The most important aim of the thesis is to find out how strong was the impact of the German economic development on the Czech economy from 1993 to 2005, through what kind of linkages could have been such an impact effective, and what are the future prospects in this field.

Magister Commercii - MCom / This study investigates the effect of public debt on economic growth in South Africa since 1961-2017. Public debt stock is disaggregated into external debt and domestic debt in order to determine the effect of each on economic growth independently. The study employed the ARDL bound test to estimate the long and short run relationship among several macroeconomic variables - real economic growth, domestic debt, external debt, budget deficit, inflation rate and investment. An error correction model was used to analyses the short-run disequilibrium. The results show that there is a short and long run equilibrium relationship between foreign debt, domestic debt, budget deficit, inflation rate and economic growth. The empirical results indicate that external debt negatively affects the real GDP growth in South Africa, both in the short and long-run. Several policy implications emerged from the empirical results. To keep public debt more manageable, South Africa should improve its debt management. Furthermore, the country can make use of debt to equity swaps by privatizing underperforming parastatals. This would make them competitive and efficient.

This paper examines the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis and tests for causality using Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) and the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). There is evidence of long-run relationships in the three models under consideration. The Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) finds no evidence to support the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for Zambia in the long-run. The evidence from the long-run suggests an opposite of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), in that the results indicate a U-shaped curve relationship between income and carbon emission. The conclusion on causality based on the VECM is that there is evidence of neutrality hypothesis between either total electricity and income or between industrial electricity and income in the short-run Additionally, there is evidence of conservation hypothesis in the context of residential and agricultural electricity consumption.

Using data from government sources (FRED, BEA, BLS), the thesis explores the underlying reasons for declining U.S. economic growth. A long standing trend of annual 3% growth no longer seems to hold true for the economy. The paper summarizes current theory as to why the growth has slowed and finds new explanations by analyzing the various major industries which make up GDP. The results show that sectoral shifts in employment from high paying industries to low paying industries help to explain a significant portion of the decline in national growth rates. The decline in growth is primarily driven by about ten poor performing states.

Potential output is used as the indicator of the business cycle. The aim of this study is to compare the results of different methods used for estimating potential output and verify the hypothesis that potential output or rather the output gap can serve as a reliable indicator to determine the phase of the business cycle in the Czech Republic in the years 1996-2012. 6 different methods - linear trend, Hodrick-Prescott filter, Baxter-King filter, Butterworth filter, Kalman filter and the production function have been used to estimate potential output. The output gap was determined based on the estimated potential output. The comparison of the results of all methods has confirmed the same development trend of potential output. All the methods for estimating potential output, except Butterworth filter, have showed that their results are good indicators of the business cycle in the Czech Republic.

This thesis develops a new Bayesian approach to structural break modeling. The focuses of the approach are the modeling of in-sample structural breaks and forecasting time series allowing out-of-sample breaks. Our model has some desirable features. First, the number of regimes is not fixed and is treated as a random variable in our model. Second, our model adopts a hierarchical prior for regime coefficients, which allows for the regime coefficients of one regime to contain information about regime coefficients of other regimes. However, the regime coefficients can be analytically integrated out of the posterior distribution and therefore we only need to deal with one level of the hierarchy. Third, the implementation of our model is simple and the computational cost is low. Our model is applied to two different time series: S&P 500 monthly returns and U.S. real GDP quarterly growth rates. We linked breaks detected by our model to certain historical events.

Abstract of thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Commerce and Management Dynamics of macroeconomic variables in Fiji : a cointegrated VAR analysis By Shiu Raj Singh The objective of this study is to examine how macroeconomic variables of Fiji inter-relate with aggregate demand and co-determine one another using a vector autoregression (VAR) approach. This study did not use a prior theoretical framework but instead used economic justification for selection of variables. It was found that fiscal policy, which is generally used as a stabilisation tool, did not have a positive effect on real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the short term. Effects on GDP growth were positive over the long term but not statistically significant. Furthermore, expansionary fiscal policy caused inflationary pressures. Fiji has a fixed exchange rate regime, therefore, it was expected that the focus of monetary policy would be the maintenance of foreign reserves. It was, however, found that monetary expansion in the short term resulted in positive effects on real GDP growth and resulted in inflation. The long term effects of monetary policy on real GDP growth were negative, which are explained by the fixed exchange rate regime, endogenous determination of money supply by the central bank, an unsophisticated financial market and, perhaps, an incomplete transmission of the policy. Both merchandise trade and visitor arrivals growth were found to positively contribute to short term and long term economic growth. Political instability was found not to have significant direct effects on real GDP growth but caused a significant decline in visitor arrivals which then negatively affected economic growth in the short term.