Greenery in towns and cities are an important part of our lives and influences us in many positive ways. In the Czech Republic, the establishment, restoration and maintenance of public green areas within the competence of municipalities. As with every other public service there arises a problem with the quantity and quality of its provision. This paper deals with the relationships that developed in 2011 between spending on public greenery and various parameters of the municipalities. These relations are implemented by means of two hypotheses. The first is based on economies of scale, and assumes that the larger the municipality, the smaller expenses should be provided for public green areas per inhabitant. The second hypothesis is based on the work of Carruthers and Úlfarsson (2008) and says that a higher the population density reduces the per capita expenditures of city govenments. The validity assessment of the hypotheses is done by use of the statistical method of regression analysis. This, however, did not confirm the validity of any of them. Thus there is no indirect relationship between the size of the municipality or population density and public expenditures on green areas per capita. The reason why there is no relationship lies primarily in the great freedom of decision-making of individual municipalities, as far as public green is concerned.

Currently the gold mining industry is taxed differently to other industries. It is taxed on a two-tier system. The nature of the gold mining tax formula encourages the mining of marginal gold ores. Firms that are involved in the mining of gold are subjected to a "tax tunnel", which is a tax free revenue portion. This is against the equity principle of taxation because it separates companies on the basis of what they produce and not on the basis of income generated. The South African government is in the process of implementing a revenue-based royalty system. The majority of firms in the gold mining industry feel that for the benefit of economic growth the government must consider implementing a profit-based royalty system. This study analyses the gold mining tax formula in comparison to the flat rate tax. It also analyses the reasons for the differential treatment of the gold mining industry. / Economics / M.Comm.

Currently the gold mining industry is taxed differently to other industries. It is taxed on a two-tier system. The nature of the gold mining tax formula encourages the mining of marginal gold ores. Firms that are involved in the mining of gold are subjected to a "tax tunnel", which is a tax free revenue portion. This is against the equity principle of taxation because it separates companies on the basis of what they produce and not on the basis of income generated. The South African government is in the process of implementing a revenue-based royalty system. The majority of firms in the gold mining industry feel that for the benefit of economic growth the government must consider implementing a profit-based royalty system. This study analyses the gold mining tax formula in comparison to the flat rate tax. It also analyses the reasons for the differential treatment of the gold mining industry. / Economics / M.Comm.

This thesis is focused on the comparison and analysis of taxation of real estate, which are located in the Czech Republic and Ireland. In the first and second part of this thesis, the historical development of real estate taxation in the monitored countries is mapped out, followed by a more detailed description of the current legislation on the taxation of real estate in the Czech Republic and Ireland. The third part brings a macroeconomic comparison, where the combined tax quota of both countries is compared, as well as the analysis of the development of the absolute tax collection for taxes related to real estate, both in the Czech Republic and Ireland. In the last part, using the model examples, is quantified and then compared the magnitude of the tax burden on real estate taxation in the monitored countries. First, a comparison of the Czech real estate tax and Irish local tax is compared, and then the real estate tax introduced in the Czech Republic is compared with the stamp duty introduced in Ireland.

