http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/1919 Habilitations Tue, 29 Sep 2026 21:14:19 GMT 2026-09-29T21:14:19Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/212270 The Politics of Electoral Reform in Central Europe since 1989: The Temptation of the Incumbents The main concern of this book is the latter approach, the politics of electoral reform, as it seeks to provide a description and explanation of the processes of electoral system change in Central Europe during the post-communist era. In particular, the focus is on electoral systems for the first or only chambers of the national parliaments. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to explore the reasons why a specific set of electoral rules emerged in a given country and in a given time, and the context in which these rules were enacted. The study thus subscribes to the research tradition studying electoral systems as the object of change (explanandum) instead of causal agent (explanans). However, the two approaches to studying electoral sys tems described above are clearly connected to one another and cannot be easily separated. Specific electoral systems are indeed chosen by political actors for their intended consequences and, once in existence, have political consequences for those actors. Hence, the objectives of this study are twofold. In addition to explaining the processes of electoral reform in Central Europe, it also aims to assess the political consequences of the electoral reforms under study in order to assess the extent to which the resulting electoral system satisfy the original intent of the change. Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/212270 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/212269 State, Policy, and Migrants: The Making of Migration Policy in the Czech Republic This habilitation thesis explores the evolution, structure, and resilience of migration and integration policy in the Czech Republic, with a particular focus on the period before and after the arrival of Ukrainian refugees in 2022. Through five peer-reviewed journal articles, the thesis investigates how institutional frameworks, political discourse, and multi-level governance have shaped the country’s approach to migrant integration. The first two articles analyse the discursive and financial dimensions of integration policy in the Czech Republic prior to 2022, while the remaining three assess the impact of the Ukrainian refugee crisis as a potential catalyst for policy adaptation. Methodologically, the thesis is based on qualitative analysis - policy document reviews, discourse analysis, and case studies - while selected cases also make use of quantitative analysis of available statistical data. It is grounded in concepts from policy design, historical institutionalism, and multilevel governance. The thesis identifies strong path dependencies in Czech migration governance, including limited inter-ministerial coordination, weak engagement with the NGO sector, and a tendency toward centralisation. At the same time, it documents new spaces of local and regional involvement triggered by the emergency reception of Ukrainian refugees. Although some crisis-driven innovations were introduced, the findings suggest that these shifts often lacked systemic follow-through and remained embedded in ad hoc governance modes. The thesis thus contributes to a better understanding of how external shocks interact with long-standing institutional legacies, offering both theoretical and empirical insights relevant to migration policy analysis in Central and Eastern Europe. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/212269 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/212268 The mortgage channel of macroeconomic dynamics This Habilitation Thesis is a collection of four published papers on the role of mortgages in macroeconomic dynamics. The first three papers constitute a contribution to the literature by explicitly incorporating nominal long-term mortgage contracts into macroeconomic models. The three papers are a joint work with two other co-authors, either Finn E. Kydland (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Peter Rupert (University of California, Santa Barbara) or Finn E. Kydland and Carlos Garriga (Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis). Prior to our work, mortgages in dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models were modeled as one period loans, contrary to their design in actual economies.1 The fourth paper is a more empirical piece of work, using time series techniques and high-frequency identification to uncover, among other things, the effects of monetary policy (its action, forward guidance, or its uncertainty) on mortgage rates and the housing market. This paper is a joint work with Iryna Kaminska (Bank of England) and Haroon Mumtaz (Queen Mary University of London). Together, the four papers provide new insights into the effects of mortgage contracts on the macroeconomy. The contribution to the literature is also reflected by the fact that the second paper (“Mortgages and Monetary Policy”) was chosen to be the Editor’s Choice article in the October 2017 issue of the Review of Financial Studies. All four papers are distinct pieces of work from my PhD Thesis (Three Essays on Aggregate Fluctuations). That is, none of the papers included in this Habilitation Thesis is included in my PhD Thesis. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/212268 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/212267 Econometrics of agent-based models in macroeconomics and finance The central motivation linking the six papers presented in this habilitation thesis is the effort to advance the econometric analysis of agent-based models (ABMs) within macroeconomic research and financial market modeling. This work contributes to the development of estimation techniques that tackle one of the most urgent issues in the eld of agent-based modeling in economics today: while these models substantially enhance our understanding of complex economic systems, their broader application in real-world policymaking remains signi cantly limited by the challenges of empirical validation and parameter estimation (Lux and Zwinkels 2018). http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/212267