Vojtěská, B., Sale prices of flats in the Czech Republic. Diploma thesis. Brno: Mendel University in Brno, 2019. Diploma thesis deals with the issue of price determination of flats. The aim of the work is to identify determinants affecting the sales prices of flats within the individual regions of the Czech Republic and also within the Czech Republic as a whole. In the chapter of the methodology, factors influencing the prices of flats are specified and subsequently appropriately expressed. Regression analysis results in two pricing models (for standard and alternative expression of variables) constructed using the ordinary least squares method (OLS). The resulting model showed that the sale price of a flat in the Czech Republic affects the number of rooms, m2, energy value, whether a terrace, balcony, cellar, garage or elevator belongs to the flat. In addition, the price of the flat is affected by the type of ownership, the condition of the flat, the type of masonry, whether it is located in the regional city, if there is a UNESCO monument in the city, and the locality, in this case designated by individual regions of the Czech Republic. Part of the work are also price maps compiled for the best-selling flats in the Czech Republic in terms of number of rooms.

Background: The impact of climate change on people's health and lives is a growing concern, with viruses, malnutrition, and heat stress potentially causing up to 250,000 deaths per year between 2030-2050. To address this issue, organizations and institutions are taking action to create a more sustainable world. One major step was signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, and financial investors have also taken on greater responsibility for the environmental transition. In response, green bonds have become increasingly popular. The key difference between a green and conventional bond is that the green bond is issued with the specific purpose of financing green projects. However, investors are still unsure about the financial performance of green bonds compared to conventional bonds, as the costs of issuing them may impact profitability and economic benefits. Purpose: This report examines how the premium on green corporate bonds, i.e., greenium, evolves over time. The main objective is to assess the performance of green bonds compared to conventional bonds in terms of yield to maturity and the impact of a bond’s green label. To gain a thorough understanding of the development of greenium over time, it is important to examine the factors that influence the yield differences between green and conventional bonds. This analysis of the existence and evolution of greenium and its driving forces can offer valuable insights to investors interested in sustainable finance and green instruments. Method: This study analyzed 267 green corporate bonds and 3,997 conventional corporate bonds issued globally between 2015-2022. The greenium was calculated by comparing green and conventional bonds' average yield to maturity. Additionally, three OLS regressions were conducted to assess the impact of a bond's green label and factors driving the yield to maturity of both green and conventional bonds, respectively. The regressions included control variables such as green label, issuer rating, time to maturity, seniority, and local currency. Conclusion: After analyzing the results, we found that conventional bonds performed better in yields than green bonds over the entire sample. However, in specific individual years, the green bonds outperformed the conventional bonds, indicating that the greenium is not negative each year separately. Regardless, conventional bonds generate higher yields over the whole sample period, implying that greenium exists. The green label does not significantly influence the variance of bond returns in all time periods, suggesting that investors' preference for environmentally friendly bonds is inconsistent across the entire sample. Additionally, the determining factors for conventional bonds are more predictable than for green bonds, and the future events of green bonds can be challenging to forecast due to the larger variation in the effects on yield to maturity.

The forest ecosystem is a dominant landscape in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) coastal region. Currently, many studies have been carried out to identify factors that drive forest dynamics. Changes in meteorological conditions have been considered as the main factors affecting the forest dynamics. For this study, the statistical regression analysis was used for modeling forest dynamics. Meteorological impact analysis was driven by observed data from PRISM (parameter-elevation regressions on independent slopes model) climate dataset. The forest dynamics was characterized by an indicator, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The objectives of this study are to 1) to specify and estimate statistical regression models that account for forest dynamics in the Golf of Mexico coastal region, 2) to assess which model used to capture the relationship between forest dynamics and its explanatory variables with the best explanatory power, and 3) to use the best fitted regression model to explain forest dynamics. By using fixed-effects regression methods: ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR), the sample-point-based regression analysis showed that meteorological factors could generally explain more than half of variation in forest dynamics. In respect of the unexplained variation of forest dynamics, the necessity of using soil to explain forest dynamics was then discussed. The result suggested that the forest dynamics could be explained by both meteorological parameters and soil texture. One of the basic considerations in this study is to include the spatiotemporal heterogeneity caused by seasonality and forest types. The model explanatory power was found differ among forest types (spatially) and seasons (temporally). By constructing regression models with randomly varying intercepts and varying slopes, the linear mixed-effects model (LMM) was fitted on composite county-based data (e.g., precipitation, temperature and NDVI). The use of LMMs was proved to be appropriate for describing forest dynamics to mixed-effects induced by meteorological changes. Based on this finding, I concluded that meteorological changes could play a significant role in forest dynamics through both fixed-effects and random-effects.

