This master thesis deals with budget economy of municipality Hovorany in the years 2009 - 2015. The theoretical part defines the territorial self-government in the Czech Republic, as well as management of the municipality, budget revenues and budget expenditures. The analytical part contains basic information about the village Hovorany, analysis and subsequent evaluation of budget management in the years. The last part deals with proposals to improve the management of the municipality Hovorany.

Cette étude vise à donner une description et une analyse de la structure de l’économie du territoire de l’actuel département de la Manche jusqu’au milieu du XIXe siècle. Une première partie reconstitue l’évolution de la population (pour chaque paroisse), des principaux prix agricoles et des salaires depuis le XIVe siècle, et elle procède à une comparaison systématique des prix et des salaires avec ceux des autres régions françaises. Elle met en évidence les cinq ou six grandes phases qu’a connues l’histoire économique de ce territoire. La seconde partie aborde successivement chacun des secteurs économiques (agriculture, industrie et artisanat, activités maritimes), depuis le début du XVIIe siècle (agriculture) ou du XVIIIe siècle (autres secteurs) jusque vers 1850. Une description aussi détaillée que possible des activités élémentaires, voire des entreprises individuelles, conduit à estimer l’évolution de la valeur de leur production, de leur valeur ajoutée (dans certains cas, de leur rentabilité) et des effectifs employés, en s’appuyant sur des modèles économétriques sectoriels simples. Une appréciation globale est enfin portée sur les forces et faiblesses de l’économie de ce territoire, dans la perspective de son insertion dans la France du XIXe siècle. / This study offers a description and analysis of the economic structure, until the mid 19th century, of the fraction of Occidental Normandy which is currently the department “La Manche”. The first part builds up the evolution of population (down to each parish or community), prices of the main agricultural products and salaries from the early 14th century; it offers detailed comparisons with corresponding elements in other French regions. It elaborates on the joint evolution of population and prices, and prices and salaries, in order to caracterise the five or six main stages of this territory’s economic history. The second part successively deals with each of the main branches of industry (agriculture, industry and craftsmanship, maritime trade), between the early 17th (agriculture) or 18th (other sectors) century and the 1850’s. A detailed description is given for each industry, or where appropriate individual companies, leading to estimated evolutions of revenues, added value (in some cases profitability) and staff over the course of the study period, with the help of simple industry-specific econometric models. The strengths and weaknesses of this economy are finally assessed, with the perspective in mind of its further integration into 19th century France.

This master thesis attempts to contribute to the existing earnings management literature by examining whether tax avoidance incentives affect opportunistic accounting choices in distress conditions. To address this issue, it investigates 2668 companies in the quarters around breach of debt covenant spanning from 1996 to 2006. This allows to analyze two distress scenarios: first, whether the companies having the opportunity to minimize tax expenses and thus improve their financial stability, would deliberately switch from engaging in aggressive upwards real earnings management to tax considerations to mitigate the potential consequences of technical default; second, whether the companies facing increased lender's scrutiny after subsequent violation are compelled to switch by the creditor. The results indicate that tax considerations do not deter misreporting in the quarters around debt covenant violation. This thesis further provides evidence against the debt covenant hypothesis: the companies in the analyzed sample engaged in negative revenue manipulation in the quarters of new breach of debt covenant and in the quarters in which the firms remained in violation. In additional analysis, it was found that the above relationship is more prominent for the companies exhibiting poor financial performance.

Competition among hospitals and managed care have forced hospital industry to be more efficient. With higher degrees of hospital competition and managed care penetration, hospitals have argued that the rate of increase in hospital cost is greater than the rate of increase in hospital revenue. By developing a payer-specific case mix index (CMI) for third-party patients, this paper examined the effect of hospital case mix on hospital cost and revenue for third-party patients in California using the hospital financial and utilization data covering 1986-1998. This study found that the coefficients for CMIs in the third-party hospital revenue model were greater than those in the hospital cost model until 1995. Since 1995, however, the coefficients for CMIs in the third-party hospital revenue model have been less than those in hospital cost models. Over time, the differences in coefficients for CMIs in hospital revenue and cost models for third-party patients have become smaller and smaller although those differences are statistically insignificant.

