The thesis looks at tax income development in selected municipalities during economic crisis, that started at the and of 2008. The selected municipalities are Karlova Studánka, Dobrá and cities Bílovec and Opava. The thesis takes into account proposed changes in tax assignment, which have not yet been approved by parliament. The proposed change is expected to increase income of municipalities from shared taxes. The first two chapters contain general description of municipality financing and development of tax assignment since the formation of czech tax system. Third chapter focuses on the impact of the financial crisis on the local and regional governments of European countries. Fourth chapter contains analysis of local and property taxes development in selected municipalities focused on crisis years. Last chapter provides a calculation of tax income from shared taxes for selected municipalities according to proposed model of tax assignment.

The significant restructuring of international capital flows to developing countries – in particular to Latin American countries – observed in the last quarter century has generated significant research in the area to examine its potential impact on development efforts. The resurgence of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the increasing significance of remittances, both as shares of gross domestic product (GDP), have made these types of capital flows the most analyzed. Despite the large fraction of empirical studies that find a positive and significant relationship between FDI and economic growth, an important fact that has been so far overlooked in the literature is its impact on standards of living in host countries. This dissertation first establishes the strong complementary connection between FDI and economic growth in Latin America, measured by increases in GDP per capita growth rates, to then examine additional channels through which it could affect the welfare of the region. I first show that FDI has a positive effect on central government tax revenues, which is mainly channeled through its effect on taxes on goods and services. I then show that FDI has a positive and significant effect on the employment rates in these host countries, with female employment rate getting the largest impact – relative to males. Remittances are another capital flow that plays a large and important role in certain economies, exceeding 10% of GDP in some countries. The impact of remittances on the main macroeconomic measures of a small open economy is analyzed in the last section using a stochastic limited participation model with cash in advance constraints and costly adjustment of cash holdings. After verifying that the model responds adequately to standard shocks, a remittances shock is introduced to examine the dynamic response of the representative economy. The results show that a positive remittances shock forces the exchange rate to depreciate and lowers both output and consumption in the period of the shock. The positive shock lowers utility during the shock but raises it from the following period onwards, improving discounted utility after 10 years when remittances are 10% of GDP and there are no adjustment costs.

The main target of this dissertation is to analyse the impact of legislative changes to the budgetary allocation of taxes to municipalities in last years with a focus on the reform of January 2013 for different types of municipalities according to their population. One of this thesis objectives is also to suggest recommendations for the future budgetary allocation of taxes on the basis of this analysis. Theoretical part defines basic concepts in the area of municipalities income and looks into the theory of fiscal federalism.The second chapter of the theoretical part concerns itself with the detailed analysis of the development of the budgetary allocation of taxes until 2013. The practical part is constituted by the prediction of the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic and is followed by an analysis of shared taxes in selected municipalities of South Bohemian Region and their development. On the basis of this analysis, the impacts in selected municipalities are analysed and possible recommendations are specified for the future development of the budgetary allocation of taxes.

This thesis deals with economic analysis of three different sized municipalities. Being specific, the largest one Karviná has 62 661 inhabitans. The smaller one Studénka has 10 168 inhabitans and the smallest Liptaň has 463 inhabitans. The chosen period begins in 2005 and finishes in 2009. The first part of my thesis is theoretical. There is a description of municipal law, fiscal decentralization, municipal tax, other taxex and municipal budget. Several aspects of categorization concerning revenues and expenditures are described in this first part. The second part is practical. The data have been collected from internal sources of the municipal offices. Different categories of revenues and expenditures are analyzed. I focus on tax revenues of particular budgets, as shared tax, exclusive tax and municipal tax. In addition, observation of time development in structure of particular groups of taxe sis made. The whole part is accompanied by a great range of tables and graphs which enables the reader understand the subject.

