The diploma thesis is focused on the current economic situation of Mexico and its position in the international tourism market. The main objective of this thesis is to evaluate the relation between the economy and tourism of Mexico. The analysis is carried out through the comparison of generating gross domestic product and employment in both sectors. The diploma thesis is divided into three chapters; the first one is devoted to theoretical definitions of basic concepts. The second chapter covers the actual development of the Mexican economy, as well as detailed analysis of macroeconomic indicators (GDP, unemployment, inflation, balance of payments). The third chapter reflects the evolution in the international tourism of Mexico and through the analysis of country competitiveness it also displays the position of Mexico's international tourism market.

The aim of this thesis is analysis and assessment of macroeconomic development of France depending upon setup of particular segments of economic policy between year 2000 and 2012, eventually 2013. Recommendations for setup of economic policy will be made based on particular findings. Theoretical part, consisting of section one to five, consists of description of economic policy and its particular segments, economic growth and cycle, macroeconomic analysis and particular examined variables. Practical part, which is fractionated to four sections, consists of description of starting position and analysis of particular variables and economic policy within core examined period. Last section of practical part consists of particular recommendations for economic policy.

Information and telecommunication technologies are always joint with economic growth in modern economies, because they participate on reduction of transaction costs and increase production factors productivity and competitiveness. Benefits from ICT had been obvious untill 2001, but right after the investmens and expenditure in ICT started to decrease rapidly. There are studies capturing this drop in developed economies, whereas there are not many works considering the situation in center and eastern Europe. This master thesis brings an analysis of impact of ICT capital and production factors productivity on gross value added by growth accounting methodology in Czech Republic between 1996-2007. It also provides econometric testing of the impact of investments in ICT equipment and software on gross value added in Czech Republic between 1993-2013 by fixed effects model. The output of the master thesis demonstrates the empirical evidence of significant negative impact year-by-year change investment in ICT equipment and software on a change of growth pace of gross value added.

The diploma thesis main goal is to show how cultural values are associated with economic growth. The thesis approaches the goal on theoretical and practical grounds. The theoretical part describes three economic growth models and perspectives to culture. The practical part relates to statistical analyses.

The main approach to the solution of the debt crisis, which started in EU in 2010, was the adoption of measures focusing on fiscal consolidation. But despite them it is still not possible to claim that the debt crisis has been resolved, and the economic stagnation of EU continues. This thesis follows alternative approach to the solution of debt crisis, specifically the measures revolving around fostering of economic growth. It looks into how different extent of implementation of competitiveness strategies, whose goal together with the improvement of country competitiveness is to also improve economic growth, influenced the impact of debt crisis on selected countries. Based on this analysis we draw a conclusion whether or not measures focused on the economic growth could be a more effective solution of the debt crisis.

The aim of this diploma thesis is comparison and analysis of chosen macroeconomic indicators of the Czech republic and Japan and illustration of the difference between them before and after the 2008 world economic crisis. This text deals especially with gross domestic product and development of the economic growth. Next, the thesis deals with international trade which means comparison of export and import of various products. The last part describes the difference in development of unemployment in the Czech republic and Japan.

The dissertation thesis deals with the relationship between military expenditures and economic growth. The data sample contains European countries and there are three growth models used in the thesis (the Feder-Ram model, the Augmented Solow-Swan model and the Barro model). Two hypothesis and one research question are set in the dissertation. The first hypothesis says that there is a relationship between military expenditures and economic growth. Consequently, the second hypothesis says that the relationship is positive in case of relatively richer countries and negative for relatively poorer countries. Turning to research question, it asks which model better describes the relationship (if it exists) between military expenditures and economic growth.

This thesis investigates the impact of financial liberalisation policies on finance-growth relationship and financial crises. Analysis of recent trends and economic performance of financially developed and stable economies raises at least two very important questions that seem to have strong analytical connections. The first question is associated with the link between financial development and economic growth and the second question focuses the possible association between the policies of financial liberalisation and financial vulnerability. In this thesis we aim to shed light on some of the aspects that have gained so much attention from academics and policy makers during the last two decades. First we address whether excessive liberalisation has caused financial development to lose its effectiveness in generating economic growth. We employ a dynamic panel data analysis for 88 countries over the period of 1973 to 2005. Our index for the financial sector liberalisation covers seven aspects: credit controls and reserve requirements, interest rate controls, entry barriers, state ownership, policies on securities markets, banking regulations and restrictions on capital market. We use a comprehensive financial development indicator constructed through principal component analysis of five different indicators: bank private credit to GDP ratio, liquid liability to GDP ratio, deposit money bank assets to total bank assets ratio, deposit money bank assets to GDP ratio, and bank credit to bank deposit ratio. The results indicate that the positive effect of financial development on long-run growth continues to decline as the financial sector becomes more liberalised. Our results are robust to changes in the financial development indicators and the dis-aggregation of the financial liberalisation index. Second, we examine the possibility for an optimal sequence of financial sector reforms that may reduce an economy’s vulnerability to financial crises. We construct a distance measure from the countries that followed a more gradual approach and liberalised their capital account at a later stage. Our analysis shows that the experience of the countries that delayed or followed a very gradual approach for the liberalisation of their capital accounts have high level of implications to those countries that allowed for shock approach or liberalised their capital account before bringing reforms in other sectors.

