Promoting an Effective Market Economy in a Changing World

In this paper we examine the main challenges in promoting an effective market economy. While the paper ranges widely across the spectrum of economic institutions and policies, the central theme is the importance of macroeconomic stability for economic growth in the medium and long run. Macroeconomic stability may be seen as a public good. Its provision is among the essential responsibilities of the state both in modern market economies and in economies transforming themselves into modern market economies. Following this brief introduction, Section II considers four key aspects of the economic environment of the coming decade: increasing internationalisation; market-orientation; diminished government role; high real interest rates. Section III reviews the reasons why macroeconomic stability matters for economic performance and summarises the key empirical evidence supporting the existence of a causal link. Section IV deals with the design of domestic and international policies and institutions to promote macroeconomic stability and Section V asks how national governments and international institutions can take advantage of the current relatively stable global macroeconomic environment to improve medium-term growth. Section IV concludes. While our discussion will range broadly both theoretically and empirically, we shall emphasise lessons for , and experience from, countries attempting to create a market economy.

A Tourism Satellite Account assessment of the impact of cruise industry on the greek economy

The cruise industry is a sub-sector of maritime tourism and it constitutes a dynamic market with substantial investments being made world-wide mainly on port facilities as well on the shipbuilding of luxurious cruisers. Cruising is a Special Interest Tourism showing robust growth rates during the last two decades worldwide. The cruise is a multi-complex concept and combines a large part of the so called “tourist chain”: transport, catering/provisioning, tourism, entertainment, and travel (Wild & Dearing 2000). Greek cruising originated already in the decade of 1930, when the first Greek cruise companies offer cruises in the Aegean and the wider area of the Mediterranean. By 2003 there were nine ships under Greek flag and almost 25 Greek owned. The Greek cruise sector operated under cabotage protection till 1999. The abolishment of cabotage was confronted in contradictory ways by Greek ship owners as well as by other Europeans. The E.U policy aimed at establishing markets free from the state’s interventionism and protectionism and at the same time at creating more competitive conditions in order to facilitate the access by all companies (Lekakou et al. 2003). Nevertheless, Greek cruising is present and follows international trends The contribution of the sector to the national economy depends on the level of expenditures realized by the “producers” and “consumers” of the cruise industry. The questions therefore that need to be answered through this research are: • What do visitors buy and which industries are most affected by these purchases? • Who are the main visitors (that is. households, businesses, government employees or non-residents)? • How many people are employed in the cruise and related tourism industries? • How much capital formation has been undertaken by the cruise industry? The paper examines the contribution of the Cruise sector to the Greek Economy and estimates the economic impacts on the major macroeconomic values for the year 2004. The aim of the analysis is to investigate the way and the degree in which the cruise activity contributes to the national economy. The research reveals a basic problem: the relevant weakness of public services and private sector in providing data, concerning specific shipping activities, such as the cruise sector. The data obstacle became higher since cruising is not an immiscible activity but a combination of other sectors (Wild & Dearing, 2000). That’s why the overall estimation and evaluation of the sector demands data from different but related sources. The breadth of data is wide and specialized. The implementation of a suitable methodological tool, such as the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), will allow a thorough and accurate evaluation of cruising economic impact on the major macroeconomic values, and finally will reveal to useful results. Since the TSA tables require information with economic value, primary researche has been conducted in order to collect necessary data. The paper concludes by presenting the impacts of Cruising on the major macroeconomic values of the Greek economy

Possibilities for a Greek Tourism Satellite Account development

The increasingly important role of tourism in the economy, its growth and potential for job creation, the fragmentation of this business sector, and the cross-sectoral nature of tourism policies are all elements that have led the OECD's Tourism Committee to design a new economic instrument for tourism which provides insights into the socio-economic impact, structure and development of activities related to tourism. The Tourism Satellite Accounts method, initially proposed by French researchers and first successfully applied to tourism by Canadian statisticians, provides a way to describe and measure the magnitude of tourism as a form of economic activity in a way that is consistent and comparable to conventional industries (Smith, 2000: 530). Since the Ottawa conference in 1991, several countries have published their own TSA and even more, are in the stage of creating their national TSA. The aim of this paper is to examine the possibilities for a Greek TSA development, taking into consideration the worldwide experience and the country’s statistical systems’ strengths and weaknesses

