The subject of the Master thesis „Financial Derivatives in Praxis“ is the analysis of the all kinds of financial derivates.The first part of the thesis deals with the general description of the derivates. In the next part of the thesis analysis of individual spices of derivates and their dividing into interest rate derivates and currency derivates is made. The final, practical part of the thesis, is devoted to the practical using of derivates in the hedging interest rate and currency risk on specific examples of companies and the offer of hedging on the Czech financial market.

In an effort to examine role of capital markets' efficiency in transmission of monetary policy, 28 time series of market efficiency development are estimated with use of long-term memory and fractal dimension measures and a panel of 27 inflation targeting countries is constructed to run a random effect regres- sion. The cases of Czech Republic and Austria are thereafter more closely examined with use a vector-autoregressive and threshold vector-autoregressive frameworks on macroeconomic data spanning from 1996:Q3 to 2018:Q4. The evidence obtained through the conducted analyses support the hypothesis, that a more efficiently functioning capital market better contributes to monetary policy pass-through, or conversely, that high transaction costs, barriers to cap- ital market entry, or poor information availability may hinder the effects of central bank's monetary policy. JEL Classification F12, F21, F23, H25, H71, H87 Keywords capital market efficiency, inflation targeting, monetary transmission mechanism Author's e-mail teddy.krejci@gmail.com Supervisor's e-mail LK@fsv.cuni.cz

The diploma thesis focuses on the development of the Czech labour market in the period of the CNB monetary interventions that took place in 2013-2017. Within the VAR models, the causal relationship between the labour market indicators and the GDP growth is verified. The delayed effect of the change in GDP on the labour market indicators was found. The thesis also pays attention to the trend models of the selected time series. Within them the presence of the structural break indicating the start of using CNB foreign exchange interventions was detected. In conclusion the possible solutions of the long-term unemployment of disadvantaged groups in the labour market are presented.

This thesis applies time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) model with stochastic volatility to assess the effectiveness of quantitative easing in time for the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System between the global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. We find pronounced and statistically significant response of GDP and level of implied stock market volatility to a QE shock whereas the response of CPI is feeble and statistically insignificant. We argue that this does not necessarily imply that there is no effect of QE on CPI but rather that our model was not able to detect it. We believe that this may be due to inflation expectations channel which our model did not account for. This can be reassessed with a TVP-FAVAR model which is more suitable for such an analysis as it can encompass a larger set of variables. Moreover, apart from the US, we report increasing effectiveness of QE in time. This is opposed by the researchers who believe that QE has rather decreasing effectiveness in time because it is more efficient during economic distress and then its efficiency tends to decrease during normal times. We explain this deviation by citing other unconventional monetary tools such as credit easing, forward guidance or negative...

In this work, neural networks are used to forecast daily Realized Volatility of the EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/CHF currency pairs time series. Their performan-ce is benchmarked against nowadays popular Hetero-genous Autoregressive model of Realized Volatility (HAR) and traditional ARIMA models. As a by-product of our research, we introduce a simple yet effective enhancement to HAR model, naming the new model HARD extension. Forecasting performance tests of HARD model are conducted as well, promoting it to become a reference benchmark for neural networks and ARIMA.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is divided into two steps. The first step sums up all the relevant theory about financial crises and monetary policies. The second step analyzes not only the past but focuses mainly on the global financial crisis which started in 2007. The cornerstones of this analytical bloc are monetary policies of central banks in China, Venezuela, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Two hypotheses are stated in the beginning of this Master's thesis. These focus on fixed exchange rate regimes and foreign exchange reserves. The analytical part of Master's thesis tries to prove whether these hypotheses can be marked as valid or invalid.

