Effects of Ownership and Financial Status on Corporate Environmental Performance

This paper analyzes the effects of ownership structure on corporate environmental performance and examines the link from financial performance to environmental performance in a transition economy. In particular, it analyzes these ownership effects and this performance link using an unbalanced panel of Czech firms for the years 1993 to 1998. It considers state ownership and various types of private ownership, while contrasting concentrated and diffuse forms of private ownership. Additionally, it examines whether or not successful financial performance begets or undermines good environmental performance.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39877/3/wp492.pd

Financial Conditions and Investment during the Transition: Evidence from Czech Firms

In this paper, we examine net investment during the early stages of transition using micro data on the population of medium and large industrial firms in the Czech Republic during the 1992-95 period. We examine the relevance of alternative models of investment and test if investment behavior varies across categories of ownership and with the legal status of firms. Our analysis of depreciation leads us to the conclusion that replacement investment displays a similar pattern in many ownership-legal form categories of firms. Retained profit is found to be the major determinant of new investment and the estimate is statistically significant even when we use the most robust fixed effects estimates based on one-year differences. We find that enterprise profitability has a strong positive effect on investment in all types of firms except privately owned-limited liability companies and foreign owned and mixed ownership firms. These results are consistent with the financing-hierarchy and credit-rationng hypotheses which indicate that domestic firms cannot easily borrow investment funds externally and that net investment varies with retained profits. Firms take into account various stock measures of internal finance. In particular, a stock of cash, receivables, receivables overdue, payables, and payables overdue systematically affect net investment.investment, cash-flow, restructuring, ownership, legal status, transition to a market economy

Effects of Ownership and Financial Status on Corporate Environmental Performance

This paper analyzes the effects of ownership structure on corporate environmental performance and examines the link from financial performance to environmental performance in a transition economy. In particular, it analyzes these ownership effects and this performance link using an unbalanced panel of Czech firms for the years 1993 to 1998. It considers state ownership and various types of private ownership, while contrasting concentrated and diffuse forms of private ownership. Additionally, it examines whether or not successful financial performance begets or undermines good environmental performance.Czech Republic, environmental protection, pollution, ownership, financial status

Determinants of Financial Distress: What Drives Bankruptcy in a Transition Economy? The Czech Republic Case

The main factors influencing the probability of bankruptcy are analyzed on Czech Republic 1993-1999 firm data. Basic models of the bankruptcy are compared: neoclassical, financial and corporate governance. The corporate governance hypothesis does not receive support in the ownership but the indicator of voucher privatization supports it. The initial conditions from early 90's were not the driving the financial distress. The voucher-scheme privatization results in poorer corporate governance. These firms are more likely to go bankrupt, ceteris paribus. On the other hand, former large SOEs are less likely to bankrupt than firms with a similar debt structure - this is an evidence of soft budget constraints.Banking and Finance, Corporate Governance, Privatization, Czech Republic, bankruptcy, privatization, soft budget constraint, financial distress

Web Portal for Network Traffic Reporting

Bakalářská práce se zabývá vývojem webového portálu pro generování zpráv o síťovém provozu. Představuje dostupné technologie pro sledování dění v síti, důkladněji se zaměřuje především na NetFlow, které je v této práci použito. Popisuje celý vývojový cyklus od analýzy, specifikace a implementace až k testování vytvořené aplikace. Výsledkem práce je systém založený na skriptovacím jazyce PHP a databázi PostgreSQL, který vytváří a zpřístupňuje zprávy o dění v síti přes WWW rozhraní. Poskytuje také možnost uložení výstupů ve formátu PDF.This thesis focuses on development of a web portal, which provides information about network traffic. It describes available technologies, which can be used for the network monitoring. It puts emphasis especially on NeTFlow. This paper also descirebs the whole development cycle from analysis to implementation and testing. The outcome of this work is a online system, based on PHP language and PostgreSQL database, which creates reports on the network traffic and makes them accessible via WWW. It is also able to save these reports to a PDF file.

