The impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on financial performance : evidence from the GCC Islamic banking sector.

This paper examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance for Islamic banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region over the period 2000–2014 by generating CSR-related data through disclosure analysis of the annual reports of the sampled banks. The findings of this study indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between CSR disclosure and the financial performance of Islamic banks in the GCC countries. The results also show a positive relationship between CSR disclosure and the future financial performance of GCC Islamic banks, potentially indicating that current CSR activities carried out by Islamic banks in the GCC could have a long-term impact on their financial performance. Furthermore, despite demonstrating a significant positive relationship between the composite measure of the CSR disclosure index and financial performance, the findings show no statistically significant relationship between the individual dimensions of the CSR disclosure index and the current financial performance measure except for ‘mission and vision’ and ‘products and services’. Similarly, the empirical results detect a positive significant association only between ‘mission and vision’ dimension and future financial performance of the examined banks

Arms Racing, Military Build-Ups and Dispute Intensity: Evidence from the Greek-Turkish Rivalry, 1985-2020

Arms races are linked in the public conscience to potential violence. Following gas discoveries in eastern Mediterranean, Greece and Turkey nearly came to blows in August 2020 and both states have enacted military expansion plans, further risking escalation. We present a novel approach to study the effect of military build-ups on dispute intensity, using monthly data on Turkish incursions into Greek-claimed airspace. Because airspace claims feature strongly in the dispute, these contestations represent an appropriate measure of the intensity with which Turkey pursues the conflict. Theoretically, we suggest that bilateral factors drive this intensity. We argue that increased Greek military capabilities deter incursions whereas increased Turkish military capabilities fuel them. Results from time-series models support the second expectation. Consequently, the study provides a novel methodological approach to studying interstate conflict intensity and shines new light on escalation dynamics in the Greek-Turkish dispute

An efficient storage manager

When dealing with large quantities of clauses, the use of persistent knowledge is inevitable, and indexing methods are essential to answer queries efficiently. We introduce PerKMan, a storage manager that uses G-trees and aims at efficient manipulation of large amount of persistent knowledge. PerKMan may be connected to Prolog systems that offer an external C language interface. As well as the fact that the storage manager allows different arguments of a predicate to share a common index dimension in a novel manner, it indexes rules and facts in the same manner. PerKMan handles compound terms efficiently and its data structures adapt their shape to large dynamic volumes of clauses, no matter what their distribution. The storage manager achieves fast clause retrieval and reasonable use of disk space. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000

A note on the causal relationship between defence spending and growth in Greece: 1955-93

The causal relationship between economic growth and defence spending has attracted considerable attention and has been the subject of many empirical studies. This paper investigates the existence of a causal link between military expenditure and economic growth in the case of Greece for the period 1955-93. By European Union standards, Greece allocates substantial human and material resources to defence. At the same time, Greece is the poorest European Union member facing chronic economic problems. Using the concept of Granger-causality, the findings reported herein suggest that neither variable Granger-causes the other disclosing thereof the absence of any causal ordering between them.Granger causality, Unit roots, Structural breaks, Greek military spending, Economic growth,

Electoral management, political risk and exchange rate dynamics: the Greek experience

The paper tries to clarify whether the Greek drachma exchange rate movements could be better understood by incorporating the dynamics of the political environment. Greece could be considered as an ideal laboratory to examine the impact of the elections on the drachma exchange rate dynamics, since its political environment is formed by the co-existence of three distinct characteristics: first, a partisan structure with two main political parties with well defined ideological differences. Second, an opportunistic structure with frequent pre-electoral relaxation of monetary and fiscal policy, and, third, a high density of elections. Based on the assumption that foreign and domestic investors are sensitive to changes in political regime, the Greek foreign exchange rate is examined relative to the ECU and the US dollar. It is found that the incorporation of political variables in the form of the electoral cycle impact the volatility of the exchange rate. Specifically, with the incorporation of political variables in an EGARCH-M context, it is found that past innovations exert an asymmetric impact on the conditional volatility of the exchange rate relative to ECU and USD. Moreover, the results based on the six parliamentary elections suggest that the conditional variance of the exchange rate is impacted by political developments in Greece.

Defence spending and economic growth: A causal analysis for Greece and Turkey

There are a number of studies which consider the relation between military spending and economic growth using Granger causality techniques rather than a well-defined economic model. Some have used samples of groups of countries, finding no consistent results. Others have focused on case studies of individual countries, which has the advantage of the researchers bringing to bear much more data than the cross country samples and a greater knowledge of the structure of the economy and the budget. This paper adds to the literature by providing an analysis of two countries, Greece and Turkey, which are particularly interesting case studies given their high military burdens, the poor relations between the two and the resulting arms race in the area. In addition to analysing the data using standard “pre-cointegration” Granger causality techniques, this paper employs modern vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology that utilises cointegration via Granger's representation theorem. The standard Granger causality tests suggest a positive effect of changing military burden on growth for Greece, but this is not sustained when the cointegration between output and military burden is taken into account. The only evidence of significant Granger causality is a negative impact of military burden on growth in Turkey.Military spending, Economic growth, Granger causality, Greece, Turkey,