In the wake of budgetary restraints, many local government organizations are examining existing sources of revenue to exhaust available streams without increasing constituents' financial burden. Some of these revenue streams include nontraditional sources, such as traffic citations, yet little research has explored the implications of revenue generated from fines from traffic citations. Using the theory of resource dependence as the foundation, the purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the estimated population of the county, the unemployment rate of the county, and the personal income per capita against the number of traffic citations issued and the Florida Clerk of Court and Comptroller's (FCCC) revenues and budget attributable to traffic citations for 39 of Florida's counties for the years 2005-¬ - 2014. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression analyses. The results of this study indicate a statistically significant (p < .001) relationship between population and personal income with increases and decreases, respectively, in the issuance of traffic citations and FCCC revenues attributable to traffic citations. Likewise, there was a statistically significant (p < .001) relationship between population and personal income with increases in the FCCC budget associated with traffic citations. Unemployment rate was not statistically associated with the issuance of traffic citations, and FCCC revenues and budget attributable to traffic citations. The findings of this study may promote positive social change by providing legislative awareness that the FCCCs continue to be dependent on the bulk of their revenues, and significant portion of their budget, from a nontraditional revenue source; the traffic citation.

This thesis is a collection of three essays that examine the macroeconomic impact of natural resource windfalls and the microeconomic impact of Chinese development finance. The aim is to understand how fiscal windfalls largely driven by events in the world affect economic development. The first chapter studies the impact of commodity related income gains on the number of exporters and the average export value per exporter within the manufacturing sector. A large body of theoretical and empirical literature showed that these windfalls could be detrimental to the manufacturing sector, but none untangled the margins through which the exports from the manufacturing sector adjusts to these windfalls. I exploit the exogenous variation in the windfalls generated by the increase in prices of all major commodities during the early 2000s to fill this gap in the literature. First, I find that manufacturing industries that historically had a relatively higher share of exports to value added ratio (more exportable) tend to be negatively affected relative to the other manufacturing industries at both margins. Secondly, the extensive margin is largely driven by entrants. i.e., the number of new exporting firms that enter more exportable industries decline relative to the less exportable industries. Thirdly, for the more exportable industries, the average export value per incumbent exporters industries decline while that of the new exporters increases relative to the less exportable industries. It has often been argued that countries that produce natural resources mobilize less non-resource tax revenues than other countries. In the second chapter, I exploit the arguably exogenous variation in the timing of giant oilfield discoveries to examine the impact of natural resource abundance on non-resource tax revenue. The timing of giant oilfield discoveries is arguably exogenous and thus renders them appealing to empirically examine this argument. This allows me to examine the performance of non-resource tax revenue effort before and immediately after discovery as well as the period corresponding to the inflow of revenues from the production. I find that non-resource tax revenues tend to increase in the period following the discovery before the onset of production and after production commences. This effect is due to an increase in non-resource indirect tax revenues. Further analysis shows that both the total and indirect non-resource tax revenues, experience an increase in only low- middle income countries. This effect is largely driven by an increase in the consumption of goods and services. Improvement in agricultural productivity plays a key role in the process of economic development. Investment in critical infrastructure has been documented in the literature as one of the pathways to boost agricultural productivity. In the third chapter, I study the causal impact of Chinese development finance on agricultural productivity in Tanzania, at the sub-national level. I combine household panel data with rich farm level information with geocoded Chinese development projects. I then exploit the within village level variation in the total number of Chinese financed development projects in a panel fixed effects model to examine their effects on agricultural productivity. I find a positive effect on agricultural productivity in villages that are located within 25 km of these projects. This is largely driven by economic infrastructure. The results are robust to alternative definitions of Chinese financed development projects. I also find that the potential mechanisms driving the results are agricultural commercialization and access to improved seeds. This suggests that these projects connect farmers to input and output markets.

