Through a case study methodology this research explores the decision-making process regarding financing services provided by the Canadian federal government to individual citizens. From a transparency and accountability perspective, for those services that benefit individuals versus society as whole, it is important to understand why some services are provided through general taxation while others are financed through user fees. The study utilizes public choice theory as developed in The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy which is the initial attempt to illustrate how the tools of economics may be applied to political institutions using a rational choice approach with an emphasis on rules about how choices are made. Rather than focusing on ‘what’ government spends funds on, the study focuses on ‘how’ government generates funds by examining three major actors: government, citizen-voters and pressure groups. This study furthers scientific knowledge as there has been prior research on distinguishing between public versus private goods, and deciding on how to publicly fund such goods, but there has been limited research undertaken on the actual decision-making process in financing public goods and services. From an academic perspective, this study is the first time that The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy model has been adapted and applied to the Canadian federal government. The study concludes that it depends on what elected officials decide to do to appeal to citizen-voters in order to win votes: appear fiscally prudent thus charge user fees; advance its political agenda with decisions to sometimes charge user fees or other times not; or limit costs to private sector organizations by deciding to not charge user fees. While elected officials make the decisions whether or not to charge user fees, it is the bureaucracy that implements these decisions.

The diploma thesis analyzes, whether became in the case of the development of real GDP, inflation and unemployment in the Czech Republic and the USA to systematic influence these macroeconomic indicators of the ruling parties and their political orientation. The work is focused on the period from the beginning of the 1990's of 20th century to the present, with an emphasis on the pre-crisis and crisis periods of the current economic crisis. Tested are two fundamental theoretical concepts. The first one is a model of opportunistic theories of the business cycle, then the second one, the model of the ideological theory of the economic cycle. The work also analyzes whether there was in these two states deliberate influencing of government expenditure in electoral periods in order to increase the chances of government politicians for re-election. The work also explores the similarities and differences of the pre-crisis and crisis periods of the current economic crisis to the great depression of the 1930's of 20th century.

This diploma thesis deals with analysis of revenues and expenditures of state budget in the Czech Republic and investigate whether in the Czech Republic since its formation apply traditional theories and opinions regarding state revenues and expenditures or there is already almost no differences between the traditional right- and left-wing policy and populist politics that is not based on ideological grounds plays the primary role. In the theoretical part there is presented the basic theory in the area of ideology as the basis for following analysis of Czech political scene and Public choice theory as the basis for an economic analysis of political decision-making. Subsequently, this section also explains the basic theoretical knowledge of the state budget and understanding budgetary policy from the perspective of two most important ideologies, right- and left-wing. In the analytical part certain data about revenues and expenditures of the state budget variables are analyzed using a two-tailed Wilcoxon test which tests the equality of the medians of the selection group. Diploma thesis confirmed that the erasure of differences between right- and left-wing in budgetary policy in the Czech Republic are insignificant and since its formation still hold traditional views and theories about state revenues and expenditures.

This diploma thesis researches model of economic man, its historical background, and also modern critics of this concept and alternative approach to economic man, especially in behavioral economics. Human (im)perfection leads to the discussion about a range of liberty man should get eventually to which extent should a man be led by paternalism. Therefore this thesis introduces and tests concept of libertarian paternalism which is applied to drug issues. The thesis demonstrates that model of economic man is in many ways too simplified and insufficient. Thus, extention of this model with findings of psychology, biology and other sciences seems beneficial. Libertarian paternalism, despite few shortcomings, shows potential to be realisable and viable in certain situations.

Theory is vital for our scientific understanding of the social world. Building, developing, and evaluating theory are therefore central practices within the social sciences. This study performs an evaluation of rational choice theory within the field of political participation. This is a theoretical framework that has had significant problems reconciling theoretical prediction with empirical findings, causing what is called the paradox of participation. For more than sixty years rational choice theorists have tried to develop new formulations of the theory to avoid this paradox. The purpose of this study is to forward this debate by providing a new perspective on rational choice theory that is purely theoretical. Using the evaluative criteria of falsifiability and leverage, the study finds that a theory using both collective and selective incentives, while also allowing the formulation of the theory to change depending on the form of political participation one wants to explain provides the most promising approach. However, the evaluation does reveal some issues in connection to selective incentives. A potential alternative solution to the paradox is therefore briefly discussed, yet a more thorough exploration of this venue is left to future research.

The global nature of today's business environment, coupled with technological advances, compels managers to work with an increasingly diverse workforce worldwide. The purpose of this multiple-case study was to explore how bank managers used employee diversity effectively in the organizational decision-making process. Participants were 10 frontline management staff (middle and executive managers) with the required employee engagement skills involved in the decision-making process of a Nigerian bank. The conceptual framework for this study was rational choice theory, also called rational action theory or choice theory. Participants responded to 8 open-ended semistructured interview questions. The data collection process included validating and triangulating information gathered via member checking and review of archival business documents and peer-reviewed journals. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data from the study. Five key themes emerged from data analysis: recruitment, retention, and improvement of diverse talents; education and integration of employees with a divergent institutional heritage; engagement and leveraging of diverse stakeholders; business innovation, and productivity; and decision-making, and profitability. The implications of this study for social change include employee diversity management and strategic practices that contribute to effective decision-making process in the organization to improve socio-economic development of stakeholders (customers, board of directors, employees, policymakers and business contractors) and promote cohesion within bank staff and stakeholders resulting to improved business relationship and tolerance in society.

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In my Ph.D. dissertation, I have studied problems arising in various aspects of preferences: preference modeling, preference learning, and preference reasoning, when preferences concern outcomes ranging over combinatorial domains. Preferences is a major research component in artificial intelligence (AI) and decision theory, and is closely related to the social choice theory considered by economists and political scientists. In my dissertation, I have exploited emerging connections between preferences in AI and social choice theory. Most of my research is on qualitative preference representations that extend and combine existing formalisms such as conditional preference nets, lexicographic preference trees, answer-set optimization programs, possibilistic logic, and conditional preference networks; on learning problems that aim at discovering qualitative preference models and predictive preference information from practical data; and on preference reasoning problems centered around qualitative preference optimization and aggregation methods. Applications of my research include recommender systems, decision support tools, multi-agent systems, and Internet trading and marketing platforms.