In capital-scarce low income economies, the lack of attractiveness to private foreign investment implies that the only readily available source of external financing for economic development has to come from foreign aid which normally comes with an altruistic motive. However, despite long history of aid-giving to low income countries and especially Sub-Saharan Africa, evidence of effectiveness of such assistance has remained debatable, particularly with the dominance of cross-country studies in such enquiry. With yet no existing country study for Sierra Leone, a typical aid dependent country, this research investigates the relationship between donor intervention (in their aid disbursement) and the development outcomes of economic growth and poverty reduction in the country. In conducting such an enquiry, the study proposed three objectives. The first examines the relationship between aid and economic growth. The second objective investigates the relationship between aid and poverty reduction considering two variants of poverty reduction: improvement of pro-poor growth and aggregate human welfare. The final objective assesses the effect of domestic politics on aid’s effectiveness in improving human welfare. Arising from a pluralistic analytical framework involving a triangulation of econometric estimation approaches complemented with qualitative enquiry, the study finds that aid to Sierra Leone is significant in promoting economic growth in the country. In terms of the impact on poverty, the results show that foreign aid to Sierra Leone has significantly improved long-run pro-poor growth in the country, but this impact could not be confirmed in the short-run. With respect to the other strand of poverty, the study finds that though aid may have not improved human well-being in Africa, it is found to significantly improve human development in Sierra Leone, though the evidence could not support its reduction of infant mortality rate as a second indicator of human well-being. Finally, for the investigation of the link between aid, politics and human development in Sierra Leone, the study finds that though aid is significant in directly improving human development in the country, yet pro-democratic politics (as against autocratic regimes) can also be good a policy option for aid‘s impact on human development in the country. Accounting for disaggregation bias of foreign aid, the study finds that whilst grants seem to consistently improve economic growth, pro-poor growth and human welfare, the study could not find strong evidence to suggest that technical assistance and loans likewise improve economic development the country. The impact of food aid on pro-poor growth is found to be moderate in conformity with the study’s hypothesis. Concluding from the analysis, it is evident in the case of Sierra Leone that the supplemental theories largely hold that foreign aid is vital in the promotion of a country’s economic development. Hence, the intervention of donors in the economy of Sierra Leone has not seemed to be in vain, but has rather proved to be largely useful. It implies that Sierra Leone’s persistent poverty characterisation amidst notable donor presence and participation in the country’s economy has little to do with the fact that foreign aid has not been effective in promoting the country’s economic development, but it may however be that the magnitude of the effect may not have been that high to completely eradicate poverty. The study’s identification of the most effective types of aid as well the realisation of political stability and democracy for enhanced effectiveness of aid in the country could be crucial if the economic significance of foreign aid is to be improved in Sierra Leone.

This thesis explores two important aspects of growth, namely the roles of financial development and inequality. The recent literature has indicated that both the finance-growth and inequality-growth relationships are complex and not well captured through conventional linear regression analyses. Thus, most of the existing empirical literature focuses on marginal or direct growth effects, ignoring the role of possible factors, conditions and thresholds that may alter our thinking about how financial development or inequality may affect economic growth. Further, it ignores the presence of outliers, especially in cross-sectional analyses which may hinder our understanding of these relationships. Therefore, Chapter 1 addresses the issue of outliers in finance-growth literature and provides a robust sensitivity analysis of some past studies and an updated data set. Chapter 2 focuses on whether R&D plays a role, potentially as a proxy for an omitted variable, for growth and whether it has important interactions with financial development. Chapter 3 then examines the role of inequality for growth, allowing the effects to differ depending on the level of human versus physical capital accumulation.The cross-sectional analysis of Chapter 1 employs the robust regression methods of median quantile regression and least trimmed squares. It shows that the findings of past studies are sensitive to outlier observations. Further, we find that the positive effect of financial development on growth disappears and even becomes negative once we use our extended data set of 86 countries over the period 1997-2006. This last finding is consistent with Rousseau and Wachtel (2011). Moreover, we investigate whether our understanding of the finance-growth relationship can further be improved by introducing a measure of R&D into the standard analysis. We note that our measure of R&D has a strong positive effect on growth and may proxy the role of an omitted variable which is highly correlated with economic growth.Chapter 2 also uses R&D and investigates its interaction with conventionally measured financial development. It employs a variety of panel data techniques for a panel of 36 OECD and non-OECD countries to show that the relationship between financial development and economic growth is not straightforward; rather, it is conditional upon the level of innovation or R&D. Further, we find that a high level of technological innovation or R&D is associated with a weak or negative effect of financial development on economic growth. It is also noted that R&D is associated with financial innovation and the results suggest that countries with a high level of R&D may have less regulated financial systems which can adversely affect the finance-growth relationship.The third chapter explores the relationship between inequality and growth in the context of a unified empirical approach suggested by the theoretical model of Galor and Moav (2004). Based on that model, we construct a new measure, the human capital to physical capital ratio, which is used to study threshold effects in the inequality-growth relationship. Methodologically, we use threshold regression with instruments, developed by Caner and Hansen (2004), which allows us to endogenously identify the threshold human capital to physical capital ratio that alters the inequality-growth relationship. Using data on 82 countries, our results show that there exist significant threshold effects, with a level of the human capital to physical capital ratio below which the effect of inequality on growth is positive and significant, whereas it is negative and significant above it. We also test the robustness of our results using different measures of the human capital to physical capital ratio. These results are consistent with the theoretical predictions of Galor and Moav (2004).