The purpose of this diploma thesis is the analysis of macroeconomic development of China in 1990 - 2014 in four key economic areas: economic performance, financial sector, labor market and internal and external equilibrium. The main hypothesis is that China is not threatened by a hard-landing in the next few years. The theoretical part explains the basic terms and defines the research framework. In the empirical part is conducted the analysis of the selected indicators in that framework, consisting of internal and external equilibrium, labor market and demographic trends, financial sector, fiscal and monetary policies and additional growth factors. The result of the empirical part is the construction of a SWOT matrix. At the end there are proposed the recommendations for setting the future economic policy in China.

Main goal of my dissertation was take a close look at progress of several economics indicators from 1993. I also decided to analyse key factors wich mainly influence these ecnomics indicators. This work is based on classical model IS-LM-BP which is most suitable because of its logic and siplicity. This work is constituted by three parts: first describer theoretical base, second part is dedicate to analysis economy from 1993 and third part is focused on macroeconomical model of Czech economy. Theoretical part presents main parts of national economy (e.g. Gross domestic product, Unemployment, Inflation, Balance of Payment, etc.) including detailed structure of these key indicators. Such a detailed description was importent because of recent modelling and was signiicant for better choice of variable. In second part of this work we analyse economic development from 1993 and we focused on main causes of change. Main goal of this part was exploring of global progress and better understanding to all indicators in the small-open-economy. In final part of dissertation are created several models which are based on historical data and predict progress for nearest future. Because fact that source data are mainly till 2010 we were able to test our models on real data of year 2011. In spite of economical progres in last few years we can say that large majority of results from our models are in compliance with our expectation. However in some cases ware results diferent, we identifed key resons for these results.

This thesis examines current problems in eurozone with special focus on international trade. An important part of the research will be the impact of the economic crisis which came to Europe in 2008. First chapter describes the development of eurozone's exports and imports between years 2001 and 2011. It analyses changes and trends in the commodity and territorial structure of eurozone's foreign trade. Some important issues which are linked to these topics are discussed in the first chapter as well, including current bargaining for bilateral free trade agreements. Second chapter deals with macroeconomic imbalances between the northern and the southern part of eurozone. It tries to identify reasons which caused this problem and assesses the role of euro in it. Finally, it offers some possible ways to adjustment between the both country groups. Third chapter concerns with the competitiveness of eurozone's members and measures how it has changed since the beginning of the crisis. In the second part of this chapter, selected weaknesses of the Italian competitiveness are stated together with a comparison with Germany. Final summary recapitulates previous chapters and presents the most important findings.

The aim of this work is to create a concept that should strenghthen competitiveness of the company based on analyses of microeconimic and macroeconomic elements. This work further deals with evaluation of the current situation of company Brewery Černá Hora a.s. in the world of small and average breweries. Theoretical part describes knowledge about competitiveness and its strengthening. In practical part are these knowledge put in use. This work examines competitiveness of the company based on analysis of microeconimic and macroeconomic elements. Outputs from these analyses are used to create a concept, that should help the company increase the competitiveness.

The thesis focuses on finding solutions to major exchange rate puzzles, which were discussed in detail by Obstfeld and Rogoff (2000). The first puzzle is the purchasing power parity puzzle. The first version of the latter puzzle is concerned with whether a real exchange rate reverts in the mean. To resolve the puzzle in the context of Southern African Development Community countries, the thesis uses Bayesian unit root testing and nonlinear nonstationarity tests associated with the smooth transition autoregressive family of models. According to Bayesian unit root test results, the nonstationarity hypothesis received small posterior probability relative to other hypotheses. In this setting, the Bayesian results strongly supported the hypothesis that all the real exchange rates were trend-stationary autoregressive processes. However, it should be pointed out that Ahking (2004) has found these tests to be biased toward trend stationarity. Nonlinear nonstationarity tests presented evidence that four out of ten of SADC’s real exchange rates could be regarded as nonlinear globally ergodic processes, while others could be considered random walks. The thesis relies on local-to-unity asymptotic theory and Rossi (2005a) to deal with the half-life version of the PPP puzzle. The half-life version is that a high degree of exchange rate volatility is generally associated with an implausibly slow speed of mean reversion. Depending on the robustness of the methods used, empirical evidence points to several half-lives of less than 36 months, but the confidence intervals of half-life deviations from PPP are found in all cases, as in Rossi’s work, to be too wide to be informative enough to resolve the puzzle. In addition, the thesis undertakes Hinich and Chong (2007) class tests of fractional integration to ensure that a long memory process is not mistaken for a nonstationary process in finding solutions to the PPP puzzle. The results show that at 1 per cent and 5 per cent significance levels, the real exchange rates associated with South Africa, Mauritius and Swaziland are not fractionally integrated. Tanzania’s real exchange rate was found to be stationary-fractionally integrated but with the antipersistence property. Other currencies were found to be nonstationary-fractionally integrated. The third puzzle is the exchange rate determination puzzle, which is as follows: In the short run there seems to be no reliable determinants of exchange rates. The thesis relies on the market microstructure approach to find the determinants of South Africa’s exchange rate. In this context, the thesis utilises autoregressive distributed lag model of cointegration to identify the fundamental and non-fundamental determinants of the rand/dollar exchange rate. The main contribution of the thesis to the economic literature is the usage of newly developed methods in an attempt to resolve the above-mentioned puzzles. / Thesis (PhD (Economics))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Economics / unrestricted

