The main goal of this thesis is to evaluate two-way trade flows in goods between Guatemala and the European Union, more precisely the import of Guatemalan bananas to the European Union during the period from 2001 to 2009. The thesis focuses on creating a gravity model for the banana trade flows. The exogenous variables in the model are GDP of the EU, GDP of Guatemala, distance and exchange rate. The main goal is achieved by the partial analyses, such as trend analyse of chosen exogenous variables. Two gravity models are assembled: a linear gravity model and a power gravity model. For both variations, there are the verifications as well as the prognosis for the 3 following periods. The results of the research show that a power gravity model is the one more suitable for following the trade flows in bananas between Guatemala and the European Union. The main contribution of this thesis is an establishment of a functional gravity model that could be use in order to follow various trade flows in one commodity between two countries.

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The core of thesis lays in quantitative analysis of microeconomic data on public procurement and alternative forms of dealing with public money. It consists of three essays with one common attribute: extensive groundwork with data, including overlaps into legal and technical disciplines. The fist essay examines the relationship between transparency of ownership structure and (i) profits of firms winning public procurement contracts and (ii) competition for the contracts and savings of the public authority. It identifies a significant advantage of firms with opaque ownership structure in terms of access to public money. It concludes with a possible explanation of conflict of interest and corruption, which might channel such advantages. The second essay proposes and tests a novel methodology for benchmarking of contracting authorities. The proposed rating measures a deviation from best practice recommendations in the areas of openness, competition and transparency. Indirectly it measures efficiency and corruption potential in public procurement. The pilot results of the methodology are provided and extensively discussed for a group of Czech municipalities. Third essay investigates issue of crowding out effect potentially introduced by EU funds provision. It studies direct budgetary impacts of...

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In the Credit Lyonnais case, the CJEU concluded that the proportion of input VAT deduction on mixed-use goods and services is to be calculated by taking into account the output supplies carried out by establishments located within the same territory only. This interpretation of the VAT Directive leads to a different treatment of domestic and foreign branches and is, hence, questionable in the light of the freedom of establishment. This paper analyses the impact of the fundamental freedoms on VAT law in general and possible reasons behind the interpretation chosen by the Court in the Credit Lyonnais case more specifically.

The aim of this study is to examine how the EU ETS price has affected the price of electricity in the Nordic electricity market, and how future changes in the carbon price may affect the wholesale electricity prices. The Nordic countries included are Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The analysis builds on a reduced econometric model where the Nordic electricity price constitutes the dependent variable. Problem with autocorrelation implied that quarterly data rather than monthly data were used. This model is estimated using ordinary least square (OLS) regression technique. Four variables were found to be statistically significant. These include the EU ETS price, the hydro reservoir level, the coal price and the temperature. The estimated coefficients were used to conduct a simulation on what could happen if the EU ETS price increased to € 30 per ton. The results showed that the electricity price would than increase by about € 16 per MWh from its current level at about € 37 per MWh.

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