This thesis presents the Spanish Empire as seeking to spread a Christian world system - Christendom on a universal scale. By focusing on Spanish America, this thesis seeks to give evidence that a new Christendom was being established in America, one which was sustained through the collection of ecclesiastical revenues. This approach is taken in order to analyze the identities which were forged by the individuals who participated and who were transformed by this empire. Specifically, I focus on the Indigenous and their mixed raced descendants, the castas. Rather than portraying them as passive figures, I seek to give them agency by presenting them as active figures who actively participated within this Christian world system. Through their active participation, a Christian identity was able to be forged. A Christian identity which was not a carbon copy of the Spaniards, but one which was uniquely theirs. Through this Christian identity the Indigenous and their mixed raced descendants were able to blur the lines between who were the conquerors and who were the conquered. This would result in the Indigenous and their mixed raced descendants transforming the Christian world system, from a system which was of European origins, to a system that became distinctly American.

Many children in developing countries forgo education due to the direct or opportunity costs of attending school. To help defray the direct costs of secondary schooling, the Ghanaian government launched its free secondary school initiative in 2017, which sought to make tuition and all educational-related expenses free for every Ghanaian child who passed the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE). The first objective of this study is to examine to what extent the association between household income and school enrollment decreased in strength over time due to Ghana’s 2017 policy reform using the Ghana socio-economic panel survey (GSPS) and difference-in-differences estimation technique. Our results show that household assets (a proxy for income) had a significant and positive association with school enrollment before the policy change; however, household assets have no significant association with enrollment after the policy change, thus suggesting that family resources do not matter for child enrollment after the policy change. Our results also imply that the 2017 policy reform effectively reduced the hurdles facing lower-income families in paying for secondary school education. The second objective of this study is to examine the effects of this government policy on household labor market outcomes in Ghana. Using the Ghana Socio-Economic Panel Survey (GSPS) and the difference-in-differences estimation technique, we found an increase in labor supply and wages for households with SHS kids before the policy change; however, after policy reform, both labor supply and wages of SHS households decreased suggesting that the free SHS policy did eliminates the direct cost of schooling. These results also indicate that the free SHS policy has significant implications for human capital development and household welfare and health since the policy eliminates the direct cost of schooling. The third chapter examines the impact of environmental tax revenues on domestic healthcare expenditures using panel data of 96 developing and developed countries from 2000 to 2018 and the fixed effect estimation technique. We find a positive and statistically significant association between total environmental tax revenue and government health expenditures; however, this finding is primarily driven by low-income countries. In addition, we find a positive effect of all kinds of environmental tax revenues on government health expenditures; however, the largest and strongest effect arises with pollution tax and transport tax respectively. Our empirical results confirm the validity of the double dividend hypothesis, thus suggesting that environmental tax revenues have significant implications for public health expenditures.

This thesis seeks to construct an empirical model of highway finance in the United States, and in particular, to examine the relationship between highway-user revenues and highway spending. It provides a general overview of the current highway system, including the federal-aid highway program, and the flow of highway funds between different levels of government. It also examines issues relating to highway-user revenues. A review of the literature failed to provide any "standard" model of highway spending and no previous studies of spending across all levels of government. Using data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia over the three-year period 1998-2000, regressions were run on the dollars spent on highways in each state from all levels of government. The independent variables included highway-user revenues (as defined by the Federal Highway Administration) in each state from all levels of government, lane-miles, daily vehicle-miles of traffic, land area, percent of land area classified as urban, population, gross state product, annual average wage, percent of traffic consisting of trucks, and average winter temperature. OLS estimates using the classical linear regression model were found to be unreliable, and attempts at using a growth rate model provided poor overall fit. Opportunities for future research are identified, as this is an important issue that should be of interest in public policy decision-making. / Master of Arts

<p dir="ltr">Airport parking revenues become essential in maintaining daily aeronautical and non-aeronautical operations and financing capital expenditures. There exist significant variations between different airports in terms of their parking revenues, and such variations will not be eliminated when airport parking revenue is standardized by passenger volume. Given the limited empirical research on airport parking revenues, this study examines the variation of airport parking revenue per locally originating passenger using random-effects regression on a five-year panel dataset. Our regression results reveal a significant positive relationship between airport economy parking price and airport parking revenue per locally originating passenger. Additionally, we find a significant positive relationship between household vehicle ownership and airport parking revenue per locally originating passenger. However, the number of offsite parking service providers can lead to a significant negative effect on airport parking revenue per locally originating passenger. Based on these findings, airport operators can implement strategic management initiatives tailored to local market conditions, with the goal of optimizing airport parking revenues and improving passenger welfare.</p>