1 Master Thesis Proposal Institute of Political Studies, IEPS programme Faculty of Social Sciences Charles University in Prague Date: 16.10.2020 Author: Ceren Küçükkayıkcı Supervisor: doc. Ing. Tomas Cahlik, CSc. E-mail: 91064497@fsv.cuni.cz E-mail: cahlik@fsv.cuni.cz Phone: +420773924728 Phone: Specialisation: IEPS Defense Planned: September 2021 Proposed Topic: The Impact of Political Determinants on Economic Growth : Analysis of AKP Era Registered in SIS: Yes Date of registration: 30.05.2019 (in case of No give an expected date) Topic characteristics / Research Question(s): The general question of this thesis is how the change in political determinants have an impact on economic growth in Turkey during the AKP era between 2002 and 2019. We would like to demonstrate the reason for the economic failure of AKP in line with the political and economic institutions and political and civil rights. AKP era will be analyzed into three sections, which are 2003-2007, 2007-2011, and 2011 and 2019. Economic growth will be measured by GDP per capita. Working hypotheses: 1. Hypothesis #1: There is an indirect relationship between political determinants and economic growth. 2. Hypothesis#2: Economic institutions and political institutions are endogenous and are defined by the collective choice of society. 2 3....

Left-hand drive (LHD) vehicles share higher road accident risks under left-hand traffic because of blind spot areas. Due to low import prices, the number of wrong-hand drive vehicles skyrockets in emerging countries like Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. I identify the causal effect of wrong-hand drive vehicles on road safety employing a new “backward version” of the synthetic control method. Sweden switched from left-hand to right-hand traffic in 1967. Before 1967, however, almost all Swedish vehicles were LHD for reasons of international trade and Swedish customer demand. I match on accident figures in the period after 1967, when both Sweden and other European countries drove on the right and used LHD vehicles. Results show that right-hand traffic decreased road fatality, injury and accident risk in Sweden by approximately 30 percent. An earlier switch would have saved more than 4,000 lives between 1953 and 1966.

States merge local governments to achieve economies of scale. Little is known to which extent mergers of county-sized local governments reduce expenditures, and influence political outcomes. I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of large local governments in Germany (districts) on public expenditures. In 2008, the German state of Saxony reduced the number of districts from 22 to 10. Average district population increased substantially from 113,000 to 290,000 inhabitants. I construct a synthetic counterfactual from states that did not merge districts for years. The results do neither show reductions in total expenditures, nor in expenditures for administration, education, and social care. There seems to be no scale effects in jurisdictions of more than 100,000 inhabitants. By contrast, I find evidence that mergers decreased the number of candidates and voter turnout in district elections while vote shares for populist right-wing parties increased.

Left-hand drive (LHD) vehicles share higher road accident risks under left-hand traffic because of blind spot areas. Due to low import prices, the number of wrong-hand drive vehicles skyrockets in emerging countries like Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. I identify the causal effect of wrong-hand drive vehicles on road safety employing a new “backward version” of the synthetic control method. Sweden switched from left-hand to right-hand traffic in 1967. Before 1967, however, almost all Swedish vehicles were LHD for reasons of international trade and Swedish customer demand. I match on accident figures in the period after 1967, when both Sweden and other European countries drove on the right and used LHD vehicles. Results show that right-hand traffic decreased road fatality, injury and accident risk in Sweden by approximately 30 percent. An earlier switch would have saved more than 4,000 lives between 1953 and 1966.

This master thesis analyses the impact of the euro on the German economy. The research is conducted through the examination of German export, GDP level, and labor market. It is also supplemented with the evaluation of the past, current and future stages of the Eurozone. The thesis provides a detailed theoretical background, which explains the motivation for the creation of a common currency. As a tool to prove the validity of my hypotheses I use the synthetic control method, where I model a hypothetical case, in which Germany did not adopt the euro. The validity of my results will be tested by using the confidence intervals and comparing the RMSPE ratio. By using this unique approach, I aim to contribute to the series of academic papers about the validity of the euro. In my research I have come to the conclusion, that the euro has positively influenced Germany's economy.

Recently the topic of the future of Ukrainian economy has been attracting great attention among economists and politicians. The way how it should develop is widely discussed on the international arena. Economists and politicians cannot reach an agreement to which direction it is better to move for Ukraine. Nowadays a lot of special institutions have been created on both sides: in Ukraine and in Europe. The main goal of those is to control all the processes of transformation to be transparent on all levels; as well as prevent unlikely events. Of course, there are proponents and opponents of the moving to the free trade with the EU as for every global process. Among the young generation it is very clear, that possibilities, which gives us European Union are much more valuable and gainful. Even now, majority of students and researchers seek to apply or acquire some knowledge in European countries. I'm not an exception and for this reason, being a representative of young generation, I will try to determine potential impact on Economy of Ukraine assuming integration to European Union. It is very important to consider both threats and benefits of such processes as they are taking place on very high level. Therefore, in this work it will be considered both contours of development for Economy of Ukraine....

