This paper examines Czech experience with inflation targeting. It tries to assess empirically character of deviations from inflation targets throughout the time. It assess situation also in an international context. Consequently it analyse ability of IT regime to anchor inflation expectations in context of CNB?s forecasting performance. Results imply that although deviations were quite frequent in the Czech Republic, their occurrence has not been a barrier for delivering lower inflation and its lower volatility. Notwithstanding, its volatility remains significantly above the range experienced in the EU and the EMU countries. Regarding the inflation expectations, monetary policy surprises tend to be smaller over time,signalising that IT regime is priced by the markets. Thus, credibility of the CNB, concerning anchoring of inflation expectations, seems to improve after introduction of IT regime. It also indicates that IT regime is a quite appropriate regime for the upcoming period of time, which will be end up by the entry in the EMU.

Financial dollarization, defined as the substantial presence of foreign currency denominated assets and liabilities in the balance sheets of the main sectors of an economy, is a widespread phenomenon among developing economies, especially in Latin America and Turkey. Since financial dollarization often causes financial fragility and limits the effectiveness of monetary policy, the causes and consequences of it and dedollarization strategies have been placed at the forefront of policy debates especially in developing countries. The purpose of this study is to analyse the determinants of corporate sector asset and liability dollarization in ten Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela) and Turkey for the period 1990-2001. To this end, this study considers the effects of monetary policy stance (exchange rate flexibility and adoption of a de facto inflation targeting regime), institutional structure (governance) and macroeconomic stance variables (volatilities of inflation and real effective exchange rates) on financial dollarization. The results based on panel data estimations suggest that high and volatile inflation and depreciation of domestic currency induce a switch to dollar denominated assets and liabilities. Furthermore, exchange rate regime flexibility appears to reduce liability dollarization and encourage asset dollarization. Finally, the empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that adoption of inflation targeting regime and strengthening the institutional structure are significant in decreasing the level of financial dollarization.

This thesis aims at contributing to the study of the valuation of insurance liabilities and the management of the assets backing these liabilities. It consists of four parts, each devoted to a specific topic. In the first part, we study the pricing of a classical single premium life insurance contract with profit, in terms of a guaranteed rate on the premium and a participation rate on the (terminal) financial surplus. We argue that, given the asset allocation of the insurer, these technical parameters should be determined by taking explicitly into account the risk management policy of the insurance company, in terms of a risk measure such as the value-at-risk or the conditional value-at-risk. We then design a methodology that allows us to fix both parameters in such a way that the contract is fairly priced and simultaneously exhibits a risk consistent with the risk management policy. In the second part, we focus on the management of the surrender option embedded in most life insurance contracts. In Chapter 2, we argue that we should model the surrender time as a random time not adapted to the filtration generated by the financial assets prices, instead of assuming that the surrender time is an optimal stopping time as it is usual in the actuarial literature. We then study the valuation of insurance contracts with a surrender option in such a model. We here follow the financial literature on the default risk and in particular, the reduced-form models. In Chapter 3 and 4, we study the hedging strategies of such insurance contracts. In Chapter 3, we study their risk-minimizing strategies and in Chapter 4, we focus on their ``locally risk-minimizing' strategies. As a by-product, we study the impact of a progressive enlargement of filtration on the so-called ``minimal martingale measure'. The third part is devoted to the systematic mortality risk. Due to its systematic nature, this risk cannot be diversified through increasing the size of the portfolio. It is thus also important to study the hedging strategies an insurer should follow to mitigate its exposure to this risk. In Chapter 5, we study the risk-minimizing strategies for a life insurance contract when no mortality-linked financial assets are traded on the financial market. We here extend Dahl and Moller’s results and show that the risk-minimizing strategy of a life insurance contract is given by a weighted average of risk-minimizing strategies of purely financial claims, where the weights are given by the (stochastic) survival probabilities. In Chapter 6, we first study the application of the HJM methodology to the modelling of a longevity bonds market and describe a coherent theoretical setting in which we can properly define the longevity bond prices. Then, we study the risk-minimizing strategies for pure endowments and annuities portfolios when these longevity bonds are traded. Finally, the fourth part deals with the design of ALM strategies for a non-life insurance portfolio. In particular, this chapter aims at studying the risk-minimizing strategies for a non life insurance company when inflation risk and interest rate risk are taken into account. We derive the general form of these strategies when the cumulative payments of the insurer are described by an arbitrary increasing process adapted to the natural filtration of a general marked point process and when the inflation and the term structure of interest rates are simultaneously described by the HJM model of Jarrow and Yildirim. We then systematically apply this result to four specific models of insurance claims. We first study two ``collective' models. We then study two ``individual' models where the claims are notified at a random time and settled through time.

