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Unlearned Social Change: A Study of Transitory Order
Tomášek, Marcel ; Šubrt, Jiří (advisor) ; Maslowski, Nicolas (referee) ; Rasiński, Lotar (referee) ; Červinková, Hana (referee)
The thesis is a qualitative study of grey zones and grey phenomena on the border of economy and politics in the Czech Republic from 1995 to 2013. The widely ingrained presupposition that the closing dot to the 'transition phase' was the Europeanization process as connected to the procedures associated with becoming an EU member is commonly spread and taken for granted. Given verifying this presumption, the research field has been divided into two distinctive subperiods: the first one investigates patterns of practice as they were associated primarily with the stage of the change, which may be labelled as post-privatization/secondary privatization (1995-2004). The second subperiod in focus (2004-2013) has been the period from entering the EU in 2004 to the shockwave of reconstitution of the Czech political scene in 2013 after the government-parliamentary-clan-clientelist structures collision and the resignation of the Czech government. The empirical sources for the inquiry have been primarily the particular instances of happenings and problematic undertakings in the overlap of politics and economy as they are registered and referred to, for the given period of 1995-2013, in the weekly periodicals - Respekt, Ekonom. The theoretical grounding of the study has been developed from identifying four waves...
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Public Procurements as a Corrupting Sector in RBC Model
Paulus, Michal ; Baxa, Jaromír (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to create a RBC model incorporating corrupting sector. The thesis contributes to the few existing DSGE models with corruption by introducing the corrupting sector into the sector of firms and political parties which is regarded as a sector of public procurements where firms bribe politicians for gaining public tenders. This setting is new and is supposed to catch better the phenomenon of political corruption. The model predicts that all shocks that positively affect the economy motivate firms to invest more into the bribes and vice versa. The increase of the overall level of corruption stimulates economy but is leading an economy to the instability. The model also examines the effect of various forms of fiscal spending in the households ' utility function. The model exhibits several non-intuitive results (too high portion of stolen money by firms, stimulation of the economic performance caused by higher corruption and negative holding of government bonds) that should be solved in next research.
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Selective adjustment to EU regulatory provisions in new member states : the case of electricity market liberalization in Bulgaria and Czech Republic
Neofitov, Alexander ; Weiss, Tomáš (advisor) ; Cibulková, Petra (referee)
The present work aspires to provide a comprehensive analysis of the policy developments through which European-level prescriptions regarding the liberalization of national electricity markets have been accommodated within the domestic policy contexts of two new member states of the European Union: Bulgaria and Czech Republic. Despite being subjected to uniform demands, adaptation to community regulatory provisions in the two countries has prompted divergent patterns of policy change, resulting in full compliance in the Czech Republic and a failure to meet EU objectives in Bulgaria. In order to address the observed inconsistency the envisaged research identifies a causal link between the outcomes of regulatory compliance and the influence of utility regulation as a sector-specific EU governance pattern on the dynamics of resource re-distribution at the domestic level. A major concern of the research is how contextual factors, such as incumbent power balances across actor populations in the target policy area condition the impacts of EU inputs on domestic policy decisions. In this respect the work hypothesizes that due to transition "sediments" in the new EU member states external rules may be selectively applied in order to match the existing realities and lead to outcomes that diverge from the...
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Anonymous Companies and Public Procurement: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Jakab, Miroslav ; Palanský, Miroslav (advisor) ; Janský, Petr (referee)
Anonymous Companies and Public Procurement: Evidence from the Czech Republic Abstract This thesis follows up on previous research concerning inefficiencies linked to tenders awarded to anonymous companies. After anonymous shares were abolished in 2014, the question is whether similar inefficiencies can be detected in the case of companies that ceased to be anonymous. A balanced sample of formerly anonymous companies and their comparable peers was constructed via a matching algorithm. A Welch unequal variance t-test was then used to check whether a disproportionate drop in selected performance indicators and in the share of formerly anonymous companies on total volume of public procurement can be detected. A linear regression model was further applied to inquire about the effect of anonymity and former anonymity on tender-specific savings. The results show that anonymity significantly contributes to lower tender savings, but no similar negative effect can be found in case of formerly anonymous companies. Profitability of the formerly anonymous companies also decreased, but no long- term drop in tender volume was found, indicating that a large portion of the inefficiencies can be traced back to well-established businesses rather than special purpose shells. This thesis thus extends the present research in 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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Selective adjustment to EU regulatory provisions in new member states : the case of electricity market liberalization in Bulgaria and Czech Republic
Neofitov, Alexander ; Weiss, Tomáš (advisor) ; Cibulková, Petra (referee)
The present work aspires to provide a comprehensive analysis of the policy developments through which European-level prescriptions regarding the liberalization of national electricity markets have been accommodated within the domestic policy contexts of two new member states of the European Union: Bulgaria and Czech Republic. Despite being subjected to uniform demands, adaptation to community regulatory provisions in the two countries has prompted divergent patterns of policy change, resulting in full compliance in the Czech Republic and a failure to meet EU objectives in Bulgaria. In order to address the observed inconsistency the envisaged research identifies a causal link between the outcomes of regulatory compliance and the influence of utility regulation as a sector-specific EU governance pattern on the dynamics of resource re-distribution at the domestic level. A major concern of the research is how contextual factors, such as incumbent power balances across actor populations in the target policy area condition the impacts of EU inputs on domestic policy decisions. In this respect the work hypothesizes that due to transition "sediments" in the new EU member states external rules may be selectively applied in order to match the existing realities and lead to outcomes that diverge from the...
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Public Procurements as a Corrupting Sector in RBC Model
Paulus, Michal ; Baxa, Jaromír (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to create a RBC model incorporating corrupting sector. The thesis contributes to the few existing DSGE models with corruption by introducing the corrupting sector into the sector of firms and political parties which is regarded as a sector of public procurements where firms bribe politicians for gaining public tenders. This setting is new and is supposed to catch better the phenomenon of political corruption. The model predicts that all shocks that positively affect the economy motivate firms to invest more into the bribes and vice versa. The increase of the overall level of corruption stimulates economy but is leading an economy to the instability. The model also examines the effect of various forms of fiscal spending in the households ' utility function. The model exhibits several non-intuitive results (too high portion of stolen money by firms, stimulation of the economic performance caused by higher corruption and negative holding of government bonds) that should be solved in next research.
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State-owned enterprises and their role in creating opportunities for corruption
Sodomka, Jan ; Dvořáková, Vladimíra (advisor) ; Vymětal, Petr (referee)
The thesis deals with state-owned enterprises and their potential for corruption. In the first chapter is characterized corruption in the Czech Republic in the context of social, economic and political changes in the end of the twentieth century. This section also contains typology of corruption from Rasma Karklins, which is also the methodological basis of this work. The second part focuses on the characteristics of state-owned enterprises, and also on internal and external control mechanisms, which should reduce their potential for corruption. The third chapter presents in detail the processes and results of legislative changes in recent years, regarding the increase of external control mechanisms of state-owned enterprises.
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Analysis of Corruption in the Czech Republic
Dubovec, Petr ; Pokorný, Pavel (advisor) ; Jiroušek, Radim (referee)
This work will describe and analyze corruption. Corruption has been described from legal point of view. This work has furthermore analyed rationality of the corruption through his utility and strategic decisions in game theory. Finally the legislative intentions of the future government and its evaluetion of the non-profit organization are taken into account.
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