An Enforcement-Coalition Model: Fishermen and Authorities Forming Coalitions

The paper sets up a four-stage enforcement model of fish quotas. The purpose of the paper is to show how the level of enforcement set by the authorities affects the way fishermen form coalitions. We show that a high level of control effort yields less co-operation among fishermen, while in the case of low control effort, coalitions are somewhat self-enforcing. The paper further discusses how the optimal enforcement level changes when the coalition formation among authorities changes: centralised, partly centralised and decentralised authorities. We show that decentralised authorities set a lower level of control effort compared to the centralised authorities. The theoretical results are illustrated by simulations of the Baltic Sea cod fishery.The authors acknowledge valuable comments and suggestions from Frank Jensen and Niels Vestergaard.     

The ‘Greater Middle East’ as a ‘Modern’ Geopolitical Imagination in American Foreign Policy

This article aims at analysing how the September 11 terrorist attacks have caused the formation of a new geopolitical vision of an area called the ‘Greater Middle East’ and how this formation has led to changes in US foreign policy towards this region. To do that, the article first presents a theoretical background against which the modern geopolitical imagination of the USA is formulated. It considers the links between national traumas/myths, geopolitical codes and visions, and foreign policy actions. The article then applies this analysis to the case of the Greater Middle East with respect to how this imagined geography shapes the foreign and security policy of the USA. It concludes that even though this imagined region has been presented in texts as justifying US-led policies with liberal underpinnings, it has in reality laid the ground for and been used for justifying US extra-territorial intervention in the region.     

Characteristics of innovating firms in Tunisia: The essential role of external knowledge sources

This article is dedicated to the analysis of the first innovation survey of the Tunisian firms. Starting from basic mechanisms of innovation processes and existing results on other developing countries, we test a set of assumptions on the characteristics of innovating firms in a developing country like Tunisia. The analysis of product and process innovations shows the essential role played by external technical knowledge sources: firms must be able to benefit at least from one such a source in order to attain a significant innovation propensity. We also show that the profile of Tunisian firms can be contrasted with other developing countries. The main contrast concerns the limited role of internal R&D and the insignificant role played by foreign participation. For both types of innovations, another important contrasting result concerns the role of sectoral membership. In Tunisia, this dimension does not seem to structure enough systematically the innovative capabilities of firms. That could indicate an immaturity of sectoral systems of innovations in this country.     

Decreasing average cost in private schools,existence of majority voting equilibrium,and a policy analysis for Turkey

The existing models of mixed public–private school systems usually capture only the decreasing average cost faced by public schools, whereas empirical studies find evidence of it for private schools as well. Motivated by this, an equilibrium model of a mixed public–private school system is studied in this paper, whereby private schools also face decreasing average cost over enrollment. In the model, households, heterogeneous with respect to exogenously specified income and child’s ability, choose among a public and a private school. Private school charges tuition whereas public school is free. Public school spending is financed by income tax revenue collected from all households and the tax rate is determined via majority voting. Achievement of a child depends on its ability and education spending. Under the assumptions on the parameters of the model, a joint lognormal distribution of income and ability, and a Cobb–Douglas utility, majority voting equilibrium is numerically shown to exist. The model is calibrated to match certain statistics from the 2013 Turkish data. Using the calibrated model, we compare the benchmark for a mixed public–private school system with a pure public school system to understand the impact of shutting down some of the private schools in Turkey following the July 15 coup attempt. We find that mean achievement and variance of achievement after high school is \(0.039\%\) higher and \(0.013\%\) lower respectively in a pure public school system.     

Paternalist leadership style of the organizational trust

This study aims to evaluate the effect of paternalist administrators on the organizational trust of teachers working in their context. The notions of paternalist leadership style, trust, and organizational trust are explained based on literature. The study is based on qualitative research approach. Despite this, the short version of “Paternalist Leadership Scale”, developed by Cheng in 2004 and a short version prepared in 2014 is used initially. Administrators with paternalist leadership characteristic were established with the help of this scale. Later, open ended questions, developed by the authors, were asked to teachers in the schools as organizations of those administrators with the aim of establishing their “trust for the administrator and for the organization”. The sample of the research was made up of 30 teachers working at 5 primary schools of the North Cyprus Ministry of National Education during the 2016–2017 school year. It was observed in the findings that in the eyes of the teachers social characteristics of individuals were most important in creating and enhancing the feeling of trust. In addition, it was observed that personal characteristics were some of the defining factors in developing trust. The conclusion was reached that teachers working with paternalist administrators had positive communications with school administrators and colleagues, and that they carried out their relationships within the rules of good manners and kindness. Again, in the eyes of teachers, it was established that paternalist administrators were eager to renew themselves. Finally, paternalist administrators were found, with a high percentage, to be quite qualified in establishing organizational trust. In conclusion, based on the findings of this study, it can be said that administrators with paternal leadership qualities are qualified in creating organizational trust; therefore, it will be important to train administrators in developing their paternal leadership styles.     