This work aims to analyze current expenditures from the state budget in the years 2005 -- 2010 and the covering of public income. The first chapter deals with the public as a source of revenue for public expenditure. Following chapter explains the theoretical foundations of public spending. The first two chapters each contain a basic definition, a member of this type and structure of public finances. The third and final chapter is devoted to the practical part of my work. Here is carried out detailed analysis of revenue and expenditure of the Czech Republic state budget. I focused mainly on the generic division and then to the more comprehensive examination of current expenditure. Analysis of public revenue and expenditure is made based on macroeconomic indicators Czech Republic, then in itself dependent on public revenues and public spending trend analysis and individual annual changes. The conclusion stated evaluation and analysis are also formulated proposals and recommendations arising from it.

The diploma thesis deals with analyzing of tax burden on consumption in European Union member states. The goal of hypothesis testing was to decide whether the tax burden on consumption in European countries is in convergence or not. The method used in the thesis is the test equivalence of two mean values (t-test). The work begins with the consumption taxes and their harmonization. Next two parts are focused on indicators of consumption tax revenues and implicit tax rates. Tax burden on cigarettes is analyzed in the last chapter. Statistical hypothesis are tested in practically oriented chapters. Differences in consumption taxation between groups of new and old member states in European Union are evaluated by the tests. Differences are tested also in each group between the years 1995 and 2011. Statistically significant difference wasn't found in most cases in the thesis. Tests approved that consumption taxation in the European Union is not in convergence.

This thesis is a collection of three essays that examine the macroeconomic impact of natural resource windfalls and the microeconomic impact of Chinese development finance. The aim is to understand how fiscal windfalls largely driven by events in the world affect economic development. The first chapter studies the impact of commodity related income gains on the number of exporters and the average export value per exporter within the manufacturing sector. A large body of theoretical and empirical literature showed that these windfalls could be detrimental to the manufacturing sector, but none untangled the margins through which the exports from the manufacturing sector adjusts to these windfalls. I exploit the exogenous variation in the windfalls generated by the increase in prices of all major commodities during the early 2000s to fill this gap in the literature. First, I find that manufacturing industries that historically had a relatively higher share of exports to value added ratio (more exportable) tend to be negatively affected relative to the other manufacturing industries at both margins. Secondly, the extensive margin is largely driven by entrants. i.e., the number of new exporting firms that enter more exportable industries decline relative to the less exportable industries. Thirdly, for the more exportable industries, the average export value per incumbent exporters industries decline while that of the new exporters increases relative to the less exportable industries. It has often been argued that countries that produce natural resources mobilize less non-resource tax revenues than other countries. In the second chapter, I exploit the arguably exogenous variation in the timing of giant oilfield discoveries to examine the impact of natural resource abundance on non-resource tax revenue. The timing of giant oilfield discoveries is arguably exogenous and thus renders them appealing to empirically examine this argument. This allows me to examine the performance of non-resource tax revenue effort before and immediately after discovery as well as the period corresponding to the inflow of revenues from the production. I find that non-resource tax revenues tend to increase in the period following the discovery before the onset of production and after production commences. This effect is due to an increase in non-resource indirect tax revenues. Further analysis shows that both the total and indirect non-resource tax revenues, experience an increase in only low- middle income countries. This effect is largely driven by an increase in the consumption of goods and services. Improvement in agricultural productivity plays a key role in the process of economic development. Investment in critical infrastructure has been documented in the literature as one of the pathways to boost agricultural productivity. In the third chapter, I study the causal impact of Chinese development finance on agricultural productivity in Tanzania, at the sub-national level. I combine household panel data with rich farm level information with geocoded Chinese development projects. I then exploit the within village level variation in the total number of Chinese financed development projects in a panel fixed effects model to examine their effects on agricultural productivity. I find a positive effect on agricultural productivity in villages that are located within 25 km of these projects. This is largely driven by economic infrastructure. The results are robust to alternative definitions of Chinese financed development projects. I also find that the potential mechanisms driving the results are agricultural commercialization and access to improved seeds. This suggests that these projects connect farmers to input and output markets.