Abstract What role does our consumption of television play in the trust we have in our politicians? This study examines how the theses of American political scientist Robert D. Putnam on the part played by TV viewing in a failed civic spirit from the year 2000 hold up in a changed media landscape. The relationship between TV viewing and trust in politicians over time, between the years 2002 to 2014, is tested through regression analysis. This is conducted with data from the European Social Survey, which includes 16 European countries, all of which participated in all rounds of the period. The study finds, despite a weak negative relationship, that tv consumption cannot be said to be a particularly strong predictive factor for the level of trust a consumer has in politicians. This in contrast with Putnam’s theses, which points out TV as an important explanation for what he believes is a failed civic spirit. The study also finds that the negative relationship becomes somewhat stronger over time. This aligns with Putnam’s description that individualization has led to TV viewing taking us further away from community with other people, rather than the opposite, which negatively impacts the trust. The study contributes by bringing Putnam’s theses into a new time period, and broadens the perspective by taking his ideas of media and civic spirit across the Atlantic.

Fokuset för den svenska familjepolitiken har länge varit på möjligheten att kombinera familj och förvärvsarbete men hjälp av föräldraförsäkringen och barnomsorgen. Tidigare forskning har visat att barnomsorg av hög kvalitet kan främja barns humankapitalutveckling och en central fråga som uppstått är om kvaliteten på de tillgängliga förskolorna påverkar föräldrars benägenhet att skriva in sitt barn i förskolan. Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilken effekt kvalitet på förskolor har på föräldrars konsumtion av förskola. För att undersöka effekten utförs en tvärsnittsregression och i en panelregression med fixa effekter. För att mäta kvaliteten på förskolor används variabeln förutsättningsindex. Indexet består av två nyckeltal personaltäthet, som utgörs av antal inskrivna barn per årsarbetare och andel heltidstjänster i förskolan med förskollärarlegitimation. En högre andel med förskollärarlegitimation och färre barn per årsarbetare leder till ett högre indexvärde. För att spegla föräldrars konsumtion av förskola används variablerna antal uttagna dagar med föräldrapenning per mottagare och andel inskrivna barn i förskola. Resultatet för tvärsnittsregressionen finner en negativ samvariation mellan förutsättningsindexet och antal uttagna dagar med föräldrapenning per mottagare samt en positiv samvariation mellan förutsättningsindexet och andelen inskrivna barn. Resultatet för panelregressionen med fixa effekter går i motsatt riktning från tvärsnittsregressionen och studien finner inte att förutsättningsindexet har en kausal effekt på föräldrars konsumtion av förskola.

This paper studied the extensive margin (EM) and intensive margin (IM)of liquefied natural gas(LNG) imports in Europe over the period 1996-2015. Two econometric models were used, a prob it estimation for the EM and an OLS for the IM. A time-varying approach was conducted to analyse the stability of the models in the studied time frame. The models were constructed through the application of known determinants of LNG trade as well as new factors that previously was unused in the investigation of LNG trade. The results indicated an overall stable EM, but a highly varying IM over the period. The findings inform that the EM is driven by income, diversification and lower bounds technological development and we found that itis inhibited by pipeline imports, domestic production and higher bounds technological development. The IM is determined by favourable pricing opportunities, lower bounds technological development and the diversification aspect of LNG. IM is negatively affected by domestic natural gas production and the higher bounds of technological development.

As a useful tool for multivariate analysis, sufficient dimension reduction (SDR) aims to reduce the predictor dimensionality while simultaneously keeping the full regression information, or some specific aspects of the regression information, between the response and the predictor. When the goal is to retain the information about the regression mean, the target of the inference is known as the central mean space (CMS). Ordinary least squares (OLS) is a popular estimator of the CMS, but it has the limitation that it can recover at most one direction in the CMS. In this dissertation, we introduce two new estimators of the CMS: the sliced OLS and the hybrid OLS. Both estimators can estimate multiple directions in the CMS. The dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 1 provides a literature review about basic concepts and some traditional methods in SDR. Motivated from the popular SDR method called sliced inverse regression, sliced OLS is proposed as the first extension of OLS in Chapter 2. The asymptotic properties of sliced OLS, order determination, as well as testing predictor contribution through sliced OLS are studied in Chapter 2 as well. It is well-known that slicing methods such as sliced inverse regression may lead to different results with different number of slices. Chapter 3 proposes hybrid OLS as the second extension. Hybrid OLS shares the benefit of sliced OLS and recovers multiple directions in the CMS. At the same time, hybrid OLS improves over sliced OLS by avoiding slicing. Extensive numerical results are provided to demonstrate the desirable performances of the proposed estimators. We conclude the dissertation with some discussions about the future work in Chapter 4. / Statistics

