The driving force of the tourism industry is represented by the attractions at destination. Travelers have no reason to visit destinations that have nothing to offer. Tourism research has demonstrated that attraction studies are necessary in the understanding of the elements that encourage people to travel. Achieving the goal of measuring destination attractiveness requires the understanding of its components and their relationships. There are two ways of examining attractiveness: by studying the attractions or by exploring the attractiveness perceptions of those who are attracted by them. As competition among tourism destinations increases and tourist funding decreases, it is of vital importance to understand how the inventory of existing attractions at destination relates to the perceptions that travelers have of those attractions. Tourism literature provides only a limited number of studies addressing destination attractiveness. Those studies focus exclusively on the measurement aspect of attractiveness and ignore the analysis of its components. The purpose of this study was to generate a new measurement tool for destination attractiveness and to examine the relationship between its elements. The principles of regional analysis, tourism planning, and tourism attraction research provided the foundation for a measurement and hypothesis testing model. This model is based on the assumption that tourism is a system, which is a function of supply and demand interaction. Four attraction dimensions - tourism services and facilities, cultural/historical, rural lodging, and outdoor recreation - were found to represent the attractiveness portfolio of the destination. According to the findings, no correlations were found between demand and supply importance of the four dimensions. Among demand representatives, market segments perceive and value attractions in different ways. The study explored the attractiveness evaluation of eight tourist regions and discovered correlations between demand and supply indicators. Additionally, it was established that the overall regional measures of demand and supply destination attractiveness explain the economic benefits of tourism in the same region. Among the contributions of this study is the development of a model that allows the simultaneous empirical assessment of demand and supply indicators of destination attractiveness. The findings of this study provided important implications for the development of robust tourism plans, promotional strategies, and resource allocation policies. / Ph. D.

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Measuring and using precipitation data in Costa Rica is a necessary subject matter when one carries out an experiment in this area, whether it be directly related to rainfall or the effects of it on ecosystems. Using geographical information systems (GIS), precipitation maps of Costa Rica were used and digitized to acquire data on where and in what regions precipitation was commonly found. With this information, we were able to track the dry and wet seasons throughout Costa Rica and determine where the precipitation is more likely to occur during certain times of the year. Additionally, trends between longitude, latitude, and elevation were sought in the areas around the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology. The results found a huge difference of precipitation between August – October and January – March, as well as trends demonstrating a strong linear relationship between latitude and precipitation. Trends between elevation and longitude showed much weaker linear relationships.

Clearly defined sales plans are crucial for any business nowadays. Particular market situation, main competitors and key factors all of these should be taken into consideration when creating a relevant sales plan. In today`s global society the cooperation of marketing and sales department is unavoidable. Knowing the exact market situation and regional differences to create a relevant plan is important not just for sales in general but also as one of the key motivating factors for people in sales force. This diploma thesis should analyze how relevant are the key factors that are being followed on a way to reach the sales target in ED market in the Czech Republic considering the demographic data and economic strength of the regions.

The aim of this diploma is the analysis of regional unemployment in the Czech Republic and examination which has cohesion policy of the European union to the unemploement rate at the level of individual regions in the Czech republic. The theoretical part includes basic description of cohesion policy in three programming periods and conceptions relevants to unemployement. Practical part is focused to analysis of regional unemployment and diferences between regions. The regions are examined from individual indicators of unemployment, individual economics indicators and indicators relevant to cohesion policy. The last part includes summary and interpretation of uenmployment indicators and cohesion policy indicators.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to characterize and judge, if the cohesion policy of the European Union really reflects regional differences of the unemployment in the Czech Republic. The theoretical part is oriented mainly on describing the unemployment from the perspective of the economic theory. The empirical part is focused on the development of the unemployment in the Czech Republic, and actual data are compared with the European Union. In this part is also the cohesion policy of the European Union generally introduced. After this follows the main chapter of this diploma thesis, which analyzes the unemployment in each region in the Czech Republic from the perspective of chosen indicators. The final chapter aims to answer the pointed goal of the thesis with the help of all available data.

With the profound interest in regional planning by local administrative units to establish a more definitive criteria for policy implementation and framework for decision analysis, this study seeks to formulate a simplistic methodological approach in the construction of a fundamental tool for socioeconomic research. By utilizing the Bear River District as a case study, we have focused on the generation of basic informational requirements for manpower planning in analyzing the size, structure and distribution of the population and labor force; changes in the employment capacity of the region; sector interdependence; and historical economic base. Based on the results of the study, the input-output analysis has shown the predominance of labor-intensive industries which is indicative of low productivity growth. Specifically, the emergence of the services sector has been influenced partly by the expansion of the population base in the domestic market in view of its personalized character. However, such industries generate low income and employment multiplier effects in the economy due to their weak links with the other sectors. The projections of the labor force have depicted the changing working-age structure of the population and the divergent patterns in the labor force participation of the males and females in the Bear River District. On the other hand, the economic analysis of the demand for labor has depicted a gradual reorientation of jobs to more technical and mechanical operations. At the same time, there is a proliferation of part-time work which is more suitable for the employment of women in view of the time-flexibility it can offer between familial obligations and market activities. The historical economic base study has shown the various components of employment growth. Cache County has the most favorable distribution of industries while Box Elder County and Rich County represent regions losing employment. Generally, most of the industries are nonspecialized with a competitive advantage.

For Chapter 1: This paper offers a meta-regression analysis of the controversial impact of EU structural funds on the growth of the recipient regions. It identifies the factors that explain the heterogeneity in the size of 323 estimates of their impact recorded in 17 econometric studies. Heterogeneity comes from the publication status, the period examined, controlling for endogeneity, from the presence of several regressors but not from differences in functional forms. For Chapter 2: Recent spatial econometric contributions call for theory-driven spatial models and W matrices capturing actual and time-varying interregional linkages. This paper answers this call by developing theoretically Griliches' well-known knowledge production function to add knowledge externalities to it. They capture how human and private capital originating from one region benefit the creation of innovation elsewhere. Furthermore, we measure interregional interaction based on the actual flows of patent creation-citation and of migration of the educated workers. They have the advantage of capturing clearly the direction of the knowledge transfers. Their presence in the theoretical model leads to a reduced-form spatial cross-regressive model which differentiates better the role of each type of externality - and displays a better goodness of fit - than the spatially lagged model where spillovers depend on geographical proximity only. Both models are estimated on spatial panel data covering the dynamics of innovation across US states over the 1986-1999 period. For Chapter 3: The Ricardian framework is increasingly used for the study of the impact of climate change on farmland values. While most of the Ricardian studies assume no interaction between the geographical units under study, the few that do rely on traditional proximity-based dependence. In this paper we argue that since the larger share of agricultural goods produced by a state is not for its own local market, including interregional trade in the Ricardian framework provides new perspectives, avoids a missing variable bias and prevents erroneous conclusions. Our new framework is applied to the system of the U.S. states over the four most recent censuses (1997-2012) and demonstrate that climate and socio-economic conditions experienced in a state's trade partners have a significant role on that state's local farmland values.

The goal of this graduation thesis is to analyze the retail network related to food products in the city Klatovy and to evaluate whether the number of the retail units is appropriate for this area. Assess whether the number of retail units corresponds to the number of the population and the optimal area for Klatovy. The first part is focused on the different concepts and describes methods regional analysis. In the second part there is described the history and sights of the city Klatovy. After that follows characteristic of individual stores (retail units focused on the sale of food products), regional analysis of Klatovy and finally the evaluation questionnaire on the citizen buying habits and satisfaction with shopping in Klatovy.