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Economics of the post-sovereign state
Konečná, Petra ; Mlčoch, Lubomír (advisor) ; Hrušová, Ivona (referee)
UNIVERZITA KARLOVA V PRAZE FAKULTA SOCIÁLNÍCH VĚD Institut ekonomických studií Petra Konečná Ekonomie postsuverénního státu Bakalářská práce Praha 2011 Abstract In this bachelor thesis I focus on an influence of sovereignty to the economy of specific state. It defines what is understood under the term of sovereignty and describes various types of attitudes to the limitation of sovereignty. It presents historically attitudes of philosophers, thinkers and economists to this issue, focuses mainly on theories of natural law and emphasizes the conclusion of the social contract. It sets up possible division of sovereignty determined by limiting factors and it states several specific examples for illustration. In this thesis I show the necessity of perceiving economics in the context of other social sciences. I concentrate on taking advantage of position of post sovereign state by other economic participants through rent-seeking. I present new concepts of rent-seeking however some fundamental basis from classical point of view cannot be omitted without the loss of logic. At the end of this thesis I test an influence of composite indicators of governance on the rent-seeking behavior in the Czech Republic.
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The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Palanský, Miroslav ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic Miroslav Palanský Abstract This thesis estimates the value of political connections in the Czech Republic and it is divided into two parts. The first one explores the recently extended, most advanced publicly available data set on political party financing in the Czech Republic, covering the time period 1995-2015. We analyze basic patterns in party funding and their development over time. We focus primarily on private funding from both legal and natural persons. The data show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the volume of private funding across parties and over time, but contributions from the government budget remain the most important source of income for all larger parties. We analyze the available data on donations and discuss several issues regarding the notion that donors may view contributions as investment, yielding possible profits in the future. In the second part, we use the data set of corporate donations to construct a proxy variable for political connections and to estimate the effect of being connected to a political party on the financial performance of such firms. We find that the connected firms perform significantly better than the non- connected ones in the years following the establishment of the...
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The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Palanský, Miroslav ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic Miroslav Palanský Abstract This thesis estimates the value of political connections in the Czech Republic and it is divided into two parts. The first one explores the recently extended, most advanced publicly available data set on political party financing in the Czech Republic, covering the time period 1995-2015. We analyze basic patterns in party funding and their development over time. We focus primarily on private funding from both legal and natural persons. The data show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the volume of private funding across parties and over time, but contributions from the government budget remain the most important source of income for all larger parties. We analyze the available data on donations and discuss several issues regarding the notion that donors may view contributions as investment, yielding possible profits in the future. In the second part, we use the data set of corporate donations to construct a proxy variable for political connections and to estimate the effect of being connected to a political party on the financial performance of such firms. We find that the connected firms perform significantly better than the non- connected ones in the years following the establishment of the...
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State capture as market distortion: Effect of political connections in the Czech Republic
Špolc, Martin ; Vacek, Pavel (advisor) ; Kameníček, Jiří (referee)
Politically connected firms may extract rent which significantly improves their financial performance, but with social costs to others in form of market distortions. The thesis presents the first empirical analysis of personal political connections to government ministers in the Czech Republic. We estimated value of political connections and inspected subsidies and public procurements allocation as channels of rent extraction on firm-level data set of 1993-2015 period. For both approaches, cross-section regressions and dynamic matching on covariates and propensity score, we found that connected firms significantly underperform their similar rivals, but slightly improve their performance over the time of connection to minister in office. Connected firms gain significantly more subsidies which confirms subsidy allocation as a channel of rent extraction. We interpret our results that firms may seek political connections as the last option how to improve their bad financial results and remain on the market. Biased subsidy allocation to connected firms in sectors where firms are dependent on subsidies like agriculture creates market distortions and could lead to significant consumer harm.
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The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Palanský, Miroslav ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The Value of Political Connections: Evidence from the Czech Republic Miroslav Palanský Abstract This thesis estimates the value of political connections in the Czech Republic and it is divided into two parts. The first one explores the recently extended, most advanced publicly available data set on political party financing in the Czech Republic, covering the time period 1995-2015. We analyze basic patterns in party funding and their development over time. We focus primarily on private funding from both legal and natural persons. The data show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the volume of private funding across parties and over time, but contributions from the government budget remain the most important source of income for all larger parties. We analyze the available data on donations and discuss several issues regarding the notion that donors may view contributions as investment, yielding possible profits in the future. In the second part, we use the data set of corporate donations to construct a proxy variable for political connections and to estimate the effect of being connected to a political party on the financial performance of such firms. We find that the connected firms perform significantly better than the non- connected ones in the years following the establishment of the...