AbstraktAlla tillgångar på en balansräkning finansieras endera med eget kapital, skulder eller en mix.Beslutet hur företag finansiera sig är sällan uppenbart och påverkas, som analyserats i dennastudie, av flera olika faktorer. Mycket av tidigare forskning är inriktad på icke-finansiellaföretag och vilka faktorer som påverkar deras kapitalstruktur. Denna studie fokuserar i ställetpå europeiska banker och syftar till att förstå vilka faktorer som påverkar bankernaskapitalstruktur. De uppkomna resultaten jämförs även med icke-finansiella företag. Studien tarstöd av Modigliani och Millers proposition I och II, men även teorierna Trade off, PeckingOrder och Agentteorin som vidareutvecklats från proposition I och II. Studien tillämpar enkvantitativ metod med paneldata som samlats in för åren 2018–2022. Datamaterialet harhämtats in som sekundärdata från databasen Refinitiv Eikon. I urvalet ingår 81 börsnoteradeeuropeiska banker som har totala tillgångar som överstiger 30 miljarder euro. För att genomföraden statistiska analysen har en OLS-regression genomförts. För att förklara bankernas kapitalstruktur används faktorerna storlek, lönsamhet, risk ochlikviditet. Resultaten visar att storlek och lönsamhet kan förklarar kapitalstrukturen hoseuropeiska banker. Resultaten för storlek och lönsamhet är i linje med tidigare forskning somockså funnit att större banker har en större andel skulder och att högre lönsamhet är associeratmed lägre andel skulder. Denna studie särskiljer sig från tidigare forskning eftersom den intefinner signifikanta samband mellan risk, likviditet och kapitalstruktur. Det ska beaktas att dematematiska beräkningarna för de två sistnämnda determinanterna har annan utformningjämfört med andra studier. Studien valde också att dela upp Europa i två regioner, nord ochsyd. Där upptäcktes att modellen förklarar kapitalstrukturen för nordeuropeiska banker på ettmer tillförlitligt sätt än för sydeuropeiska. Våra fynd ger en viss bekräftelse på giltigheten avbåde Trade Off-, Pecking Order och Agentteorin. Även om dessa teorier traditionellt sett hartillämpats för att förstå kapitalstrukturen hos icke-finansiella företag, indikerar våra resultat attde även är relevanta och användbara för att beskriva finansieringsbeteendet hos större europeiska banker.

<p>The goal of this paper is to examine whether the introduction of a qualifying day in the use of sick insurance in the Swedish welfare system resulted in an increase in the use of parental benefits as substitute to avoid the qualifying day. We believe that this could be the case because of the higher gain from the welfare system. We use OLS to perform a linear regression from a data set from the data base LINDA during 1991-1996. The results in this paper are that there is a significant increase in the parental benefit after the reform although there is a negative trend for parental benefit during the examined period.</p> / <p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur införandet av en karensdag i det svenska sjukförsäkringssystemet påverkade uttaget av tillfällig föräldrapenning för vård av sjukt barn. Tidigare studier påvisar att individer som har möjlighet att utnyttja förmånen, väljer att sjukanmäla barnet trots egen sjukdom för att minska inkomstbortfallet. Vi utför en linjär regressionsanalys på datamaterialet, bestående av paneldatabasen LINDA för åren 1991-1996. Resultaten påvisar en signifikant ökning i uttaget av tillfällig föräldrapenning i vår population efter införandet av en karensdag, samtidigt som en negativ trend i uttaget observeras.</p>

The goal of this paper is to examine whether the introduction of a qualifying day in the use of sick insurance in the Swedish welfare system resulted in an increase in the use of parental benefits as substitute to avoid the qualifying day. We believe that this could be the case because of the higher gain from the welfare system. We use OLS to perform a linear regression from a data set from the data base LINDA during 1991-1996. The results in this paper are that there is a significant increase in the parental benefit after the reform although there is a negative trend for parental benefit during the examined period. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur införandet av en karensdag i det svenska sjukförsäkringssystemet påverkade uttaget av tillfällig föräldrapenning för vård av sjukt barn. Tidigare studier påvisar att individer som har möjlighet att utnyttja förmånen, väljer att sjukanmäla barnet trots egen sjukdom för att minska inkomstbortfallet. Vi utför en linjär regressionsanalys på datamaterialet, bestående av paneldatabasen LINDA för åren 1991-1996. Resultaten påvisar en signifikant ökning i uttaget av tillfällig föräldrapenning i vår population efter införandet av en karensdag, samtidigt som en negativ trend i uttaget observeras.