janda, Karel (referee)
This thesis examines the environmental effect of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in the Czech Republic. Specifically, the impact of the EU ETS on CO2 emissions, carbon-fuel intensity and carbon intensity of production (measured by revenues) is analysed on installation-level financial, environmental and energy data throughout all three phases of the EU ETS over 2005 - 2019. The difference-in-differences approach with propensity score matching is used to infer the causal effect of the regulation. We find no effect of the EU ETS on carbon emissions and carbon intensities in the Czech Republic. This finding holds for various model specifications and different approaches we utilised. In the end, we discuss possible reasons why the EU ETS might not lead to any significant effect in the Czech Republic. JEL Classification O13, F18, Q54, Q58, H23, D22 Keywords EU ETS, environmental regulation, propen- sity score matching, difference-in-differences, the Czech Republic Title The impact of the EU ETS in the Czech Repub- lic
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School bullying and its effect on children's academic performance in the Czech Republic
Kalendová, Tereza ; Chytilová, Julie (advisor) ; Polák, Petr (referee)
A safe school environment is a crucial aspect for sustainable educational quality as well as for promoting students' academic performance. One of the factors damagingly affecting school environments is school bullying. Researchers investigating bullying problematic have revealed many negative consequences of bullying on students' general well-being, including its adverse effect on school performance. The thesis aims to investigate the impact of school bullying on student's academic achievement in the Czech Republic, using mathematics test score results of fourth grade students from TIMSS 2015. In the first stage, we use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression controlling for a number of student's background variables. As the estimates obtained from this method might be biased due to endogeneity issues, we apply non-parametric technique propensity score matching (PSM) in the second stage. Our findings suggest that school bullying has a significant negative effect on students' mathematics test scores. However, the effect loses its significance as the frequency of bullying decreases. The PSM technique yield similar estimates as the OLS. The results indicate that Czech educators and policymakers should take into account bullying as an important determinant of pupils performance and enhance...
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Output-Inflation Trade-off After a Quarter of a Century of Inflation Targeting
Kamarád, Martin ; Potužák, Pavel (advisor) ; Kadeřábková, Božena (referee)
This thesis estimates the treatment effect of inflation targeting adoption on inflation, inflation variability, output, and output variability for 25 explicit inflation targeting countries. I implement the propensity score matching methodology that takes into account the problems of non-experimental nature, such as selection bias or selection on observable, and allows me to effectively mimic properties of randomized experiment and compute unbiased treatment effect estimates. I introduce a variety of propensity score matching methods that were recently developed in the treatment effect literature, including Nearest Neighbor, Radius matching, Kernel matching, and Inverse Probability Weighting. The results indicate that both industrial and developing inflation targeting countries exhibit lower inflation levels and at the same time higher output growth than non-targeting countries. The estimates are however in most cases statistically insignificant. Moreover, it appears that both industrial and developing countries achieve combination of lower inflation variability and output variability compared to non-targeting countries. Nonetheless, majority of the estimates are again statistically insignificant. The results are to a small extent sensitive to the choice of propensity score matching method. Radius matching with tight calipers (r=0.005, r=0.001) tends to provide the most reliable estimates. Balancing properties of the models are reasonable and compared to the previous research the standardised biases are quantitatively better.
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