Testing the higher education-led growth hypothesis in a small island: an empirical investigation from a new version of the Solow growth model

This study employs a new version of the Solow Growth Model in order to investigate the higher education-led growth (HELG) hypothesis in the case of North Cyprus. Results reveal that a long-run equilibrium relationship exists between real income growth of North Cyprus and its determinants, namely capital, labor, and the higher education sector. Results show that real income growth converges to its long-term equilibrium level by 10.9 %. Granger causality tests suggest undirectional causality from higher education growth to real income growth in North Cyprus. Therefore, the HELG hypothesis can be inferred for the Turkish Cypriot economy.     

网站管理中若干安全问题的研究

文章从当今主流的加密技术、防火墙管理、常见攻击的类型和预防等方面,寻求解决网站安全度量的行之有效的办法,对近年来因特网用户数呈爆炸性增长,黑客攻击、病毒和信用卡欺诈等安全威胁因为存在更多潜在途径的进入而进一步加剧的情况进行探讨。     

Consolidation in the European banking industry: how effective is it?

The European banking industry is becoming increasingly consolidated as banks engage in domestic and cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) activities. Due to cultural differences in cross-border consolidations, the benefits of domestic and cross-border consolidations are likely to differ. This paper examines the effectiveness of merger processes, with a detailed analysis of both domestic and cross-border consolidations in Europe from 1998 to 2004. Effectiveness is measured via several criteria: improvement in costs, return on assets (ROA), and return on equity (ROE). To analyze potential cost efficiency improvement, we use a stochastic cost frontier approach. The same methodology is used for ROA and ROE to estimate efficiency in profitability. Finally, considering cross-border mergers as a form of entry, we carry out an analysis of the entry effect in response to the performance and profitability of the incumbent market participants. Results show that mergers in the European banking industry have been effective. Although domestic M&As are more common than cross-border M&As, banks involved in cross-border M&As are more efficient. Moreover, cross-border merged banks seem to outperform incumbent banks.     

Brand Personality and Emotional Attitudes: The Case of Mobile Telephone Operators

ABSTRACT

As part of a brand image, brand personality has aroused for years the interest of scholars and marketers. This article examines this concept in the case of two mobile telephone operators in Tunisia (North Africa). An empirical investigation, based on a sample of 272 students, has shown that brand personality influences and above all is influenced by emotional attitudes within consumers. At a managerial level, this study sheds light on the main brand personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, sophistication, and youth) that make successful product differentiation and communication strategies. An emotion-oriented approach is also indicated as a salient branding management key of success.     

Evaluating interpretable machine learning predictions for cryptocurrencies

This study explores various machine learning and deep learning applications on financial data modelling, analysis and prediction processes. The main focus is to test the prediction accuracy of cryptocurrency hourly returns and to explore, analyse and showcase the various interpretability features of the ML models. The study considers the six most dominant cryptocurrencies in the market: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Cardano, Ripple and Litecoin. The experimental settings explore the formation of the corresponding datasets from technical, fundamental and statistical analysis. The paper compares various existing and enhanced algorithms and explains their results, features and limitations. The algorithms include decision trees, random forests and ensemble methods, SVM, neural networks, single and multiple features N-BEATS, ARIMA and Google AutoML. From experimental results, we see that predicting cryptocurrency returns is possible. However, prediction algorithms may not generalise for different assets and markets over long periods. There is no clear winner that satisfies all requirements, and the main choice of algorithm will be tied to the user needs and provided resources.     

Market crises and Basel capital requirements: Could Basel III have been different? Evidence from Portugal,Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIGS)

Basel III represents a crucial step in strengthening the capital rules underlying banking operations, aimed at reducing the probability and severity of a systemic crisis. Alongside two supplementary capital buffers, the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision imposed severe pressure on the Value-at-Risk based Internal Models Approach in order to increase. This is to increase the capital base by adding the stressed Value-at-Risk component in an effort to reduce reliance on internal models while keeping the Standardized Approach avenue open. However, even though those measures might appear theoretically correct, evidence gathered for long and short exposures in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain highlights several defects in Basel III. We emphasize that leptokurtic models, primarily those derived from Extreme Value Theory, should be enforced in the regulations given their superior performance in market crises, and that Basel II could have shielded against 2008 mayhem provided that heavy-tailed techniques had been employed.     

Liberalisation,privatisation and the productivity of Egyptian banks: a non-parametric approach

This paper evaluates the performance of Egyptian banks during a period characterised by changes in economic policies. The Egyptian government's liberalisation policies in the early 1990s have had a positive or negative impact on the performance of the Egyptian banks. In addition, whether the liberalisation impact has influenced different forms of banks' ownership and sizes with consistent magnitude is examined. Another objective of this paper is to examine the impact of the privatisation process at the end of 1995 on the efficiency and productivity performance of the overall banking sector and on joint-venture banks in particular. The data envelopment analysis Malmquist methodology is employed to estimate the productivity of Egyptian banks.     

Formal and informal sectors: is there any wage differential?

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this paper is to investigate if a wage difference exists between formal and informal sectors in the case of the Turkish labour market using a sample of wageworkers. To this end, we use data for 2004 and 2009 and a novel definition of the informal sector. On the methodological front, we adopt three alternative decomposition techniques, namely, the Oaxaca-Ransom [(1994). On discrimination and the decomposition of wage differentials. Journal of Econometrics, 61, 5–21] decomposition in the context of mean regression, the Machado and Mata [(2005). Counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 20(4), 445–465] decomposition in the quantile regression framework and the non-parametric decomposition method proposed by Nopo [(2008). Matching as a tool to decompose wage gap. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(2), 290–299]. The results reveal the existence of a wage gap between the two sectors. We found education and experience to be key determinants of earnings. The findings of this paper have implications for policies, which might be directed towards developing approaches with a focus on education and experience.