C12 - Hypothesis Testing: GeneralReturn

Voters' ability to act upon the fulfilment of election pledges matters profoundly for democratic accountability. Existing literature provides evidence of retrospective voting on pledge fulfilment at the party level. This paper investigates retrospective voting on pledges at the level of individual politicians. It estimates the effect of breaking a pledge to support anti-corruption legislation on Czech deputies' preferential votes. Since the pledge was identical for all the participating de- puties and not all deputies pledged, the data permit estimation of the effect of pledge breakage independently of the effect of voting against anti-corruption bills. Results show that retrospective voting on pledges occurs even at the level of individual politicians when information about pledge fulfilment is easily accessible. Voters "punish" pledge breakage alone, i.e., they do not punish voting against anti-corruption bills if the politician has not pledged to act otherwise.

The aim of the article is to examine the relations between forward exchange rates (maturities of 3 and 6 months), spot exchange rates, interest rate differentials, expected spot exchange rates and risk premiums on the CZK/EUR and CZK/USD parities. A model of FX speculators and arbitrageurs is devised and subsequently empirically verified in order to provide an explanation for the dynamics of forward exchange rates. The estimations of parameters of explanatory variables, which enter the covered interest rate parity, are confirmed to be statistically significant for the time period preceding the application of the exchange rate commitment by the Czech National Bank. Though the estimated parameters of future spot rates are statistically significant, their low values suggest that their impact on the quotation of forward exchange rates is rather marginal. The statistically significant estimations of constants with negative signs are interpreted as risk premiums reflecting the higher credit risk for financial investments denominated in CZK. The relations within the time series of the CZK/EUR parity were found to be distorted during the period of exchange rate commitment on the parity level of 27 CZK/EUR and during foreign exchange interventions (i.e., the estimated parameters of interest rate differentials were not statistically significant).

Using a cointegration, we show that there is no long-term relationship between money in the economy M and real (and nominal) GDP and CPI (US data from 1959 to 2018). There is no empirical evidence to support the textbook claim that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon". Only when we shorten the time series to the period before the crisis (1959-2008), there is a cointegration between CPI and M2, but only at the 10% significance level and only according to one of two co-integration tests. The relationship that existed before the crisis either had to fall apart or change. There are three possible explanations: (1) The growth of M in low-inflation economies (CPI below 10% annually) is distributed more equally between CPI and real GDP than in the event of significant changes in M. (2) The falling velocity of money after the crisis of 2008/2009. (3) The last possibility is an increase in the adequacy problem of inflation - the CPI does not adequately reflect the economic definition of inflation.

This article analyzes the public-private pay gap in the Czech Republic. To prove the existence of this pay gap and measure for its decomposition, we used Mincer wage equations and Blinder-Oaxaca-based decomposition techniques. Using data from the IV/2012 Quarterly Survey of Average Earnings, an econometrical model intended for regression and decomposition analyses was set. The most important part of the model is the dummy variable representing pertinence to the public sector of the national economy. We found that this dummy was statistically significant throughout the wage distribution, and that the value of its coefficient was negative and rising. This means that public sector employees up from the lowest deciles can be discriminated against in their salaries, and that this potential for discrimination increases as we look at the higher deciles. This finding was further examined by decomposition analysis which showed that on average, public sector employees are better equipped (have better characteristics) but have worse return on them (lower regression coefficients).

The aim of our paper is to formulate and empirically verify the simple backward looking econometric model of the monetary rule, which would be able to describe the development of CNB repo rate, namely only on the basis of statistically measured and in the given time available information. We focus on the period after 1998, when the CNB's inflation targeting policy is implemented and the repo rate (14 days) plays the role of the monetary policy rate. In the paper we discuss some methodological problems associated with the "ex post" empirical verification of the central bank monetary rule. We construct an empirical model of the monetary rule, justify the choice and the inclusion of explanatory variables, we analyze the statistical properties of time series and verify the alternative forms of econometric models. Our analysis showed that the development of CNB repo rate in the reporting period can be explained by the past and present evolution of three explanatory variables: the yearly inflation rate, the exchange rate and the ECB repo rate. The annualized inflation rate proved to be statistically insignificant in the model. We find interesting that the statistical quality of the estimated model was further increased after a six-month delay of the yearly inflation rate. The obtained results indicate that in determining the CNB repo rate the expected future level of the yearly inflation rate does not play important role and the last yearly inflation rate is more important than its present level.

Efficient Market Hypothesis has dominated the field of research on capital market theory. It postulates that asset prices are rationally connected to economic realities and always incorporate all the information available to the market. A huge quantity of theoretical works around the world have been devoted to testing this hypothesis. In this paper, the weak form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis is tested on data from the Czech stock market of period 1996-2006. The tested hypothesis is verified by both linear and nonlinear methods. Those linear are: Box-Pierce test, variance ratio test, test of sequences and reversals nad Hurst exponent. The nonlinear ones are: White test, Engle test, Hinich test and BDS test. These tests are carried on stock returns time series of Czech stock market index PX and individual stocks as Telefónica, Komerční banka and ČEZ and series with randomly changed order from original series. The results of the testing indicate that returns, when randomly permutated, are independent, hence they follow a random walk. But it is impossible to maintain it in case of original returns series.It implies that returns of either Czech stock market index or its stocks are not independent and do not follow a random walk.

The article asks whether a paradox of new members comes into being during the EU enlargement. The first chapter defines the paradox of new members and examines its frequency in political communities. The second chapter introduces practical examples of the paradox and specifies voting power indicators in the EU. The third chapter brings empirical results - frequency of the paradox during EU enlargement. The fourth chapter tests some hypotheses and defines a disproportionality index. The fifth chapter summarizes conclusions.

The article is concerned with voting indicators in the European Union. The first chapter constructs a model of voting power and defines four indicators: A. Simple relative power, B. Shapley-Shubik index, C. Banzhaf index, D. Coleman index. The second chapter defines data: the voting structure according the Nice Treaty and nine algorithms - variants of the EU enlargement. The third chapter summarizes empirical results. The fourth chapter discusses statistical relations between voting indicators. The fifth chapter brings conclusions.