The financial crisis of 2007/8 has triggered a profound debate about public budget finance sustainability, ever-increasing government expenditures and the efficiency of fiscal policy measures. Given this context, the following dissertation provides four contributions that analyze the long-run growth of government spending throughout economic development, discuss potential effects of fiscal policy measures on output, and provide new insights into the assessment of debt sustainability for a variety of industrialized countries. Since the breakout of the European debt crisis in 2009/2010, there has been a revival of interest in the long-term growth of government expenditures. In this context, the relationship between the size of the public sector and economic growth - often referred to as Wagner's law - has been in the focus of numerous studies, especially with regard to public policy and fiscal sustainability. Using historical data from the mid-19th century, the first chapter analyzes the validity of Wagner's law for five industrialized European countries and links the discussion to different stages of economic development. In line with Wagner's hypothesis, our findings show that the relationship between public spending and economic growth has weakened at an advanced stage of development. Furthermore, all countries under review support the notion that Wagner's law may have lost its economic relevance in recent decades. As a consequence of the 2007/8 financial crisis, there has been an increasing theoretical and empirical debate about the impact of fiscal policy measures on output. Accordingly, the Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) approach to estimating the fiscal multipliers developed by Blanchard and Perotti (2002) has been applied widely in the literature in recent years. In the second chapter, we point out that the fiscal multipliers derived from this approach include the predicted future path of the policy instruments as well as their dynamic interaction. We analyze a data set from the US and document that these interactions are economically and statistically significant. In a counterfactual simulation, we report fiscal multipliers that abstract from these dynamic responses. Furthermore, we use our estimates to analyze the recent fiscal stimulus of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The third chapter contributes to the existing empirical literature on fiscal multipliers by applying a five-variable SVAR approach to a uniform data set for Belgium, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Besides studying the effects of expenditure and tax increases on output, we additionally analyze their dynamic effects on inflation and interest rates as well as the dynamic interaction of both policy instruments. By conducting counterfactual simulations, which abstract from the dynamic response of key macroeconomic variables to the initial fiscal shocks, we study the importance of these channels for the transmission of fiscal policy on output. Overall, the results demonstrate that the effects of fiscal shocks are limited and rather different across countries. Further, it is shown that the inflation and interest rate channel are insignificant for the transmission of fiscal policy. In the field of public finances, governmental budgetary policies are among the most controversial and disputed areas of political and scientific controversy. The sustainability of public debt is often analyzed by testing stationarity conditions of government's budget deficits. The fourth chapter shows that this test can be implemented more effectively by means of an asymmetric unit root test. We argue that this approach increases the power of the test and reduces the likelihood of drawing false inferences. We illustrate this in an application to 14 countries of the European Monetary Union as well as in a Monte Carlo simulation. Distinguishing between positive and negative changes in deficits, we find consistency with the intertemporal budget constraint for more countries, i.e. lower persistence of positive changes in some countries, compared to the earlier literature.

The oil industry is the richest and most influential industry in the world. The industry has moved the fates of nations. Oil is required to fight wars and exert power, and the restriction of this energy source is paramount to the restriction of movement, control, and in the end, power. Management of this resource and the tax revenue it generates are of serious strategic importance, both domestically and internationally. Understanding the results of taxation for this important commodity is important to international relations as well. The tax system affects tax revenue, government actions, oil company actions, and the oil supply itself. Each of these is important to international relations.

This thesis aimed to find the correlation between happiness and macroeconomic variables using multiple linear regression analysis. The macroeconomic variables considered were GPD per capita, the Gini coefficient, unemployment rate, tax revenue of GDP, government spending on education and inflation. The data for self-reported happiness were collected from a global happiness survey. GDP per capita, the Gini coefficient and government expenditure on education were found to be positively correlated with happiness. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate and tax revenue of GDP showed a negative correlation. Inflation were found to not have a statistically significant relationship with happiness. Furthermore, the Gini coefficient was investigated more closely since the positive correlation was partially contradictory to previous research within the field. A simple linear regression analysis was therefore performed, which showed a negative relationship between happiness and the Gini coefficient. This could indicate that important regressors were not included in the main model. In conclusion, this thesis showed that the investigated macroeconomic variables have a statistically significant impact on the happiness of individuals. / I detta kandidatexamensarbete undersöks korrelationen mellan lycka och makroekonomiska variabler med hjälp av multipel linjär regression. De makroekonomiska variablerna som studerades är BNP per capita, Ginikoefficienten, arbetslöshet, skattekvot av BNP, offentliga utgifter för utbildning och inflation. Data för självuppskattad lycka hämtades från en global undersökning. BNP per capita, Ginikoefficienten och offentliga utgifter för utbildning visade sig ha en positiv korrelation med lycka, medans arbetslöshet och skattekvoten av BNP hade en negativ korrelation. Inflation visade sig ej ha en statistiskt signifikant korrelation med lycka. Vidare undersöktes Ginikoefficienten mer djupgående då den positiva korrelationen delvis motsätter sig tidigare forskning inom ämnet. Därav genomfördes en simpel linjär regressionsanalys, som nu visade på ett negativt samband mellan lycka och Ginikoefficienten. Detta kan vara ett tecken på att viktiga variabler inte har inkluderats i huvudmodellen. Sammantaget visar dessa resultat att de undersökta makroekonomiska variablerna har en statistiskt signifikant inverkan på individers lycka.