Determinants of Financial Distress: What Drives Bankruptcy in a Transition Economy? The Czech Republic Case

The main factors influencing the probability of bankruptcy are analyzed on Czech Republic 1993-1999 firm data. Basic models of the bankruptcy are compared: neoclassical, financial and corporate governance. The corporate governance hypothesis does not receive support in the ownership but the indicator of voucher privatization supports it. The initial conditions from early 90's were not the driving the financial distress. The voucher-scheme privatization results in poorer corporate governance. These firms are more likely to go bankrupt, ceteris paribus. On the other hand, former large SOEs are less likely to bankrupt than firms with a similar debt structure - this is an evidence of soft budget constraints.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39835/3/wp451.pd

Comparison of methods for flow border detection in images of smoke visualization

A separation of the flow region from the surroundings is an essential step in the analysis of smoke visualization images. The separation can be performed using several detection methods from the image segmentation group. This paper deals with the border detection of the air flow downstream of a benchmark automotive vent using different threshold-based detection methods. An assessment of the methods on the basis of the resulting image quality is also addressed. The quality level depends on the quantity and brightness of disturbances in the background area. The disturbance is usually an isolated region of smoke, which naturally cannot be a part of the flow. Three representative images of different quality levels were selected for the detection, and three methods were used for the evaluation. Each of the methods was used to determine the threshold differently (by the level, by the ratio, and by the change of brightness). It is demonstrated that the change-based method with an appropriately selected parameter is the most convenient for images with the worst quality level while level- and ratio-based methods are only applicable for images of good quality.A separation of the flow region from the surroundings is an essential step in the analysis of smoke visualization images. The separation can be performed using several detection methods from the image segmentation group. This paper deals with the border detection of the air flow downstream of a benchmark automotive vent using different threshold-based detection methods. An assessment of the methods on the basis of the resulting image quality is also addressed. The quality level depends on the quantity and brightness of disturbances in the background area. The disturbance is usually an isolated region of smoke, which naturally cannot be a part of the flow. Three representative images of different quality levels were selected for the detection, and three methods were used for the evaluation. Each of the methods was used to determine the threshold differently (by the level, by the ratio, and by the change of brightness). It is demonstrated that the change-based method with an appropriately selected parameter is the most convenient for images with the worst quality level while level- and ratio-based methods are only applicable for images of good quality

Experimental verification of boundary conditions for numerical simulation of airflow in a benchmark ventilation channel

Correct definition of boundary conditions is crucial for the appropriate simulation of a flow. It is a common practice that simulation of sufficiently long upstream entrance section is performed instead of experimental investigation of the actual conditions at the boundary of the examined area, in the case that the measurement is either impossible or extremely demanding. We focused on the case of a benchmark channel with ventilation outlet, which models a regular automotive ventilation system. At first, measurements of air velocity and turbulence intensity were performed at the boundary of the examined area, i.e. in the rectangular channel 272.5 mm upstream the ventilation outlet. Then, the experimentally acquired results were compared with results obtained by numerical simulation of further upstream entrance section defined according to generally approved theoretical suggestions. The comparison showed that despite the simple geometry and general agreement of average axial velocity, certain difference was found in the shape of the velocity profile. The difference was attributed to the simplifications of the numerical model and the isotropic turbulence assumption of the used turbulence model. The appropriate recommendations were stated for the future work

Characterization of aerosol nebulized by Aerogen Solo mesh nebulizer

Nebulizers are commonly used devices for inhalation treatment of various disorders. There are three main categories of medical nebulization technology: jet nebulizers, ultrasound nebulizer, and mesh nebulizer. The mesh nebulizers seem to be very promising since this technology should be able to produce aerosol with precisely determined particle size and is easy to use as well [1]. Aerosol generated from the mesh nebulizer Aerogen Solo was measured in this work. Particle size distribution with a mass median of aerodynamic diameter (MMAD) was determined by two different methods

Simulation of Airway Deposition of an Aerosol Drug in COPD Patients

Medical aerosols are key elements of current chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) therapy. Therapeutic effects are conditioned by the delivery of the right amount of medication to the right place within the airways, that is, to the drug receptors. Deposition of the inhaled drugs is sensitive to the breathing pattern of the patients which is also connected with the patient's disease severity. The objective of this work was to measure the realistic inhalation profiles of mild, moderate, and severe COPD patients, simulate the deposition patterns of Symbicort((R)) Turbuhaler((R)) dry powder drug and compare them to similar patterns of healthy control subjects. For this purpose, a stochastic airway deposition model has been applied. Our results revealed that the amount of drug depositing within the lungs correlated with the degree of disease severity. While drug deposition fraction in the lungs of mild COPD patients compared with that of healthy subjects (28% versus 31%), lung deposition fraction characteristic of severe COPD patients was lower by a factor of almost two (about 17%). Deposition fraction of moderate COPD patients was in-between (23%). This implies that for the same inhaler dosage severe COPD patients receive a significantly lower lung dose, although, they would need more