An evaluation of higher education sector to the economy

Economic sectors consider the contribution of higher education sector. The big majority of the students studying at universities in North Cyprus come from overseas and they compose a big proportion in the population of North Cyprus and they contribute to the economy of North Cyprus as well as to the others involved. According to educational economists, the main source of economic development is the quality and level of education individuals receive. The quality of education has a big effect on the socio-politic and economic structure of a community. This, obviously, indicates the importance of universities for the communities and economy. The aim of this study is to evaluate the contribution of individual education to economy and the development of the country as well as the positive contribution of the universities to the economy of the country. A case study, one of qualitative research models, was conducted in this study. As for the study group, an “intentional sampling”, a model without selection, model was used. In this process, representatives from sectors, public organizations, and organizations in economy operating in the North Cyprus were interviewed and questioned through semi-structured interview forms. The research data was analyzed through content-analysis method and the contribution of the research has been presented as suggestions for the future.     

Value at risk methodology of international index portfolio under soft conditions (fuzzy-stochastic approach)

The approach to modelling uncertainty of the international index portfolio by the value at risk (VAR) methodology under soft conditions by fuzzy-stochastic methodology is described in the paper. The generalised term uncertainty is understood to have two aspects: risk modelled by probability (stochastic methodology) and vagueness sometimes called impreciseness, ambiguity, softness is modelled by fuzzy methodology. Thus, hybrid model is called fuzzy-stochastic model. Input data for a stochastic model are unique distribution functions and crisp (real) data. Input data for fuzzy model are fuzzy numbers and crisp (real) data. Input data for hybrid model are fuzzy probability distribution functions, unique distribution functions, and crisp (real) data. Softly defined VAR model is constructed as hybrid model because it is supposed that the input data are difficult to determine as crisp numbers or as some unique distribution functions. Risk is modelled by stochastic methodology on the VAR basis and vagueness is modelled through the fuzzy numbers. The analytical delta normal VAR methodology for international index portfolio under soft conditions is described including illustrative example. It is shown, that methodology described could be considered to be generalised sensitivity analysis.     

The signs of change in economic evolution

Neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary economics has, since the early works of Nelson and Winter, defined evolution as the change of the mean of a characteristic of a population. This paper trancends the previous paradigm and explores novel aspects of evolution in economics. Within the traditional paradigm change is provided by directional selection (and directional innovation). However, the full definition of evolutionary processes has to include two important types of selection that change the variance without necessarily changing the mean. Stabilizing selection removes any outlier and diversifying selection promotes the coexistence of behavioural variants. This paper emphasizes the need for an integrated analysis of all three types of selection. It also demonstrates that the evolutionary algebra provided by Price’s equation increases the intellectual coherence and power of thinking about selection and other aspects of evolutionary processes. Directional, stabilizing and diversifying selection are then related to fitness functions that can produce the different types of selection; and the functions are used for simple simulations of the change of the population distribution of a quantitative characteristic. Finally, the paper adds to evolutionary economics a novel way of using Price’s equation to decompose the statistics of the changes of the frequency distributions. The changes of mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis are all decomposed as the sum of a selection effect and an intra-member effect. It is especially the signs of these effects that serve to define and characterize the different types of selection. Both this result and the general analysis of the types of selection are of relevance for applied evolutionary economics.     

Multistage public education,voting, and income distribution

This paper proposes a theory to study the formulation of education policies and human capital accumulation. The government collects income taxes and allocates tax revenue to primary and higher education. The tax rate and the allocation rule are both endogenously determined through majority voting. The tax rate is kept at a low level, and public funding for higher education is not supported unless the majority of individuals have human capital above some threshold. Although public support for higher education promotes aggregate human capital accumulation, it may create long-run income inequality because the poor are excluded from higher education.     

CUE with many weak instruments and nearly singular design

This paper analyzes many weak moment asymptotics under the possibility of similar moments. The possibility of highly related moments arises when there are many of them. Knight and Fu (2000) designate the issue of similar regressors as the “nearly singular” design in the least squares case. In the nearly singular design, the sample variance converges to a singular limit term. However, Knight and Fu (2000) assume that on the nullspace of the limit term, the difference between the sample variance and the singular matrix converges in probability to a positive definite matrix when multiplied by an appropriate rate. We consider specifically Continuous Updating Estimator (CUE) with many weak moments under nearly singular design. We show that the nearly singular design affects the form of the limit of the many weak moment asymptotics that is introduced by Newey and Windmeijer (2009a). However, the estimator is still consistent and the Wald test has the standard χ²${\chi }^2$ limit.