Inflationen har i många länder varit låg sedan finanskrisen 2008. I försök öka inflationstakten har centralbanker sänkt sina räntor till rekordlåga nivåer. I Danmark, Schweiz och Sverige har styrräntorna varit negativa. John B Taylor föreslog 1993 en makroekonomisk regel med syfte att kunna ge en prognos för styrräntan. Enligt Taylorregeln kan styrräntan förklaras av tidigare perioders inflationstakt och bruttonationalprodukt. Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka Taylorregelns empiriska relevans i Danmark, Schweiz och Sverige under perioden 2000 till 2018. Två tester genomförs. Det första är att, med en linjär regressionsmodell, undersöka sambandet mellan styrränta, inflationsgap och BNP-gap. Det andra är ett Granger-kausalitetstest för att se om den implicerade kausaliteten i Taylorregeln stämmer. Granger-testet bygger på resultaten från en vektor autoregression. Resultaten i denna uppsats visar att det finns ett samband mellan inflationstakt och styrränta, men inte mellan BNP-gap och styrränta i de valda länderna under undersökningsperioden. Vidare visar resultaten att kausaliteten går från inflationsgap och BNP-gap mot styrränta, som Taylorregeln föreslår. Resultatet lyckas inte påvisa att negativa styrräntor skulle påverka Taylorregelns relevans. / The rate of inflation has been low in many countries since the financial crisis in 2008. In attempts to increase the inflation rate, central banks have lowered their interest rates to historically low levels. In Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden, the central banks key interest rates have been negative. In 1993, John B Taylor proposed a macroeconomic rule with the aim of providing a forecast for the key interest rate. According to the Taylor rule, the policy rate can be explained by the inflation rate and gross domestic product of previous periods. This paper aims to investigate the empirical relevance of the Taylor rule in Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden during the period 2000 to 2018. To do this, two tests are performed. The first is that, with a linear regression model, investigate the relationship between the key interest rate, the inflation gap and the GDP gap. The second is a Granger causality test to see if the implicit causality of the Taylor rule is correct. The Granger test is based on the results of a vector autoregression. The results of this paper show that there is a correlation between the rate of inflation and the key interest rate, but not between the GDP gap and the key interest rate in the selected countries during the investigation period. Furthermore, the results show that causality goes from the inflation gap and the GDP gap towards the key interest rate, as the Taylor rule suggests. The result does not suggest that negative key interest rates would affect the relevance of the Taylor rule.

The goal of my thesis "Development of economies of the Czech and Slovak Republic in the last twenty years" is not only to assess and compare the economic development of Czech and Slovak Republic in the last twenty years, but also outline the economy of Czechoslovakia as a whole to have an idea of the citations and the context of the time. I only compared the development in the two economies, then also in relation to the EU. I divided the whole work into three chapters according to the various stages of development in the Czech and Slovak economies. In the first chapter, I proceed from a brief description of Czechoslovakia, ie. its creation and subsequent development up to 1989, through the transformation of the economy, focusing on the initial state of the economy, the basic operations carried out and macroeconomic page of the transition itself, to the split of Czechoslovakia into two independent states. The following chapter focuses on the characteristics of a separate economic development of the Czech and Slovak Republic until 2004, when both countries joined the EU. The final chapter then deals with the European Union, the Maastricht criteria before joining the EU and development of the economies after the entry into the Union with regard to the entry of Slovakia into the eurozone.