This dissertation is divided into four essays, each of them having its own structure and methodological framework. Although each of the essays making the chapters of the thesis is self-contained, their topics are very closely related. Consequently, the reader will be able to follow the thesis in its unity. Essay I is a selective survey of the extensive, mostly theoretic, literature dealing with monetary policy rules. We aim at contextualization of the monetary policy rules in the existing monetary economics literature. We explain the logic, the inspiration and the history of the rules for the monetary policy conduct. We distinguish between instrument rules and targeting rules as two basic categories. Finally, we resume specific issues related to policy rules for small open economies. Essay II studies the logic of short-term interest rate setting pursued by 15 EU countries before and after the launch of the EMU. We employ econometric estimation of the augmented Taylor rule (TR) for individual 15 EU countries and the Euro area. Although a vast empirical evidence is available for the major economies like the US, the UK or Germany, there is an important gap in our understanding of the factors behind the short-term interest rate dynamics in smaller economies. We find that in the period preceding the euro adoption, the TR is a poor representation of monetary policy setting in most EU countries and that many central banks considered decisions made by dominant economies rather than their domestic macroeconomic developments. The analysis of monetary policy rule of the ECB features additional problems related to the heterogeneity of the EMU. We argue that results based on Euro-area aggregated series, commonly presented in empirical studies, are subject to diverse econometric problems. We provide some evidence that the ECB is concerned also with national information and propose quasi-panel analysis as a viable framework. Essay III explores the relation between the existing monetary policy and domestic price stability in small open emerging economies, in particular the 12 EU new member states. This work has three principal objectives. First, it aims at revealing the logic of interest rate setting pursued by monetary authority of each country. The linear specification of the Taylor rule, applied already in the Essay II, is accompanied by an extensive analysis of nonlinearities in monetary policy rules and the inference on their possible sources. We find that the official monetary policy is sometimes inconsistent with the empirical evidence on the short term interest rate setting. The second objective consists in revealing the determinants of the inflation process. We have found that inflation rates are driven not only by backward persistency but also by the forward-looking component. Third, we employ analysis of the conditional inflation variance so as to give account on the viability of the existing monetary policy setting for price stability. We conclude that the policy of inflation targeting seems to be preferable to exchange rate peg because it allows decreasing not only inflation rate but also its conditional variance. Essay IV seeks to shed light on inflation dynamics of four CEEC (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and test when the predominant model of inflation, the New Keynesian Philips Curve (NKPC), is consistent with the data of these countries. According to the microfounded NKPC, the current inflation is related to inflation expectations and the real marginal cost. The empirical validity of this model has recently become a subject of major controversy in the monetary economics. Although we find some favorable evidence for the NKPC, it seems to be too restrictive model for small open economies. In particular, the failure of the NKPC to explain the inflation dynamics of these countries may be related to the assumption that inflation is related to forward-looking price setting of domestic monopolist firms while our evidence suggests that prices in CEEC have an important backward-looking component and the inflation is significantly driven by external factors like the exchange rate and the foreign inflation rate.

The aim of the thesis is to evaluate the stability of the euro area in the context of the impact of the economic crisis. The work is divided into three chapters. The theory of optimum currency area was identified as a fundamental theoretical basis for subsequent analysis, and then Ireland and Portugal were chosen as the two countries representing vulnerable economies, which have been subjected to more detailed examination and comparison. These two parts were for the coherence of the whole work set in the historical context of European monetary integration. The first part deals with a theory of optimal currency area. The first chapter is further analysis of potential benefits and costs of the monetary area. The second chapter focuses on the historical context of monetary integration in Europe and recent developments in euro area countries. The theme of the third chapter is to compare the impact of the crisis on the Irish and the Portuguese economy. This chapter focuses on the main causes of the crisis in Ireland and then in Portugal, the impact of the crisis on them and stability restoring program adopted in the context of drawing loans from the European Commission, ECB and IMF. In the last part of the third chapter the causes and effects of the crisis in Ireland and Portugal were mutually compared. The conclusion of this chapter is devoted to the prospects of these countries into the future.

The objective of the thesis is to assess business cycle correlation and convergence in the European Union. The thesis also examines the effect of structural conver-gence, intra-industry trade intensity and other factors upon the above mentioned convergence of economic activities. For this purpose, the correlation analysis and panel data regression analysis are implemented. The results show positive influence of intra-industry trade intensity, whereas structural convergence indices report ra-ther unstable and heterogeneous outcomes.

Thesis "Foreign exchange exposure and currency risk" deals with managing foreign currency exposure and foreign exchange risks when doing business in The Czech Republic. It defines foreign exchange risk, different types of foreign exchange exposures and the possibility of its ensuring, as well as internal and external methods of reducing foreign exchange exposure and foreign exchange risk. The practical part is devoted to a particular solution, respectively to the management of foreign exchange exposure and foreign currency risk in ABC, s.r.o. company.