Measuring the Quality of Bank Regulation and Supervision, with an Application to Transition Economies

This study develops a method to evaluate the quality of a legal framework for bank regulation and supervision (RS) by developing an extensive set of criteria and a coding system. Using this method, we generate an original set of measurements for RS by evaluating the letter of banking laws of 23 transition economies. In doing so, we also utilize the Basle guidelines on banking supervision and the related literature. The indices of RS indicate that legal banking reforms in Poland, Hungary and Estonia have been more ambitious than the rest of the countries in transition. In general, however, banking laws in transition economies indicate a lower regulatory and supervisory quality than indicated by the German banking law, if one is willing to choose the latter as a benchmark. This data set permits an empirical analysis of the relationship between legal RS and macroeconomic performance. The empirical evidence in the paper shows a significant positive relationship between RS and real GDP growth in transition economies.Bank regulation and supervision, growth, transition economies

Central Bank Transparency: Where, Why, and with What Effects?

Greater transparency in central bank operations is the most dramatic change in the conduct of monetary policy in recent years. In this paper we present new information on its extent and effects. We show that the trend is general: a large number of central banks have moved in the direction of greater transparency since the late 1990s. We then analyze the determinants and effects of central bank transparency in an integrated empirical framework. Transparency is greater in countries with more stable and developed political systems and deeper and more developed financial markets. Our preliminary analysis suggests broadly favorable if relatively weak impacts on inflation and output variability.

Corruption, Income Inequality, and Poverty in the United States

In this study we analyze the effects of corruption on income inequality and poverty. Our analysis advances the existing literature in four ways. First, instead of using corruption indices assembled by various investment risk services, we use an objective measure of corruption: the number of public officials convicted in a state for crimes related to corruption. Second, we use all commonly used inequality and poverty measures including various Atkinson indexes, Gini index, standard deviation of the logarithms, relative mean deviation, coefficient of variation, and the poverty rate defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. Third, we minimize the problems which are likely to arise due to data incomparability by examining the differences in income inequality, and poverty across U.S. states. Finally, we exploit both time series and cross sectional variation in the data. We find robust evidence that an increase in corruption increases income inequality and poverty.Corruption, Income Inequality, Poverty

ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE OF TOURISM SECTOR IN BALKAN COUNTRIES AND AN ANALYSIS OF THE TOURISM RELATIONS BETWEEN TURKEY AND BALKAN COUNTRIES

The Balkan region which has been unstable up to 2000s now host leading markets that make progress and attract attention in global economy from an economic,political, geographical, historical and cultural perspective. Particularly the newreforms and legal arrangements introduced in the Balkan countries within the framework of harmonization efforts with the European Union contributed to the emergence of a new environment of stability and peace. Positive development is observed if the general economic performance of the Balkan countries is analyzed by sectors. According to the tourism data of the World Tourism Organization in2011, tourism has become popular in recent yearsin Western Balkans; however, cross-border tourism has been in decline in many parts of the region due to the decrease in the spendable income. In addition, the tourists prefer developing countries; the change in this preference and the impact ofthe global economic crisis contributed to the rise of domestic and international tourism in the Balkan countries. Turkey's relations with the Balkans which appear to be extension of Turkey in the European continent have improved in a wide range of fields including economy, social affairs, culture and tourism. After introduction of project by Turkish Airlines, "Visa-Free Balkans," in 2011, the Turkish citizens became more interested in having vacation in the Balkans. It is also visible that Balkan countries have diversified their tourism options and that in addition, seasand and sun, they have other alternatives to offer including health tourism andfaith tourism.In this study, the necessary business enterprises on accommodation, traveling,transportation, food and catering in order to improve this potential and make it tourism supply in Balkan tourism and other relevant countries in international tourism market will be examined first. Subsequent to the examination of the tourism supply, the demand for tourism in these countries will be evaluated in the second part and the profile of the visitors by foreign active-foreign passive and domestic tourism will be drawn. The purpose in these two sections is to examine the tourism sector which contributes extensively to the economic and social development of these countries by focusing on its economic dimension. In the third section, the tourism relations between Balkan states and Turkey which is a remarkable destination in global market and ranked among the first ten countries by number of visitors and international tourism revenues as evidenced by the World TourismOrganization's data through economic, social and cultural dimensions. In the concluding section, some recommendations will be made on how to improvetourism relations between Turkey and Balkan states which already enjoy close tiesin economic and cultural spheres

Hop-limited routing for multihop cellular networks

In recent years, conventional cellular systems have experienced evolution in fields of data oriented services. During this period, the requirement for high data-rate stimulated new research proposals, which resulted in a new architecture: Multihop Cellular Networks (MCN), where multihop structure enables mobile stations to forward packets from other mobile stations to the base station on the uplink, and in turn, forward packets to other mobile stations from the base station on the downlink. In this thesis, a new routing algorithm is introduced for MCNs in order to limit the number of hops between the base station and the mobile stations with given delay constraints. The capacity of MCNs is restricted due to intensive traffic in the network since all nodes has the capability of sending packets simultaneously. The analysis of average end-to-end delay in high bitrate data transmission reveals that minimizing end-to-end delay with a proper scheduling scheme guarantees the aim of limiting number of hops in MCNs. The proposed algorithm showed that the intensive traffic can be absorbed by the base station by limiting the number of hops between the base station and the mobile stations

Buffalo’s Economic Development Compared: Buffalo as Part of the Rust Belt

In August 2017, The Worker Institute convened high level leaders over the course of two days, around a discussion of Buffalo, NY Since the Great Recession. With presentations, panels, and a visit to the UAW Local 774, participants gained a deeper understanding of the economic restructuring that followed the Great Recession and where this large metropolitan area stands today. Here, you will find links to the resources that were presented during this two day convening