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We explore the impact of low and negative monetary policy rates in core world economies on bank lending in four small open economies – Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic and Norway – using confidential bank-level data. Our results show that the impact on lending in these small open economies depends on the interest rate level in the core. When interest rates are high, monetary policy cuts in core economies can reduce credit supply in small open economies. In contrast, when interest rates in core economies are low, further expansionary monetary policy increases lending in small open economies, consistent with an international bank lending channel. These results have important policy implications, suggesting that central banks in small open economies should watch for the impact of potential regime switches in core economies’ monetary policy when rates shift to and from the very low end of the distribution.

This dissertation consists of four empirical papers analysing and discussing central bank policies in the post-crisis period. After the global financial crisis central bankers and other regulators have faced many new challenges, including a prolonged period of acommodative monetary policy, side effects of monetary policy easing on financial stability and interaction of macroprudential, microprudential and monetary policy. On top of that, policy makers must deal with uncertainty surrounding the transmission and the effectiveness of newly introduced macroprudential measures. The empirical analyses focus primarily on the Czech Republic and its banking sector, with an exception of the first essay. Using data for the Czech Republic and five euro area countries, the first essay shows that monetary tightening has a negative impact on the credit-to-GDP ratio and banks' capital-to-asset ratio, while these effects have strengthened considerably since mid-2011. This supports the view that accommodative monetary policy contributes to a build- up of financial vulnerabilities, i.e. it boosts the credit cycle. The second essay assesses the transmission of higher additional capital requirements stemming from capital buffers and Pillar 2 add-ons on banks' capital ratio, capital surplus and implicit risk weights. The results...

This paper studies the impact of higher additional capital requirements on loan growth to private sector of banks in the Czech Republic. The empirical results indicate that there is a negative effect of higher additional capital requirements on loan growth of banks with relatively low capital surplus. In addition, the results confirm that the relationship between capital surplus and loan growth is important also in the period of stable capital requirements, i.e. it does not serve only as an intermediate channel of higher additional capital requirements.

Banks in the Czech Republic maintain their regulatory capital ratios well above the level required by their regulator. This paper discusses the main reasons for this capital surplus and analyses the impact of additional capital requirements stemming from capital buffers and Pillar 2 add-ons on the capital ratios of banks holding such extra capital. The results provide evidence that banks shrink their capital surplus in response to higher capital requirements. A substantial portion of this adjustment seems to be delivered through changes in average risk weights. For this and other reasons, it is desirable to regularly assess whether the evolution and current level of risk weights give rise to any risk of underestimating the necessary level of capital.

The paper contributes to understanding the economic dynamics at the zero lower bound and the exchange rate movements under different central bank intervention regimes. It provides a theoretical framework for modeling foreign exchange interventions at the ZLB within a dynamic general equilibrium model. We find a pronounced volatility of real and nominal macroeconomic variables in response to the domestic demand shock, the foreign demand and financial shocks and the terms-of-trade shock at the ZLB. This effects become severe in response to highly persistent shocks which leads to stronger reaction of variables and prolong period of binding constraint. The FX interventions have proven to be effective in mitigating deflationary pressures and recovering the economic activity in response to all examined shocks at the ZLB. In this sense, the central bank achieves the best performance by fixing the nominal exchange rate temporarily at the ZLB.

The central bank is not able to further ease monetary conditions once it ex- hausts the space for managing short-term policy rate. Then it has to turn its attention to unconventional measures. The thesis provides a discussion about the suitability of different unconventional policy tools in the Czech situation while the foreign exchange (FX) interventions have proven to be the most appropriate choice. A New Keynesian small open economy DSGE model estimated for the Czech Republic is enhanced to model the FX interventions and to compare dif- ferent monetary policy rules at the zero lower bound (ZLB). The thesis provides three main findings. First, the volatility of the real and nominal macroeconomic variables is magnified in the response to the domestic demand shock, the for- eign financial shock and the foreign inflation shock. Second, the volatility of prices decreases significantly if the central bank adopts price-level or exchange rate targeting rule. Third, intervening to fix the nominal exchange rate on some particular target or to correct a misalignment of the real exchange rate from its fundamentals serves as a good stabilizer of prices while intervening to smooth the nominal exchange rate movements increases the overall macroeconomic volatility at the ZLB. 1

