C13 - Estimation: GeneralReturn

The paper focuses on identifying the main factors affecting the motivation of labour market participation in connection to the system of assistance in material need and the subsistence minimum. The results of the analysis show that (i) assistance in material need itself lowers the motivation to work, but in Slovakia, the difference between net household income from work after finding a job and the net social income during unemployment is increasing in time; (ii) house-holds with incomes below the subsistence minimum react to these changes most sensitively; and (iii) increases in the assistance in material need negatively affect the motivation to work, especially in those individuals for whom the additional benefit from work is relatively low, i.e., people with a low level of education and mothers with dependent children.

One of the fundamental assumptions of the efficient market hypothesis and the modern portfolio theory are both Gaussian probability distribution and the independence of returns. This paper provides a brief historical review of efforts dealing with capital markets emphasizing their efficiency and counter-tendencies whose goal was to falsify the assumption of independence of returns and their normal distribution. This paper applies a measure of long-range dependence rediscovered and promoted by Mandelbrot to daily returns of 27 selected stock indices. This measure is called Hurst exponent and was estimated using rescaled range analysis. The results are in line with similar papers stating that the series of daily returns are prevailingly persistent which implies the presence of local trends. Such a finding falsifies the assumption of random walk in stock prices.

In the text finite mixtures of lognormal distributions are used for the modelling of net annual income per capita and equivalized income of the Czech households (in CZK) in 2004-2010. The development of distribution of number of members of households is analysed and the characteristics of standardized units according to EU and OECD methodologies are given. Data from the survey EU-SILC organized by the Czech Statistical Office from 2005-2011 (dealing with incomes from 2004-2010) are used for the analysis. Models (with incomplete data) with two to four artificial components are used in order to fit the distribution of incomes; the development of their characteristics is shown. All estimates in the text are maximum likelihood estimates, EM algorithm in the program R is used for the optimalization. Models are compared with the use of Akaike criterion.

In various fields of macroeconomic modelling, researchers often face the problem of decomposing time series into trend component and cycle fluctuations. While there are several potentially useful methods to perform the task in question, Hodrick-Prescott (HP) fi lter seems to have remained (despite some serious criticism) the most popular approach over the past decade. In this article I propose a straightforward and easy-to-implement bootstrap procedure for building pointwise and simultaneous confidence intervals around "point estimates" produced by HP filter. The principle of proposed method can be described as follows: first, we use maximum entropy bootstrap (Vinod, 2004, 2006) to approximate ensemble from which original time series is drawn and then apply the HP filter directly to each bootstrap replication. If necessary, the proposed method can be adapted to allow for uncertainty in the smoothing parameter. Practical usefulness of our approach is demonstrated with an application to the GDP data. Results are encouraging - obtained confi dence intervals for the trend and cyclical component are overall plausible thus supplying a researcher with some measure of uncertainty related to HP filtering. Finally, we demonstrate that a former approach to build confidence intervals for HP filter (Gallego and Johnson, 2005) leads to erratic inference for cycle due to the shape-destroying block bootstrap sampling.

The paper presents empirical analysis of influence of different ownership forms on efficiency of Czech and Slovak banks using the Stochastic Frontier Analysis. The paper brings new results as it uses set of data which has not been used previously in the literature. On the set of 44 Czech and 21 Slovak banks in the 1996 - 2005 period we show, that the stochastic specification of cost frontier is justified method for the data. Our main findings are that the structural influences are significant for both countries. Foreign-owned banks are bit more cost efficient than domestic private banks, state-owned banks are significantly less cost efficient when compared to domestic private banks. Extent of inefficiency also depends on the specification of the model.

This contribution undertakes to outline the state space models and the recursive technique called the Kalman filter to a wider audience of the Czech economics readers. One can find both terms in a whole range of empirical studies from recent years. Following this approach also allows us among other things to model unobservable variables such as the potential output or the natural rate of unemployment. The primary motivation of this article is to bring a basic introduction to the reader who does not deal with the time series analysis on an everyday basis and to sketch the roots of state space models and the Kalman filter. Those who are interested can find more proper and rigorous description in the original literature.

The authors present an algorithm for making flash estimate of quarterly change in gross domestic product at constant prices in the conditions of the Czech Republic. This algorithm is based on monthly/quarterly statistics on the output of individual branches, i.e. on data measuring trends in structured domestic supply. Estimates produced by the Czech Statistical Office and covering six preceding quarters make up the part of history, which the flash estimate is built on. It depends therefore on both the stability of methodology used for compiling quarterly national accounts and the perfection of its application. The authors assume that the innovated algorithm should be accessible to experts as well as the general public, and that it can serve them to arrive at well-founded rough information on total quarter-on-quarter change in GDP at constant prices a month or so before Czech Statistical Office official estimate is released.