Regulation and competition in the Turkish telecommunications industry: an update

This chapter provides an overview of the state of liberalization, competition and regulation of major segments of the telecommunications industry in Turkey. It shows that the competitive stance of the regulatory authority and the development of actual competition has been uneven across segments. Specifically, the degree of competition has been higher in the mobile segment relative to fixed telephony or broadband. The chapter also discusses the new Electronic Communications Law and argues that although not perfect, it provides a coherent basis on which the regulatory authority can pursue competitive objectives in a more even manner. However, the actual development of competition will depend a lot on how the law and the ensuing secondary legislation are actually implemented

An analysis of integrative outcomes in the Dayton peace negotiations

The nature of the negotiated outcomes of the eight issues of the Dayton Peace Agreement was studied in terms of their integrative and distributive aspects. in cases where integrative elements were Sound, further analysis was conducted by concentrating on Pruitt's five types of integrative solutions: expanding the pie, cost cutting, non-specific compensation, logrolling, and bridging. The results showed that real world international negotiations can arrive at integrative agreements even when they involve redistribution of resources tin this case the redistribution of former Yugoslavia). Another conclusion was that an agreement can consist of several distributive outcomes and several integrative outcomes produced by different kinds of mechanisms. Similarly, in single issues more than one mechanism can be used simultaneously. Some distributive bargaining was needed in order to determine how much compensation was required. Finally, each integrative formula had some distributive aspects as well

Energy privatisations, business-politics connections and governance under political Islam

The changing connections between business and political Islam under liberalisation can best be studied through an analysis of moral justifications, political connections in business and institutional modifications. Our evidence on energy utility privatisations through a comprehensive analysis of party connections with firm and industry specific data demonstrates that Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) reshaped industry structures to nurture a new breed of politically linked businesses. In order to build a patronage regime in energy markets, the AKP manipulated regulatory institutions, suppressed the media and advocacy groups, and immobilised the judicial process in response to allegations of misconduct. The highly personalised and opaque allocation of assets increased the power of business groups that enjoyed close ties with the prime minister and key party officials. Leading politically connected firms emerged as not only the major beneficiaries but also key supporters of authoritarian politics. Our findings have important implications for the analysis of political Islam, regulatory institutions and the vulnerabilities of energy privatisations in emerging economies

Exporting and Productivity: Evidence for Egypt and Morocco

This paper investigates the link between exporting and importing activities and firm performance using a rich dataset on Egyptian and Moroccan firms. We test the export premium, self-selection and learning-by-exporting hypotheses using a number of firm characteristics. Our analysis also includes importing activities as a source of learning and considers their effects on productivity changes. A differences-in-differences matching estimator is used to address the endogeneity bias of target variables. The main results for Egyptian firms echo those reported for other countries using firm-level data, namely exporters are larger and more productive than non-exporters. In contrast, Moroccan exporters and non-exporters are strikingly similar. More specifically, no evidence is found of pre or post-entry differences in labour productivity for Moroccan firms

Income inequality in turkey: 2003–2015

Turkey’s income inequality is one of the highest within the OECD countries. Despite a decline in Gini coefficient in the early years of the millennium, the gains have stalled, and inequality is rising again, resembling changing macroeconomic developments. This paper presents an investigation of income distribution in Turkey using evidence from inequality index decompositions by subgroup and by income source. The evidence suggests a close relationship between education of householder and inequality, while household formation became an important contributing factor in later years. Reliance on paid employment income and social transfers and decline in self-employment and asset incomes suggest an erosion in the incomes of middle classes