Many children in developing countries forgo education due to the direct or opportunity costs of attending school. To help defray the direct costs of secondary schooling, the Ghanaian government launched its free secondary school initiative in 2017, which sought to make tuition and all educational-related expenses free for every Ghanaian child who passed the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE). The first objective of this study is to examine to what extent the association between household income and school enrollment decreased in strength over time due to Ghana’s 2017 policy reform using the Ghana socio-economic panel survey (GSPS) and difference-in-differences estimation technique. Our results show that household assets (a proxy for income) had a significant and positive association with school enrollment before the policy change; however, household assets have no significant association with enrollment after the policy change, thus suggesting that family resources do not matter for child enrollment after the policy change. Our results also imply that the 2017 policy reform effectively reduced the hurdles facing lower-income families in paying for secondary school education. The second objective of this study is to examine the effects of this government policy on household labor market outcomes in Ghana. Using the Ghana Socio-Economic Panel Survey (GSPS) and the difference-in-differences estimation technique, we found an increase in labor supply and wages for households with SHS kids before the policy change; however, after policy reform, both labor supply and wages of SHS households decreased suggesting that the free SHS policy did eliminates the direct cost of schooling. These results also indicate that the free SHS policy has significant implications for human capital development and household welfare and health since the policy eliminates the direct cost of schooling. The third chapter examines the impact of environmental tax revenues on domestic healthcare expenditures using panel data of 96 developing and developed countries from 2000 to 2018 and the fixed effect estimation technique. We find a positive and statistically significant association between total environmental tax revenue and government health expenditures; however, this finding is primarily driven by low-income countries. In addition, we find a positive effect of all kinds of environmental tax revenues on government health expenditures; however, the largest and strongest effect arises with pollution tax and transport tax respectively. Our empirical results confirm the validity of the double dividend hypothesis, thus suggesting that environmental tax revenues have significant implications for public health expenditures.

This diploma thesis is focused on analysis of factors affecting tax revenues in the Czech Republic. The theoretical part is dedicated to dividing taxes according to the type, discusses their functions and their principles, as well. After that the summary of previous investigations of factors with potencial effects to tax revenues is presented. The practical part begins with comparation of tax quota and its structure between the Czech Republic and selected European Union member countries. The main part is represented by the correlation and regression analysis of selected factors. As the result of this analysis the evaluation of their real effect is done.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Steven P. Cassou / This dissertation consists of three essays on modeling the behavior of both fiscal and monetary policy by allowing for asymmetry in preferences of the policy authorities. Whether the responses of fiscal or monetary policy to the business cycle conditions are symmetric or asymmetric is still an unresolved question. The idea behind asymmetric behavior is that policy makers take stronger action during times of distress than during ordinary times. The following chapters investigate this question empirically using data for the United States and show that policy makers do behave asymmetrically. Chapter 1 investigates whether the asymmetric monetary policy preferences for the output gap as shown in Surico (2007) disappeared during the post-Volcker period spanning 1982:04- 2003:02. The results show Surico’s conclusion to be fragile as moving the starting period for the estimation a few quarters forward shows strong asymmetric policy behavior. Chapter 2 investigates U.S. fiscal policy sustainability and cyclicality in empirical structures that allow fiscal policy responses to exhibit asymmetric behavior. Two quarterly intervals of data are investigated, both of which begin in 1955. The short sample was chosen for comparison to Bohn (1998), while the full sample uses all available data. The results for a short sample that ends in the second quarter of 1995 show some differences from the results for the full sample that includes the financial crisis and the Great Recession. For the full sample, U.S. fiscal policy is asymmetrical in regard to both sustainability and cyclicality. Regarding fiscal policy sustainability, the best fitting models show evidence of fiscal policy sustainability for the short sample. However, the fiscal sustainability question does become less clear for the full sample. Regarding fiscal policy cyclicality, we find during times of distress, policy is strongly countercyclical, but during good times the results are mixed. Chapter 3 investigates the source of asymmetry in reaction of U.S. fiscal policy to business cycle conditions, as shown in chapter 2. By decomposing the fiscal policy variable into the tax revenues and the expenditures, we show that both series exhibit asymmetry in a way which is analogous to the results found in chapter 2.