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Economics of the post-sovereign state
Konečná, Petra ; Mlčoch, Lubomír (advisor) ; Hrušová, Ivona (referee)
UNIVERZITA KARLOVA V PRAZE FAKULTA SOCIÁLNÍCH VĚD Institut ekonomických studií Petra Konečná Ekonomie postsuverénního státu Bakalářská práce Praha 2011 Abstract In this bachelor thesis I focus on an influence of sovereignty to the economy of specific state. It defines what is understood under the term of sovereignty and describes various types of attitudes to the limitation of sovereignty. It presents historically attitudes of philosophers, thinkers and economists to this issue, focuses mainly on theories of natural law and emphasizes the conclusion of the social contract. It sets up possible division of sovereignty determined by limiting factors and it states several specific examples for illustration. In this thesis I show the necessity of perceiving economics in the context of other social sciences. I concentrate on taking advantage of position of post sovereign state by other economic participants through rent-seeking. I present new concepts of rent-seeking however some fundamental basis from classical point of view cannot be omitted without the loss of logic. At the end of this thesis I test an influence of composite indicators of governance on the rent-seeking behavior in the Czech Republic.
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Rent-seeking in public procurement: evidence from the entry of political challengers at electoral thresholds
Palguta, Ján
This paper shows that political challengers affect rent-seeking in public procurement. I use data from municipal governments in the Czech Republic to construct new measures of political rent-seeking in procurement and test whether the entry of additional challengers into municipal legislatures affects the rent-seeking practices. Because the entry of challengers is endogenous to the performance of incumbents, I predict the challenger entry using quasi-random variation in the vote share of challengers near the threshold in proportional elections. I show that legislatures with additional challengers allocate fewer procurements to political donors, double price savings in procurement and use more competitive procurement auctions. The entry of extra challengers leads to greater economic benefits in legislatures with fewer political parties and in legislatures entered by local-level political movements. My findings highlight the role of local-level movements in enhancing political accountability and the value of monitoring the behavior of politicians.
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Je česká myslivost institucionalizovanou formou trvale udržitelného pytláctví?
Ambrožová, Zuzana ; Bartoň, Petr (advisor) ; Hudík, Marek (referee)
This paper aims at unveiling the true nature of the Czech hunting Act by modeling the competition for property rights characteristics among gamekeepers, the subsidized group, and other users of land based resources, the taxed group. We show that the subsidized gamekeepers' group seeking to decrease public opposition tries to obfuscate the true goal of its profit-oriented efforts by supporting relatively less revealing technically imperfect institutions. It does so by advertising artificially created qualities such as tradition and public interest. What hunters try to achieve technically is to shift the reference points of desire of the other users of land-based resources in order to disable them from perceiving total policy costs. As a result taxpayers' intrinsic advantage is undermined, and contrary to the efficient redistribution hypothesis a Pareto-inferior outcome is reached. Moreover taking full account of all costs of rent-seeking, including incomplete externality internalization, institutional rigidity and created moral hazard, total social costs, connected with the outcome of competition for property rights, are not minimized. Regarding empirical testing of the theoretical propositions, analyzing hunting statistics we prove that whereas the acknowledged public goals are not met, the technically imperfect Act 449/2001 Coll. creates moral hazard in favor of gamekeepers' private interests.
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State corporation as a source of political capital
Sedláková, Simona ; Doležalová, Antonie (advisor) ; Jakubec, Ivan (referee)
This thesis deals with the question whether a state public enterprise is the source of political capital in the conception of the theory of rent-seeking on the example of the Czechoslovak state spa. The theoretical part explains the concept of political capital and the concept of rent-seeking theory from the view of Public Choice Theory. The analytical part is concerned with the fate of state spas in Czechoslovakia. The probe into the historical period of the First Republic is examined what happens to these spas, what is their place in the state budget, what is their fulfillment of stated objectives and which characters of rent-seeking in the form of political capital are observed at this state company. Based on this analysis it is concluded that the state spa enterprise is practical example of the theory of rent seeking and the source of political capital.
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Interest groups matters in the sphere of smoking regulation
Sahánková, Barbora ; Minárik, Pavol (advisor) ; Ryvolová, Ivana (referee)
The purpose of this thesis is to analyze interest groups functioning in the sphere of smoking regulation. Theoretical part of the thesis contains introduction into interest groups matters, lobbing and rent-seeking, practical part analyses legislative arrangements and ways of regulations of tobacco industry in Czech republic. There are mentioned two dominant groups (tobacco goods producers and producers of preparations for smoking cessation) and examined particular strategies which lead to achieving the group's goals.
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