The gender job satisfaction paradox is a phenomenon occurring when despite their disadvantaged labour market position, women consistently report higher levels of job satisfaction than men. This thesis aims to verify the presence of a gender paradox of job satisfaction, analyze the labor conditions and job per- ceptions of workers in the Czech Republic to provide employers a sense of job aspects making male and female workers more productive, motivated and satis- fied. The study uses sub-sample of employees from International Social Survey Programme data from 2015. The study applies four regression models to reveal the relationship between job satisfaction and gender, other socio-demographic factors and various work aspects. The outcomes revealed some significant dif- ferences between males and females, specifically discrimination based on sex or disadvantage of women regarding income and access to leading positions. De- spite the theory of gender paradox, predicting women to be more satisfied at work than men, the analysis showed the opposite. This study discovered, that the most relevant aspects of work, that affect the overall job satisfaction are relations with co-workers and management, interesting job, independence at work and specifically for men having subordinate(s), working on weekends,...

Forty years after Margaret Thatcher became the first woman prime minister of the UK, her past actions and reforms remain highly polarizing and influential. Nevertheless, there is general agreement that her government was a game-changing one in many aspects. In this thesis we test whether and to what extent her deconstruction of the Post-war consensus affected the UK's economic performance. We apply the synthetic control method in order to observe the overall economic impact of Thatcher's policies. We find significant evidence that M. Thatcher exploited the output-inflation trade-off, and the decrease of inflation was very much at the costs of a significant increase of unemployment. We have calculated that in case of continuation of Post-war consensus policies the inflation would be on average approximately 2.2% higher and unemployment 2.8% lower in time period 1980-1990.

Property distraint is an issue that anyone can face at any point of their life. Despite minor efforts to amend the situation, the Czech Republic continuously sees yearly increases in distraint orders against individuals who default on their debt. This thesis investigates possible meso-level factors that could influence the number of these issued orders. Using data on the 76 state districts plus the capital city of Prague, the overall influence of criminal activity, unemployment and financial literacy is estimated. This is achieved by using the ordinary least squares regression, as well as two other unobserved effects models. The empirical evidence then hints at favorable properties of the random effects model. The results confirm the main hypotheses that crime and unemployment are risk factors for distraint, and that financial literacy helps reduce these risks. Auxiliary data also hints at a certain level of correlation between debt default and immigration, which is up for a further deeper analysis. Keywords Property distraint, crime, unemployment, over-indebtedness, financial literacy Author's email: dkostal@gmail.com Supervisor's email: cahlik@fsv.cuni.cz

A great amount of available information over the internet makes it impossible for anyone to process it all. In this thesis, we use the rational inattention theory to see how the perceived signals about the exogenous variables would change under different levels of information capacity. Those signals are then applied in the New Keynesian model and corresponding impulse responses are compared with the case of unlimited attention. We found that for some autoregressive processes the differences from the perfect attention case are not very profound while for others the results vary considerably.

After the recent world financial crisis, macroprudential policy tools have started to play an important role in maintaining financial stability. In many countries, the tools have been extensively used only in recent years and their effectiveness is often difficult to assess. Using an index as a proxy for policy tools is one of ways to measure their impact. In this thesis, a new index capturing, in contrast with other studies, also an intensity factor, is constructed. Results are mostly in accordance with economic intuition and existing studies and suggest that indices constructed in an equivalent way can help to understand the impact of policies on changes in housing prices and credit volumes. JEL Classification F12, F21, F23, H25, H71, H87 Keywords macroprudential policy, systemic risk, house prices growth, credit growth Author's e-mail Lucie.Wdowyczynova@hotmail.com Supervisor's e-mail Simona.Malovana@gmail.com

