Influence of the Czech Banks on their Foreign Owner's Interest Margin

AbstractThe present paper investigates functional relationship between the parent companies and their subsidiaries, the Czech banks. The aim of this study is to examine if there are relationships between net interest margin of foreign parent companies and our selected variables of their Czech subsidiaries. We are using GMM regression with annual data in panels from the period 2005 – 2010. We confirm that there are some significant relationships between net interest income of foreign parent's and the both amount of gross loans and total deposits of their subsidiaries. In addition, we show the ways how it is possible for parent«s to get some cash flows from the Czech banking sector. We make also monetary policy implications for the Czech National Bank, then

Now you see it, now you don’t: flushing hosts prior to experimentation can predict their responses to brood parasitism

Brood parasitic birds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, leaving hosts to raise their offspring. To understand parasite-host coevolutionary arms races, many studies have examined host responses to experimentally introduced eggs. However, attending parents often need to be flushed from their nests to add experimental eggs. If these birds witness parasitism events, they may recognize and reject foreign eggs more readily than parents who did not. We found that, after being flushed, female blackbirds, Turdus merula, remained close to their nests. Flushed females were more likely to eject foreign eggs and did so more quickly than females that were not flushed during experimentation. In contrast, flushing did not predict responses and latency to responses to parasitism by song thrush, Turdus philomelos, which flew farther from their nests and likely did not witness experimental parasitism. When statistically considering flushing, previously published conclusions regarding both species’ response to experimental parasitism did not change. Nevertheless, we recommend that researchers record and statistically control for whether hosts were flushed prior to experimental parasitism. Our results have broad implications because more vigilant and/or bolder parents can gain more information about parasitism events and therefore have better chances of successfully defending against brood parasitism

Peak systolic velocity ratio for evaluation of internal carotid artery stenosis correlated with plaque morphology: substudy results of the ANTIQUE study

BackgroundAccurate assessment of carotid stenosis severity is important for proper patient management. The present study aimed to compare the evaluation of carotid stenosis severity using four duplex sonography (DUS) measurements, including peak systolic velocity (PSV), PSV ratio in stenosis and distal to stenosis (PSVICA/ICA ratio), end-diastolic velocity (EDV), and B-mode, with computed tomography angiography (CTA), and to evaluate the impact of plaque morphology on correlation between DUS and CTA.MethodsConsecutive patients with carotid stenosis of ≥40% examined using DUS and CTA were included. Plaque morphology was also determined using magnetic resonance imaging. Spearman’s correlation and Kendall’s rank correlation were used to evaluate the results.ResultsA total of 143 cases of internal carotid artery stenosis of ≥40% based on DUS were analyzed. The PSVICA/ICA ratio showed the highest correlation [Spearman’s correlation r = 0.576) with CTA, followed by PSV (r = 0.526), B-mode measurement (r = 0.482), and EDV (r = 0.441; p < 0.001 in all cases]. The worst correlation was found for PSV when the plaque was calcified (r = 0.238), whereas EDV showed a higher correlation (r = 0.523). Correlations of B-mode measurement were superior for plaques with smooth surface (r = 0.677), while the PSVICA/ICA ratio showed the highest correlation in stenoses with irregular (r = 0.373) or ulcerated (r = 0.382) surfaces, as well as lipid (r = 0.406), fibrous (r = 0.461), and mixed (r = 0.403; p < 0.01 in all cases) plaques. Nevertheless, differences between the mentioned correlations were not statistically significant (p > 0.05 in all cases).ConclusionPSV, PSVICA/ICA ratio, EDV, and B-mode measurements showed comparable correlations with CTA in evaluation of carotid artery stenosis based on their correlation with CTA results. Heavy calcifications and plaque surface irregularity or ulceration negatively influenced the measurement accuracy

Formování úvěrových trhů vybraných zemí Evropské unie : analýza užitím panelové regrese

