Regulate one service,tame the entire market: Credit cards in Turkey

In credit card markets banks provide both payment and credit services. Two regulations were recently enacted in the Turkish credit card market: one on payment services in 2005 and the other on credit services in 2006. By employing the well-known  and  method and a unique quarterly data set for 21 Turkish banks between 2002 and 2008, we investigate the extent of banks’ market power in the Turkish credit card market before and after the regulations. Unlike most of the existing literature, which considers competition and regulation for either credit or payment services and ignores the externalities between them, we consider the entire market by taking both services into account. Fixed effects estimations reveal that banks enjoyed collusive oligopoly power before the regulations. Although the first regulation did not have much impact, the second led to rises in both banks’ total revenues and competition in the entire market.     

Fiscal Decentralization: A Remedy for Corruption?

This paper examines the effect of fiscal decentralization in a country on the level of corruption. Using a tax competition framework with rent-seeking behavior, it is shown theoretically that fiscal decentralization, modeled as an increase in the number of competing jurisdictions, leads to a lower level of corruption. This result is then tested using a small, cross-country data set. The empirical results are not very strong, but they suggest that the hypothesized relationship between decentralization and corruption may indeed exist.     

Tolerance,equality and access in all levels of education quality management

Forming quality is the most important elements of higher education in the world. Even in countries where systems in higher education are fully succeed in performance, quality is under ongoing observation. Barrier-free campuses are among the most crucial criteria in quality development and evaluation. While such campuses are strictly considered in American and European higher education, it has been observed that awareness of this issue has become a focus point in Turkey and necessary measures are taken. It is a fact that the disabled learners need to get benefit from educational services less than others. All individuals in a community have equal rights. Therefore, higher education has great responsibilities for “raising awareness”, “adapting standards by the community”, “understanding”, and “meeting the needs” of the disabled learners. The disability in our country are facing several problems such as education, employment, transportation and communication. Parallel to developing technology, there are solutions to such problems. Universities are institutions where scientist, educationalists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, politicians etc. are educated to shape the future of a country. Young people learn at universities, broaden their horizon, produce new ideas, and shape their future. At this stage, undoubtedly, universities are not expected to ignore the learners with disabilities. They, too, have the right, as other individuals, to receive education in their interest areas and contribute to production, benefit from all the facilities provided by the university and be active members of the society.