The thesis deals with quantitative easing (QE)-unconventional monetary policy, which was conducted by several central banks in the aftermath of recent financial crisis. Its goal is to boost the economy and to reach infla- tion target with key interest rates being already close to zero. The United Kingdom was one of the countries involved: Bank of England was conducting the policy in 2009-2012. The first part of the thesis focuses on quantitative easing in more detail; the policy is described in general, but special emphasis is put on Bank of England. The second part uses synthetic control method to estimate effect of the policy on real GDP and inflation of the United King- dom. The method does not lead to construction of appropriate control unit for GDP of the UK under unusual circumstances of the financial crisis. Pos- itive effect of quantitative easing on inflation is found, but its magnitude is surrounded by large uncertainty. 1

The objective of this thesis is to evaluate alternative weighting systems to determine if they have the potential to improve the current weighting system of the Financial Secrecy Index (FSI). The FSI, a measure of countries' contributions to global financial secrecy, currently weights its 15 qualitative components equally. A web-based opinion survey conducted in January and February 2016 among academics, journalists, experts and other persons familiar with FSI serves as the baseline for assessing new weights. The new weights derived from the survey results are not significantly different from the equal weights in 14 out of 15 components. The survey results suggest that widely held opinion is consistent with equal weight assumptions. Statistical model selection criteria from information theory that penalize model complexity prefer in majority of cases the simple model over the more complex one even though more complex model provides better goodness-of-fit statistics. Alternative methods and analysis such as Principal Components Analysis is performed and discussed. The present work finds that, statistically, the weights should not diverge from the equal weighting system in use currently. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The Basic Income concept in the perspective of Agent-Based modelling Abstract: The thesis study the relationship between the basic income introduction and the price level. The basic income would replace the existing social security. The resulting redistribution induce changes in the aggregate demand through the concave consumption function. The aggregate demand in turn affect the price creation mechanism. Because the price level is a result of activity of many different agents with private motivation and information, the work used a simple macroeconomic agent-based model to isolate the relationship. The simulation however did not succeed in isolating the possible link between the price level and the basic income introduction.

This bachelor thesis firstly introduces the jungle model, in which economic transactions are driven by coercion. The jungle is closely related to the model of exchange economy. The differences between both setups are discussed and consumption sets are introduced as additional constraint of agents in exchange economy. Following is the essential part of the thesis, discussing effects of these sets on welfare properties and competitive equilibria. The results suggest that consumption sets extend the set of Pareto efficient allocations in exchange economy. Analysis of competitive equilibria suggests interesting results about existence of non- efficient competitive equilibrium allocations.

DSGE models are as structural models capable of estimating what would have happened if some part of economy or shocks to it had been different. We consider three such differences in the recent Czech history: no financial shocks during the crisis in 2008-2009; eurozone membership during the crisis in 2008-2009; and no foreign exchange interventions of the Czech National Bank in November 2013. For this purpose, we employ a small open economy DSGE model with financial frictions and estimate it with Bayesian inference. Our results show that impact of financial shocks on GDP growth was negligible. Further, eurozone membership would have made crisis more severe; GDP growth in 2009Q1 would have been -6% instead of -3% and economy would have been in deflation for the five consecutive periods. Difference is explained by strong depreciation of exchange rate during crisis that would not have occurred with the fixed exchange rate. Lastly, the Czech National Banks's foreign exchange interventions increased GDP growth by as much as 0.8 percentage point and saved economy from deflation in all following quarters. They worked through depreciation of exchange rate and consequent improvement in trade balance and increase in price of imported goods. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Housing market has a considerable impact on the macroeconomic stability. There is an attempt to regulate housing market using a set of macroprudential tools. The first aim of this thesis is to describe and compare macroprudential regulation aiming at the contract between lenders and borrowers in the European Union and Norway. The second aim is to assess the influence of central banks in macroprudential policy-making on the probability that these instruments are implemented. The probability is estimated using a probit model. The comparison shows that there are considerable differences in implemented regulation between individual countries and that countries with high proportion of foreign currency denominated loans use macroprudential measures to mitigate borrowing in foreign currencies. Using the data from the European union and Norway, statistically significant influence of central bank involvement was not identified. The effect of central bank became significant when using larger dataset including non-European countries. In this dataset, the leading role of central bank is associated with lower probability that instruments targeting borrowers are implemented.