Yachting in Greece: Economic Impacts

The aim of this paper is the investigation of the Tourism Satellite Account implementation for the estimation of Yachting economic impacts to the Greek Economy. The method has been applied by several countries for the estimation of economic effects of tourism globally (Welsh Economy Research Unit, 2004: vi), no however for the economic effects of an alternative form of tourism, as yachting. The method up to today has not been applied in Greece neither for the total of tourist activity, nor for a specific type of alternative tourism. For the research needs satisfaction, the adaption of Tourism Satellite Account tables is essential, under the condition of maintaining the harmonization with the OECD directives and definitions which are approved and accepted internationally. For the achievement of research’s aim, the theoretical and empirical frame of Yachting in Greece, is investigated. The paper is concluded by presenting the provisional and expected results

Ti3SiC2-Cf composites by spark plasma sintering: Processing, microstructure and thermo-mechanical properties

MAX phases, and particularly Ti3SiC2, are interesting for high temperature applications. The addition of carbon fibers can be used to reduce the density and to modify the properties of the matrix. This work presents the densification and characterization of Ti3SiC2 based composites with short carbon fibers using a fast and simple fabrication approach: dry mixing and densification by Spark Plasma Sintering. Good densification level was obtained below 1400 °C even with a high amount of fibers. The reaction of the fibers with the matrix is limited thanks to the fast processing time and depends on the amount of fibers in the composite. Bending strength at room temperature, between 437 and 120 MPa, is in the range of conventional CMCs with short fibers and according to the resistance of the matrix and the presence of residual porosity. Thermo-mechanical properties of the composites up to 1500 °C are also presented.This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon2020 “Research and innovation programme” under grant agreement No 685594 (C3HARME

How much dark matter is there inside early-type galaxies?

We study the luminous mass as a function of the dynamical mass inside the effective radius (r_e) of early-type galaxies (ETGs) to search for differences between these masses. We assume Newtonian dynamics and that any difference between these masses is due to the presence of dark matter. We use several samples of ETGs -ranging from 19 000 to 98 000 objects- from the ninth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We perform Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of galaxy samples and compare them with real samples. The main results are: i) MC simulations show that the distribution of the dynamical vs. luminous mass depends on the mass range where the ETGs are distributed (geometric effect). This dependence is caused by selection effects and intrinsic properties of the ETGs. ii) The amount of dark matter inside r_e is approximately 7% +- 22%. iii) This amount of dark matter is lower than the minimum estimate (10%) found in the literature and four times lower than the average (30%) of literature estimates. However, if we consider the associated error, our estimate is of the order of the literature average.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figures. MNRAS accepte

Job security and long-term investment: an experimental analysis

We investigate an experimental labor market setting in which we introduce the novel aspect that workers have the chance of investing money in a long-term project in order to increase their income. We find a strong relationship between what happens inside the labor market (worker's performance) and what happens outside the labor market (long-term investment). Contrary to the theoretical predictions with selfish preferences, we find that the mere presence of long-term projects acts as an effort-enforcement device; this effect seems to be driven by an increase in long-term employment relationships. In the other direction, long-term labor relationships seem to provide a safer environment for undertaking successful long-term projects. This article also considers three different types of experimental labor contracts. We find that performance-based dismissal barriers, whereby firms are required to retain workers if they have satisfied the effort level required by firms, lead to more long-term employment relationships and higher overall productivity. As theory predicts, the presence of renewable dismissal barriers makes it likely that workers will provide the desired effort level. Firms appear to correctly anticipate this, leading to greater social efficiency