During the Cold War, approximately 36,000 persons claimed Czechoslovakia as their country of citizenship upon entering Canada. A defining characteristic of this postwar migration of predominantly ethnic Czechs and Slovaks was the prevalence of anti-communist and democratic values. This dissertation follows Czech and Slovak refugees through the German invasion of the Czech lands and Slovakia’s independence in 1939, the Second World War, the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of 1968. Diplomats, industrialists, workers, democratic politicians, professionals, and students fled to the West in search of freedom, security, and economic opportunity. Many of these individuals sought to return home after Czechoslovakia was liberated from communism. This dissertation examines the interwar, wartime, and postwar immigration experiences of Czech and Slovak refugees through the lens of Canadian Czechoslovak institutions. In Canada, Czechs and Slovaks who professed a belief in a Czechoslovak identity formed their own organizations. In the Cold War era, the two most prominent Canadian Czechoslovak institutions were the Czechoslovak National Alliance and the Masaryk Hall. Both were later incorporated and renamed as the Czechoslovak National Association of Canada and the Masaryk Memorial Institute. Czechoslovak institutions in Canada faced opposition from nationalist Slovaks who opposed a common Czechoslovak identity. By focusing on political and institutional history, this study contributes to our understanding of Cold War immigration, and its influence on ethnic organizations and Canadian society. Although the admission, settlement, and integration of Cold War refugees was heavily influenced by federal and provincial authorities, Czech and Slovak newcomers joined Czechoslovak organizations and continued in their attempts to affect developments in Communist Czechoslovakia and Canadian foreign policy towards their homeland. During the Cold War, Canadian authorities further legitimized the Czech and Slovak refugees’ anti-communist agenda and increased their influence in Czechoslovak institutions. Similarly, Canadian Czechoslovak organizations supported Canada’s Cold War agenda of securing the state from Communist infiltration. Ultimately, an adherence to anti-communism, the promotion of Canadian citizenship, and the preservation of a Czechoslovak ethnocultural heritage accelerated Czech and Slovak refugees’ socioeconomic and political integration in Cold War Canada. As a result, Canadian Czechoslovak organizations were instrumental in helping to shape a democratic culture in Cold War Canada.

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3 Abstract The aim of the thesis is to describe, analyse and discuss the development of spatial population dynamics in the Czech Republic between 1989 and 2007. Demographic structure and migration, the two components of spatial population dynamics, are analysed using two spatial dimensions, the urban-suburban-rural gradient and the core-periphery region distinction, using quantitative analyses, including gravity regression modelling of migration. The analysis primarily focuses on domestic migration as the main vehicle of spatial population dynamics. It discusses the structure, determinants, and temporal evolution of migration and its consequences on the population structure in different spatial categories. The thesis indicates that suburbanisation has recently become the main factor influencing Czech spatial population dynamics. The key factor determining migration destination is the social status of migrants, whereas age has only secondary importance. However, since Czechs are not very mobile, population dispersal is less large-scale than in Western-Europe. This explains why recent domestic migration patterns have had only a small measurable influence on the social or demographic structures of the population across spatial categories. Key words: suburbanisation, domestic migration, gravity modelling,...

Sports and Intellectual Property Law - Copyright Focus Intellectual property affects with bigger or lower intensity almost all areas of modern society, sports not being an exception. Inventions of new technologies allow sportsmen and sportswomen to reach better results and to compete in new sports disciplines. Impact of broadcasting rights and branding of teams and their sponsors were detrimental to financial grow of sports and allowed sports to become a quasi-religion for many people round the world. Audience is attending sports for mental satisfaction and other reasons similar to those for visiting theater. In antic Greek Olympics were sportsmen in direct competition with poem writers or rhetoricians. This thesis focuses on copyright ability of "Sports" itself (term "Sports" is used in this thesis as including sports moves/complexes of sports moves and sports events). In "Part 1 - Introduction" is discussed the role of intellectual property in sports and the role of sports in modern society in general but yet with more details. Farther, in part 1 are set forth definitions of terms used later in the thesis. Part 2 examines the legal possibility of copyrighting sports first from the U.S. point of view - where this matter was already brought to attention by several scholars and several papers have...

3 ABSTRACT More than 30 % of agricultural land in Europe also Czech Republic is covered by arable fields. There is no evidence about diversity of some arable fields bounded species groups. In general the diversity of arable land species is less than the wild land species. For increasing species diversity in agricultural land European commission comes up with agri environmental farming schemes in 90's. Till now real effectiveness of the agri environmental schemes is not clear for all species groups. In my thesis I have investigated whether the diversity and community composition of arable bryophytes species is influenced by agri environmental or conventional management on cereal fields. The influence of agri environmental management on arable bryophytes was never investigated in Europe unlike the other species groups like vascular plants, non vertebrates or vertebrates. The thesis stands on dataset provided by Ministry of agriculture for 3 Czech regions (kraj Vyso ina, Pardubický kraj, St edo eský kraj). My own research of arable bryophytes diversity held on 12 fields within 6 localities is the main part of the thesis supplemented by basic soil measurements and climatic characteristics extractions. Main result of the thesis is finding that conventional management has marginally positive effect on arable...

