Competition on the Global Market: A Way Towards an Autonomous International Court for Global Competition Cases

Competition policy is a field where economists and lawyers have to work hand in hand to achieve efficiency and, in the international arena, global welfare. At the present, there is no internationally recognised official authority under the auspices of which there would take shape the global competition policy and, simultaneously, set up a core of global competition rules. Competition policy, still national or supranational in its nature, is, as a consequence, under strong influence of other national or supranational policies and so regulated by various laws that in their specific way address competition cases including those with an international element. Overlapping of jurisdictions, conflicts between substantive and procedural laws are unavoidable. Considering that full and simultaneous compliance with all those laws is a hard task to fulfil, it makes cross-border transaction much more risky, time consuming, and costly than is necessary. By setting up an autonomous international court for global competition cases not only would we get rid obstacles to efficient enforcement of competition but we could make global welfare flourish without depriving developing countries of their economic growth.global competition, global market, international court, enforcement, World Trade Organization

Compressed zero-divisor graphs of noncommutative rings

We extend the notion of the compressed zero-divisor graph $\varTheta(R)$ to noncommutative rings in a way that still induces a product preserving functor $\varTheta$ from the category of finite unital rings to the category of directed graphs. For a finite field $F$, we investigate the properties of $\varTheta(M_n(F))$, the graph of the matrix ring over $F$, and give a purely graph-theoretic characterization of this graph when $n \neq 3$. For $n \neq 2$ we prove that every graph automorphism of $\varTheta(M_n(F))$ is induced by a ring automorphism of $M_n(F)$. We also show that for finite unital rings $R$ and $S$, where $S$ is semisimple and has no homomorphic image isomorphic to a field, if $\varTheta(R) \cong \varTheta(S)$, then $R \cong S$. In particular, this holds if $S=M_n(F)$ with $n \neq 1$.Comment: 30 page

Perceived Effects of Croatian Customs Services Reform: the Opinion of Forwarders from Istarska County

The reforms of the public sector rank among the most complex problems Croatia has to face in the process of transition and accession to the EU. One of the recent reforms, the Customs Service Reform, offers insights into some of the achieved improvements and may serve as a guideline for reformers in other areas of public management. This research provides evidence of “customer satisfaction” with the functioning of the Croatian Customs System. Conclusions have been drawn based on the responses of 31 forwarders from Istarska County using a 19-item Likert scale. According to their opinion, services have improved in several aspects during the past few years, and accordingly the results can be interpreted as an indication of success of reform efforts.public services; quality perception; reform results; customs services

The total zero-divisor graph of commutative rings

In this paper we initiate the study of the total zero-divisor graphs over commutative rings with unity. These graphs are constructed by both relations that arise from the zero-divisor graph and from the total graph of a ring. We characterize Artinian rings with the connected total zero-divisor graphs and give their diameters. Moreover, we compute major characteristics of the total zero-divisor graphs of the ring ${\mathbb Z}_m$ of integers modulo $m$ and prove that the total zero-divisor graphs of ${\mathbb Z}_m$ and ${\mathbb Z}_n$ are isomorphic if and only if $m=n$