This paper aims to explore the credit markets' development of selected EU countries by selected economic variables. The article shows the common features of credit markets in selected EU countries. When comparing the results of both methods, we can identify several similarities, but also some contradictory results. Main results show that the EU credit markets' panel regression have some weaknesses due to non-existing cointegration causalities. The work is initially focused on data analysis of 25 EU member states. The analysis is selected on the basis of the existence of cointegration causalities for using the method of least squares. The same panel data are then analyzed by the GMM. The second method also allows the installation of a generalized regression model constructed from the data in a selected panel of 25 countries. The annual frequency data includes the data from the period 1998 to 2009

What Drives Liquidity of Tourism Companies? Microeconomic Evidence from Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Poland

Current paper focuses on business economics of tourism industry. Liquidity of a company has the key role within financial management among all industries, including the tourism as well. However, the question still remains: What drives the liquidity among hotels and travel agencies? The aim of the paper is to investigate whether or not is the liquidity among tourism companies in Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Poland affected by other selected microeconomic variables. It is obtained financial data from annual reports of 1,892 tourism companies collected within Amadeus, the international statistical database. Estimated period is from 2006 till 2015. In particular it has been explored three variables (i) return on assets, (ii) share of stockholders’ funds, and (iii) average length of loans from creditors. As the main estimation method is employed the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with panel data. A comparison is made between both, large as well as medium sized hotels and travel agencies in selected countries. Except of a few, it was proven that reinvestments of the decreasing profit supported liquidity among tourism companies during a period affected by the global financial crisis

Managers of tourism companies can no longer expect any financial support from company owners: different working capital management due to the global financial crisis

Tourism evidence is more and more often among the research literature because of its importance for the economy. Nonetheless, there is still a huge gap in recent literature related to its financial issues, the microeconomics of tourism in other words. This particular paper focuses neither on economic growth, nor the number of arrivals, which is both the most common fields in literature. It focuses on the financial management of middle-sized hotels and travel agencies. The aim of the study is to estimate the relationship between profitability and both, working capital management and reinvestments of companies’ owners of medium-sized hotels and travel agencies in the period affected by the global financial crisis. Annual data from two international databases, Amadeus and Orbis, are used to compare differences caused by the global financial crisis and later on, the Euro crisis. Both of these economic events affected even tourism without any doubts. According to a character of variables the General Method of Moments (GMM) with panel data is deployed as the main estimation method. There is an effort made to explain this particular regression method and all reasons for its usage, more importantly, to explain that a reader in a clear way. The results of this study have proven that managers cannot expect any financial support from owners of tourism companies. Even though the owners were obviously distributing the earnings during the crisis period, managers were able to increase the net working capital apparently. Therefore, on the contrary, owners would put the pressure on managers to employ a riskier payment policy of middlesized hotels and travel agencies after the crisis

Were the Czech Hotels Able to Confront Current Appreciation of the Czech Currency Before the End of the Exchange Rate Commitment?

This paper has focused on the issue of foreign exchange markets in relation to tourism and hotel industry in the small open economy such as the Czech Republic. After more than three years when the Czech National Bank (CNB) intervened on the foreign exchange market, everybody look forward to development of exchange rates after the end of the exchange rate commitment. The aim of this study is to show how Czech hotels were been able to confront current appreciation of the Czech koruna before the CNB had ended the exchange rate commitment. According to this aim it was necessary to investigate relations between exchange rates and turnover of Czech hotels as the first. Therefore, it has been obtained time series of the hotels’ profit and loss statements from Bureau van Dijk’s Amadeus international statistical database as well as exchange rates from the CNB online database. Other data is from the Eurostat and the World Bank online statistical database. As the main estimation method it is used the GMM approach with panel data for period from 2007 till 2014. After the estimation of those statistical significant relations it is essential to describe the ways, how were the hotels been able to face the exchange rate risk before the end of the commitment. Furthermore, it has been differentiated between natural hedging for smaller hotels and the usage of the financial derivatives for these bigger. Three types of hedging are described: (i) natural hedging, (ii) usage of a currency forward, and (iii) taking a loan in foreign currency

