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REVIEW OF THE BACHERLOR THESIS SUPERVISOR
Student’s name and surname: Wei Ma...
Thesis title: Usury and Macroeconomic (In)stability: A Comparative Study of Norway and United Arab Emirates ...
Thesis supervisor: Ing. Lukáš Augustin Máslo, Ph.D. ...
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Assessment of the main aspects of the thesis:
1 Structure of the thesis (logical and systematic construction) ☒ ☐ ☐ ☐
2 Goal of the thesis (unambiguity of formulation, adequacy) ☒ ☐ ☐ ☐
3 Quality of the theoretical part ☒ ☐ ☐ ☐
4 Quality of the application/analytical/empirical part ☐ ☒ ☐ ☐
5 Adequacy of the methods to the goal of the thesis ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
6 Sources (topicality, relevance, frequency) ☒ ☐ ☐ ☐
7 Quality of conclusions, fulfillment of the goal of the thesis ☐ ☒ ☐ ☐
8 Formal aspects (formatting, stylistics, references) ☐ ☒ ☐ ☐
Verbal assessment (describe the strongest and weakest aspects of the thesis; especially in case of a low assessment 3-4, concrete reproaches need to be expressed):
The methodology of the practical part is uneasy to penetrate. The goal is to assess the influence of a certain financial system on the macroeconomic stability. Influence means causation. The necessary condition of causation is correlation. However, the term correlation does not appear in the thesis even one time. Instead, the author uses a term “matching degree between input and output variables”, in connection to the machine learning decision tree algorithm (XGBoost) and principal component analysis (PCA). In addition, the author measures the importance of each input variable to the output variables. Again, is this importance the same as correlation coefficient? I don’t want to suggest that the chosen methods are not adequate. I just want to say that since these methods are not so frequently used and known, it would be advisable to explain their relation to more standard methods, such as correlation analysis, for example.
The conclusion are a little bit ambiguous. In the last paragraph of the section 2.3 (p. 46), the author is partially directly, partially indirectly suggesting that the central hypothesis has not been supported by the data. However, this conclusion does not appear in the final Conclusion of the thesis. The Conclusion seems to suggest that the author is recommending the Islamic countries to become more open as concerns the institutional foundations. This is in a contradiction with other statements of the thesis where the author adores the macroeconomic stability of usury-free economies.
The graphs and formulas are printed in a rather bad quality and sometimes they are barely readable.
Complex assessment (it is necessary to state whether the thesis complies with the Methodological guidelines of the Faculty of Economics, University of Economics, Prague as concerns the quality of the content, the extent and formal requirements and whether the thesis is being recommended to the defense or not; the thesis can also be nominated to a special award, etc. ):
The thesis puts forward a very interesting and up-to-date question. The theoretical part presents a detailed and extensive factual description, as well as a deep and solid theoretical foundation. Even though the goal of the thesis is formulated clearly enough, the conclusion is ambiguous and, partially, contradicts other statements in the thesis. The methodology would deserve some kind of link to the concepts of the standard quantitative analysis, such as causation, correlation etc. The graphs and formulas are not in the best possible quality. The general impression from the thesis is that the author did not preserve the level of quality which is characterizing the theoretical part. Despite of these deficiencies, though, the thesis represents a good piece of scientific work and meets the main requirements placed on the theses of this type by the Faculty of Economics and I recommend it to the defense before the committee.
Questions to the defense:
In a usury-free economy, the creditor-debtor relation is basically replaced by a partner-partner relation. While the creditor does not bear the risk of the debtor’s failure, the partner does. This co-sharing of risk is the specific difference between the usurious relation (or credit relation) an the partnership. The interest rate does not exist in the usury free economy. The only relevant indicator is the rate of return on an investment. So, can we, in effect, talk about the usury-free economy being part of the global capital market? On what conditions?
Suggested grade: Very Good / Good
Date: September 3, 2021 ...
Thesis supervisor’s signature