The aim of the thesis is to examine the relationship between inflation and economic growth using the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as a case study. The motivation emanates not only because of the lack of studies analysing this relationship in the SADC region, but also due to the fact that this relationship may differ from the one that exists in developed countries due to the level of economic development and prudent macroeconomic policies being practised in the latter (Sarel, 1996). The relationship may differ because the vast majority of developed countries have established independent central banks with a clear mandate to keep inflation levels within a specific range (adopted an inflation targeting framework). However, in most developing countries, central banks do not have a clear inflation targeting monetary policy framework, for instance, in the SADC region, only South Africa has adopted an inflation targeting monetary policy framework. High inflation episodes are known to contribute to macroeconomic instability, therefore policy makers find it important to understand the kind of the relationship that exists between inflation and economic growth in order to develop and implement sound macroeconomic policies. Therefore, inflation is viewed to be one of the basic indicators of macroeconomic stability; hence it is an indicator of the ability of the government to manage the economy. High levels of inflation may be indicative of a lack of sound governance by the monetary authority of a country. In addition, it is a sign of government that has lost control of its finances (Fischer,1993). The thesis addresses issues of nonlinearities in the inflation-growth nexus by endogenously estimating the threshold level of inflation below which inflation may have no, or positive, impact on economic growth, or above which inflation may be detrimental to economic growth. It also assesses the effects of a shock to inflation in South Africa, being the largest economy in the region, on inflation and economic growth of the rest of the region. First, different panel data methodologies; Fixed Effects (FE), Difference Generalised Method of Moments (DIF-GMM), System Generalised Method of Moments (SYSGMM), and Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) estimators are used in order to examine the relationship between inflation and economic growth in the region. Second, Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) methodology is utilised to examine the nonlinearities in the inflation-growth nexus. In particular, the threshold level of inflation is endogenously estimated and the smoothness of the transition from a low to a high inflation regime in the region is also estimated1. Thirdly, the effects of South African inflation on the inflation and economic growth in the rest of the region are assessed using impulse-response functions derived from estimating a Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) model. Overall, the study deals with problems which are normally encountered when using cross-country data such as endogeneity, heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The main findings of the study are that inflation and economic growth in the region are negatively related, as is also the case in other regions of the world as depicted by the empirical literature (Fischer, 1993 and De Gregorio, 1993). Therefore, in terms of the inflation-growth link, the SADC region is not different from all the other regions around the globe. Secondly, the threshold level of inflation in the region is estimated at 18.9 per cent, which is in line with the findings of authors like Drukker et al. (2005), Mignon and Villavicencio (2011), and Ibarra and Trupkin (2011), who found a threshold level of 19.2 per cent, 19.6 per cent, and 19.1 per cent for developing countries. However, this threshold level marginally exceeds that of Khan and Senhadji (2001), Schiavo and Vaona (2007), Moshiri and Sepehri (2009) and Espinoza et al. (2010), which studies report threshold values between 10 and 12 per cent for developing countries. The empirical results also reveal that shocks to South African inflation have significant economic impact on inflation, openness, investment and economic growth in the rest of the SADC region. In particular, more interestingly, South African inflation is found to have a negative and statistically significant impact on economic growth in the region for up to about 12 years after the shock, after which, it becomes insignificant. The contribution of the thesis to the literature is that, firstly, this looks into the inflation-growth relationship in the context of Africa, in particular the SADC region; as such an investigation or research has not been conducted before. Secondly, the research takes advantage of panel data methodologies so as to provide more robust estimates and confront the potential bias emanating from problems such as endogeneity, heterogeneity and cross-country dependence that may have affected previous empirical work on inflation-growth nexus. This is believed to provide more informative estimates on the inflation-growth link, and therefore deepens our knowledge of the region. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Economics / unrestricted

This research aimed to identify reliable economic data for predictive rent modelling in South Africa and Nigeria, as a contribution towards the growing debate on real estate rental forecasting from the African perspective. The data were obtained from the Iress Expert Database, Stat SA, the Central Bank of Nigeria database (CBN), the National Bureau of Statistics and World Bank. The South African economic data comprised time series for a fifteen-year period between Quarter 1 (Q1), 2003 and Quarter 4 (Q4), 2018. The Nigerian data comprised time series for a ten-year period between Quarter 1 (Q1), 2008 and Quarter 4 (Q4), 2018. The logit model was proposed among others as a macroeconomic modelling approach that captures the future rental directions based on the general economic movements and likely turning points. The model is particularly useful due to its reliance on macroeconomic and indirect/listed real estate data which are more readily available to real estate investment decision-makers. This study identified that coincident indicators and the exchange rate both have positive significant relationships with Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed real estate as compelling indicators for the South African market. For the Nigerian listed real estate market indicator, the model also responded to interest rate, the consumer price index and the Treasury Bill Rate (TBR) as reliable indicators. In addition to this, analysis revealed the logit regression framework as an improvement to naïve or ordinary linear rent models in these emerging African real estate markets. The use of macroeconomic modelling proved to be a viable alternative to scarce comparable transaction data which serve as the bedrock of traditional real estate investment appraisal. Thus, a forecasting model for early detection of turning points in commercial real estate rental values in South Africa and Nigeria was developed for use in real estate investment decisions. The study concluded that not all economic indicators lead the listed real estate market. The relationship between the macroeconomy and listed real estate is largely significant, but this could be a positive or negative relationship. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / African Real Estate Research (AFRER) for IREBS Foundation. / Construction Economics / MSc / Unrestricted