1 Abstract Efficiency is an important concept for performance evaluation of decision- making units. This thesis studies efficiency of public spending and methods of its estimation. Firstly, a wide range of efficiency estimators are defined and compared. For the public spending efficiency analysis the most convenient es- timator is found to be the cost frontier approach of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). The second part of the thesis contains efficiency analysis of public spending in the 14 regions of the Czech Republic in the years 2003-2014. For the analysis current expenditure of regional offices is used as the input. Based on the investigation of regional services output index is formed and employed in the analysis. The estimation is performed using the cost frontier approach of the SFA as the main method. Various other efficiency estimators are then applied to the data in order to study robustness of the results. The thesis further discusses relative ranking of the regions and time evolution of efficiency scores using different assumptions and variety of methods. Lastly, several potential effects on the estimated efficiency are considered and analysed. JEL Classification D24, H41, H72 Keywords efficiency, regions, public expenditure, Czech Republic Author's e-mail verca25.vrana@seznam.cz Supervisor's e-mail...

This dissertation focuses on Spanish similes with adjective (like feliz como una perdiz) and its equivalents in Czech. First the theoretical frame is sketched: a summary of the evolution and of the actual situation of the investigation in the field of fraseology; a description of the corpora which were used as a source of the data; a characterization of the basic terms connected with the topic; a description of the function of phrasemes and simies in the process of communication; and a summary of some basic thoughts from cognitive linguistics. Then a semantic and contrastive analysis of the simies with selected adjectives (feliz, alegre, triste, tranquilo, furioso) comes. Finally we point out what each comparatum can tell about the meaning of the adjective, what we can tell about the comparata and its selection, and what can be said about the grade of stabilization of the examined simies. Then a tip follows: what more could be explored in this area and that there could be a possibility to use the results of such research for instance while creating a didactic material.

I chose the topic of comparing the legal modifications of the business activities of foreigners because I consider this topic "a starting point" for the comparison of other areas of law, for example, insolvency law, company law, labour law etc. I chose the comparison with Italian law mainly because I am a graduate of FF UK (Philosophical Faculty of Charles University), specialization in germanic-romance languages and from 1996 I have been a legal translator in both Italian and German. For maximum clarity I have divided the entire work into three parts - History, Concepts and Current legal modifications. Further, I have systematically divided these parts into chapters in order that any interested individuals could easily orient themselves in the work. Many differences can be found in the current legal modifications of both countries, however, since both countries are under the influence of community law the differences are not so distinct. I consider the most significant difference in the legal modifications of both countries to be that the Czech Republic has set out in the European direction as late as the nineties due to historical and political reasons. This relates to the distinct development during these years, signifying the de-socialization of business activities and liberalization and the...

8 Abstract Counterurbanisation research, which is a central topic of this thesis, represents an appropriate field where transformations of contemporary societies and their socio- spatial organization can be examined. The dynamics of social and societal changes creates a demand for developing new methods and tools which helps us to understand contemporary change. Counterurbanisation is a multi-faceted concept which has been controversial since its initial use. An introduction of the concept of counterurbanisation in the field of population geography provoked a general debate on new and emerging trends in development of settlement system. Different logics of concentration and deconcentration of human activities has been challenged. Counterurbanisation operationalized as a migration poses a challenge for many standard conceptualizations of migration. The logic of non-economically motivated migration from the centre to the periphery requires a search for alternative explanatory mechanisms. Impact assessment and the impact of counterurbanisation in rural communities are analogous to the classical social science studies evaluating the integration of immigrants from rural areas in the cities. The thesis is composed of two basic sections. The first section presents a broader theoretical and methodological...

The topic of fiscal policy has been long neglected in terms of fiscal policy's interdependence with other main macroeconomic variables. Presented thesis therefore analyses the validity of different fiscal policy models for the case of Czech Republic. Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework is used throughout the thesis. Different fiscal policy rules are put into otherwise identical - benchmark - model and the models are compared to each other and to the benchmark model. The analysed fiscal policy models are an acyclical, counter- cyclical, two pro-cyclical and dichotomous spending models. We find that the most plausible fiscal policy rule is of pro-cyclical type and closely follows the model of Alesina et al. (2008). The model assumes that interest groups can steal part of government income through corruption and voters cannot observe it, so they demand maximum fiscal spending in the good times. The logic of this model is in accordance with the current state of fiscal and economic behaviour in Czech Republic.