Recently the topic of the future of Ukrainian economy has been attracting great attention among economists and politicians. The way how it should develop is widely discussed on the international arena. Economists and politicians cannot reach an agreement to which direction it is better to move for Ukraine. Nowadays a lot of special institutions has been created on both sides: in Ukraine and in Europe. The main goal of those is to control all the processes of transformation to be transparent on all levels; as well as prevent unlikely events. Of course, there are proponents and opponents of the moving to the free trade with the EU as for every global process. Among the young generation it is very clear, that possibilities, which gives us European Union are much more valuable and gainful. Even now, majority of students, researchers seek to apply their knowledge or gain some knowledge in European countries. I try to determine potential impact on Economy of Ukraine assuming integration to European Union. It is very important to consider both threats and benefits of such processes as they are taking place on very high level. Therefor in this work I will consider both contours of development for Economy of Ukraine. To explore it I have applied the synthetic control method, which gives us opportunity to...

People respond to incentives—people make decisions by comparing the costs and benefits of a particular action. When either the costs or benefits change, behavior also changes. My dissertation focuses on estimating the impact of two different behaviour-altering taxes on household consumption. In the first section, I conduct an empirical examination of a hypothetical "fat tax" on household food consumption in Canada. The simulation results suggest that when fat tax revenues are recycled as lump-sum transfers to households, this policy would be the most efficient and progressive scenario from both economic and health perspectives. In the second section, I examine the impact of British Columbia's (BC) recently implemented carbon tax on household energy use from an aggregate perspective. I find no significant impact of the BC carbon tax on residential natural gas consumption. The third section is a further investigation of the BC carbon tax on household natural gas consumption varied by their environmental ideology. The results suggest that the impact of the carbon tax is more effective for non-environmentally conscious households than for other households.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-09-16T15:21:14Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação_Poliana.pdf: 864570 bytes, checksum: 74d0fe98907e91cfd6d989e6f6735ace (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-16T15:21:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação_Poliana.pdf: 864570 bytes, checksum: 74d0fe98907e91cfd6d989e6f6735ace (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-31 / CAPES / PROPESQ- UFPE / Os acidentes de trânsito tem se apresentado como um sério problema de saúde no mundo, ocasionando prejuízos físicos, emocionais e econômicos. Esses tipos de acidentes são diretamente influenciados por ações individuais dos motoristas e de outros usuários. Leis ou medidas que afetem os incentivos individuais na forma de se comportarem no trânsito podem levar a mudanças nas taxas de mortalidade, entre elas as que restringem a associação, consumo de bebidas alcoólicas e direção, como a Lei Seca implantada no Brasil no ano de 2008. Desta forma, o objetivo desta dissertação é avaliar o impacto da Lei Seca sobre a mortalidade por acidente de trânsito automotivo na Região Metropolitana de Recife, Pernambuco. Para tanto, a partir do método do Controle Sintético de dados de mortalidade obtidos no DATASUS estimou-se um efeito positivo da referida lei na RMR, resultando em uma redução da taxa de mortalidade por acidentes de trânsito automotivo em média de um ponto, equivalente a 45%, entre os anos de 2008 a 2013. Ou seja, a Lei Seca apresentou como uma medida eficiente na prevenção de mortes no trânsito decorrentes de acidentes automobilísticos na região em estudo. / Traffic accidents must be presented as a serious health problem in the world, causing damages to physical, emotional and economic. These types of accidents are directly influenced by individual actions of drivers and of other users. Laws or measures that affect individual incentives in the form of behave in transit may lead to changes in mortality rates, among them the that restrict the association, consumption of alcoholic beverages and direction, as the Dry Law implanted in Brazil in the year 2008. In this way, the objective of this dissertation is to assess the impact of the Dry Law on mortality by automotive traffic accident in the Metropolitan Region of Recife, Pernambuco. For both, from the method of synthetic control of mortality data obtained in DATASUS we estimated a positive effect of this law in the metropolitan Recife, resulting in a reduction in the rate of mortality from traffic accidents automotive on average a point, equivalent to 45%, between the years of 2008 to 2013. Thus the Dry Law presented as an efficient in the prevention of traffic related deaths resulting from car accidents in the region under study.

The aim of this study is to examine whether the 2018 U.S. steel tariffs have negatively impacted Swedish steel exports to the U.S, given that the U.S. is Swedish steel industry’s second most important foreign market and the majority of Swedish steel exports to the U.S. are subject to the tariffs. The theoretical foundation for this study is the standard trade model, which predicts a decline in quantity traded due to tariffs. With monthly export value data for January 2015 to January 2020, the synthetic control method (SCM) is used to create a counterfactual to the steel products subject to tariffs. The study encountered several data limitations which complicated the use of the SCM, but the overall results suggest that in the absence of tariffs, Swedish monthly export value for steel to the U.S. would have higher than it has been with the tariffs.