This diploma thesis deals with the changes in civil engineering that occured as a result of the global pandemic crisis. The theoretical part defines the basic terms and definitions, describes facts from past crises and defines the economic situation before the pandemic. It compares the economic situation before and after the start of the pandemic. This thesis also examines the development of selected macroeconomic indicators during the crisis. The practical part consists of an analysis of the construction market using a questionnaire survey. Based on the data from this survey, it evaluates the view of participants in the construction market on the supply side. The final data obtained from the questionnaire survey are compared with statistical data. Finally, possible predictions about the development of civil engineering are defined.

[pt] Expansões fiscais têm sido propostas como soluçao para economias passando por fortes recesseções e episódios de deflação. Mostramos em uma arcabouço fiscalista que um aumento dos deficits pode iniciar uma estagflação por afetar negativamente a intermediação de recursos para investimentos. Intermediários financeiros coletam depósitos para comprar títulos do governo e realizar empréstimos através de contratos nominais de longo-prazo. Quando intermediários enfrentam fricções financeiras e um descasamentos entre seus ativos e passivos, uma inflação surpresa e/ou uma reavaliação dos preços dos títulos prejudica seus balanços, reduzindo os empréstimos, investimentos e produção. Em uma expansao fiscal, a recessção vem com inflação porque a queda na oferta de capital iniciada no setor financeiro aumenta os custos marginais das firmas produtoras de bens. A probabilidade de uma recessão é maior quanto maior for o descasamento de maturidade, a sensibilidade dos preços dos titulos às taxas de juros e quanto maior a participação dos titulos no balanço dos bancos. Esses resultados: (1) dão suporte teórico para a relação negativa entre a performance do setor financeiro e alta inflação; (2) ajudam a explicar episodios de alto endividamento publico, alta inflação e crises bancarias e, mais importante, (3) expõem desvantagens de politicas fiscais inflacionarias propostas para inflacionar e estimular economias com baixa inflação, onde o arcabouço proposto neste artigo é mais provavel de estar presente. / [en] Expansionary fiscal policies have been advocated to induce output expansions and inflation in deep recession or deflationary episodes. We show that, in a fiscalist setup, an increase in deficits can trigger a stagflation by negatively affecting financial intermediation of resources to investments. Financial intermediaries collect deposits to buy government bonds and lend through nominal long-term loans. When intermediaries face financial frictions and a maturity mismatch on their assets and liabilities, a surprise inflation and/or a revaluation of bonds prices impair their net-worth reducing lending, investments, and output. Recession comes with inflation in a fiscal expansion because the fall on capital triggered on the financial sector rises production firms marginal costs. The probability of a recession is higher the greater is the maturity mismatch, the sensitivity of bonds prices to the policy rate, and the share of bonds on banks balances. These results: (1) give theoretical support for the negative relation documented between financial sector performance and inflation (2) help explaining high debt, high inflation environments coinciding with banking crisis and, more importantly, (3) expose drawbacks of fiscal inflation policies proposed to inflate and stimulate low inflation economies, where the fiscalist setup stressed in this paper is more probable to be present.

This PhD thesis aims at exploring price convergence in the European Union with a particular emphasis paid to the Czech Republic and new EU member states. Fundamental issues are discussed in the first chapter, starting with the notion and term `convergence' since many alternative definitions have been proposed in the literature. Apart from that, main indicators utilized when investigating price convergence are defined (for example purchasing power parity/purchasing power standard, PPP/PPS, comparative price level, CPL) and a brief review of the literature is added. The second chapter deals with several issues accompanying price convergence in general and in transforming countries in particular such as the club convergence hypothesis, issues of tradability, availability of datasets and their strenghts and weaknesses, the link between price levels and rates of inflation, and determinants. Both `standard' and `modern' approaches are utilized in the last chapter so that several hypotheses can be verified. For the sake of comparability, individual CPLs for EU-27 countries for the period 1995(9)-2011 are employed. Firstly, stylised facts for both old EU and NMS are presented (including effects stemming from the on-going financial crisis). Secondly, the club convergence hypothesis is examined with help of two different ways - cluster analysis and the Phillips-Sul test (both for the EU and its `subgroups'). Both of them do confirm the existence of convergence clubs in the EU (including its old and new part). Following the previous findings, a somewhat broader and richer view on price level dynamics is supplemented via utilization of the so-called Stochastic kernel (Quah, 1993). This methodology shows both convergence and divergence (divergence/polarization/stratification) in the EU. Finally, the last section of this chapter is focused on a thorough search for determinants of price levels in the EU. The Bayesian approach is employed (Bayesian model averaging, BMA) and our results confirm both the importance of both `traditional' determinants such as labour costs and output gap and new ones such as broadly defined institutional factors. Main findings of this thesis are summarized and commented in the conclusion aiming at providing implications for policymakers and some guidance for future research.