Day of the week effect in central european stock markets

The aim of the paper is to estimate the day of the week effect in the stock markets in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland over the period 2006–2012. The paper fills the gap in literature as the most recent period and the countries covered by the present paper have not been studied yet. The entire period of estimation is divided to six sub-periods capturing individual phases of the financial and economic crisis. We separately estimate a modified GARCH-M (1,1) model for each country and each sub-period using daily returns of the major national stock market indices. Although the markets share the main development trends the reactions of markets to domestic and international shocks differ remarkably. The day of the week effect is measured for both daily returns and conditional variance (volatility) of the returns. The results clearly indicate that there is a little evidence of day of the week effect. Daily calendar anomalies are rather sporadic, isolated, unstable over time and often opposite to theoretical assumptions. While some occurrences of the day of the week effect were revealed in the Czech Republic and Poland, Hungary is almost completely free of anomalies. There is no phase of financial crisis characteristic of significantly increased incidence of day of the week effects. However, only stage with no day effect in returns was the pre-crisis period. We conclude that the day of the week effect is not typical for the Central European stock markets and the recent financial crisis seems to have no impact on existence of this phenomenon in the markets

Volatility of yields of government bonds among GIIPS countries during the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area

The aim of the paper is to estimate, how the volatility of yields of the Greek bonds affects yields’ volatilities of bonds in selected European countries during the period of the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area. We obtained data for 10-year bonds in a weekly frequency from January 2006 till the end of December 2014. To make a comparison of pre-crisis period, we firstly investigate a bond yields’ volatility before 15th September 2008, when U.S. Leman Brothers bankrupted and the global financial crisis had been reflected in full. However, the period of the global financial crisis could also negatively affect the development of government bonds. Therefore, the period after Leman Brothers’ bankruptcy has been excluded and our crisis period starts after 23rd April 2010, when Greece asked the IMF for financial help and the sovereign debt crisis had been reflected in full. Volatility models GARCH (1,1), IGARCH (1,1) and TARCH (1,1) were used as an estimation method. To examine the risk premium of all GIIPS economies (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain), we also compared the whole investigation with the developments of each spread against the yields of German government bonds. Our results clearly proved not only big differences between pre-crisis and crisis period, but also differences in output with the bond yield spreads. It was concluded that there has been a higher impact of the Greek bond yields, as well as yield spreads volatility in 2010 and 2011, while it is on the lower level in pre-crisis period

VOLATILITY OF YIELDS OF GOVERNMENT BONDS AMONG GIIPS COUNTRIES DURING THE SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS IN THE EURO AREA

The aim of the paper is to estimate, how the volatility of yields of the Greek bonds affects yields’ volatilities of bonds in selected European countries during the period of the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area. We obtained data for 10-year bonds in a weekly frequency from January 2006 till the end of December 2014. To make a comparison of pre-crisis period, we firstly investigate a bond yields’ volatility before 15th September 2008, when U.S. Leman Brothers bankrupted and the global financial crisis had been reflected in full. However, the period of the global financial crisis could also negatively affect the development of government bonds. Therefore, the period after Leman Brothers’ bankruptcy has been excluded and our crisis period starts after 23rd April 2010, when Greece asked the IMF for financial help and the sovereign debt crisis had been reflected in full. Volatility models GARCH (1,1), IGARCH (1,1) and TARCH (1,1) were used as an estimation method. To examine the risk premium of all GIIPS economies (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain), we also compared the whole investigation with the developments of each spread against the yields of German government bonds. Our results clearly proved not only big differences between pre-crisis and crisis period, but also differences in output with the bond yield spreads. It was concluded that there has been a higher impact of the Greek bond yields, as well as yield spreads volatility in 2010 and 2011, while it is on the lower level in pre-crisis period