This thesis investigates to what extent macroeconomic factors influence real estate stock prices before and after the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2007. This is carried out by examining the securitized real estate markets in Sweden and Switzerland by using descriptive statistics. Bivariate regressions are conducted for the macroeconomic factors; all share stock index, exchange rates, unemployment, inflation, term structure, money supply and real GDP per capita, to examine the marginal effect of each variable. The indexed developments and volatilities of each variable and correlations to the OMXS Real Estate and WUPIX-A are compiled to further facilitate an analysis. The results show that the macroeconomic effects on real estate stock prices differ among small economies and are inconsistent in a pre-crisis and crisis period. Solely theoretical aspects are not sufficient to describe the varying conditions in the financial markets, which have to be scrutinized in a wider economic context. Those factors that show some regularity in the relation to the real estate markets are all share indices, term structure and real GDP per capita.

The flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into a country can benefit both the investing entity (the home country) and the host country. The determinants of FDI are a highly discussed topic, with various determinants being analysed and discussed over time.  Multiple research papers focus on the determinants of the host country, which try to identify the most important factors that make countries attractive to investment from abroad. This paper aims to shed light on the home country determinants and their relationship with investments into the Republic of Ireland. Using panel data analysis for 28 different countries around the world from the years 2012 to 2019, this paper aims to find relationships between different home country related variables and FDI flows into the Republic of Ireland. We find evidence that FDI is positively associated with the market size of the home country, the corporate tax rate difference between the home and the host country and sharing an official language. On the other hand, population and distance were found to be negatively associated with FDI. Based on the results of our analysis, a discussion of the home country determinants and their impact on FDI into Ireland is presented.

La presente investigación analiza las variables determinantes y relacionadas en las exportaciones de jengibre fresco (Partida Arancelaria. 0910.11.00.00) de la República del Perú al Reino de los Países Bajos, comprendido en los años 2012 – 2019. En donde la inestabilidad de las exportaciones peruanas de jengibre ha desarrollado un interés para que sean analizadas en base a tres variables: entorno macroeconómico, competencia internacional y gestión de inocuidad alimentaria, desde un enfoque mixto. Este tendrá un alcance explicativo causal bajo un diseño transversal, en donde se aplicó un análisis de una regresión lineal múltiple, con el cual se planteó un modelo matemático predictivo de las variables aceptables, y un diseño fenomenológico aplicado a través de la guía de entrevistas de tipo semiestructuradas. Los resultados apuntan que, dentro del entorno macroeconómico, el precio es el indicador más influyente siendo las certificaciones orgánicas las que permiten que el producto salga con un mejor precio al mercado, ya que la demanda de Países Bajos así lo requiere. Dentro de competencia internacional, el indicador características del producto resalta apoyándose en la condición orgánica y las propiedades naturales del producto. Y finalmente, dentro de la variable gestión de inocuidad alimentaria destaca el indicador certificaciones de gestión de inocuidad, siendo las más importantes GlobalG.A.P. y HACCP. En conclusión, entorno macroeconómico es una variable determinante de las exportaciones de jengibre fresco, mientras que competencia internacional y gestión de inocuidad alimentaria son variables relacionadas a las exportaciones de jengibre fresco, los resultados indican que competencia internacional es la más relacionada, destacando dentro de ella el indicador características del producto. / The research aims to analyze the determinant and relevant variables in exports of fresh ginger (Harmonized system code 0910.11.00.00) from the Republic of Peru to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, between the years 2012 - 2019. The instability of Peruvian ginger exports has been developing, has created an interest in analyzing it based on three variables: macroeconomic environment, international competition, and food safety management, from a mixed methods research. This investigation will have a causal explanatory approach by a cross-sectional design, where is applied a multiple linear regression and is proposed a predictive mathematical model of the acceptable variables, and a phenomenological design through the interview guide of semi-structured type. The results indicate that in the macroeconomic environment, price is the most influenced indicator, where organic certifications are the ones that allow the product to come out with a better market price on the Netherlands market. Regarding international competition, the product features indicator is emphasized, by organic conditions and the natural properties of the product. Finally, in respect of the variable food safety management, it is enhanced through the indicator safety management certifications where GlobalG.A.P. and HACCP are the most important. In conclusion, the macroeconomic environment is a determinant variable of fresh ginger exports, while international competition and food safety management are related variables of fresh ginger exports. However, the results demonstrate, the international competition is the most relevant, highlighting the indicator product features. / Tesis