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Empirical Essays in Institutional Microeconomics
Schwarz, Jiří ; Bauer, Michal (advisor) ; Benáček, Vladimír (referee) ; Bjørnskov, Christian (referee) ; Berggren, Niclas (referee)
The dissertation consists of three empirical papers in institutional microeconomics. The first paper examines the role of institutional quality in international trade, the second paper focuses on unintended consequences of intellectual property rights for social welfare, and the last one addresses the impact of banking on corporate financing and investment. An introductory chapter puts these three papers into perspective. In the first paper I analyze the role of institutions in price dispersion among cities in the European region in the 1996-2009 period. Using a number of institutional quality measures I find that the better the institutions, the lower the predicted dispersion. The result is robust to different specifications of the regression model and is consistent with a hypothesis that arbitrage, as an entrepreneurial activity and the main power behind the law of one price, is influenced by institutional quality. In the second paper I use a large data set of U.S. patents applied for between 1980 and 2007 by 22 large technology companies to study development of strategic patenting over time and across industries. Using two complementary methods I reveal strong evidence against the hypothesis of more strategic patenting after 1995. Contrary to the expectations, aerospace patents appear to be on average...
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Patent Functions and Impact on Economic Growth of Selected Industries in EU
Vojta, Michal ; Vokoun, Marek (advisor) ; Houdek, Petr (referee)
Currently, legislative patent protection is one of "the hottest topics" due to a billion-dollar lawsuit between Samsung and Apple. There is an academic discourse related to the importance of the patent protection regulations. Contemporary legal system impacts all fields of economics. A purpose of this study is to test hypothesis (that): "there should be an inhomogeneous patent-protection setting for particular industries". The IT industry, recognized for its low efficiency of regulation, is to be compared with the chemical industry, which, on contrary, is suggested to be stimulated by rigid regulation. This thesis brought a critical academic discussion leading to a quantitative regression analysis, which then supported the working hypothesis.
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