Financial sustainability of pension systems in the European Union

Increases in life expectancy together with the decreases in fertility rates are predicted to make financing of public pension systems hard in an environment which some Eurozone member countries have had serious problems in their public finance, in the coming 50 years. European Union member countries, which have very different pension systems, have made pension reforms for sustainability of their pension systems such as increasing retirement age gradually, linking retirement age or benefits with changes in life expectancy, increasing the share of occupational and personal pensions in pension systems by taking into account the ageing and the negative effects of global financial crisis and the ongoing Eurozone sovereign debt crisis on public finance. This paper examines the pension systems in the European Union and evaluates the financial sustainability of pension systems in consideration of pension expenditures, ageing and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. Findings demonstrated that recent pension reforms by some European Union countries have mitigated the financial burden of pension systems, but further measures should be taken for the financial sustainability of pension systems.peer-reviewe

Characteristics of the population employed in primer sector in Turkey

Activities related to the production of raw material like agriculture husbandry, forestry, fishery are called as primer activities. Especially people living in rural areas earn their livings on primer activities, mainly agriculture. Rural planning is inevitable for providing rural development which has an important place in all development of a country. And achievement of this planning depends on putting forth the characteristics of the population living in rural areas with its different aspects. Therefore, the requirements will be introduced more clearly and the increase in the welfare levels of the people living in rural areas will have been achieved. To achieve the rural development and progress, in addition to the features like the size of agricultural products, products that are cultivated, activities like husbandry, forestry, hunting, etc. and the qualities of the enterprises in which these activities are carried out, policies applied, capital, market and technology, the characteristics of the population employed in this sector is also of importance. Considering these points, what is aimed in this study is to put forth the characteristics of the population employed in primer sector in Turkey. According to the census results of the year 2000 in Turkey 38% of the population is employed, and 48% of this work is in primer sector

REMITTANCES AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN TURKEY

Savings are one of the important determinants beyond the theories of economic growth. Therefore remittances and foreign direct investment inflows have importance for the countries having insufficient savings. This study examines the relationship between economic growth, remittances, foreign direct investment inflows and gross domestic savings in Turkey during the period 1974-2013 by using Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach. We found that remittances, foreign direct investment and gross domestic savings had positive impact on economic growth

CORRUPTION AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT INFLOWS IN EMERGING MARKET ECONOMIES

This study investigates the interaction between corruption and foreign direct investment inflows in 23 emerging market economies during the period 2002-2014 by employing Westerlund-Durbin-Hausman (2008) cointegration test. We found that control of corruption and rule of law had no statistically significant impact on attraction of foreign direct investments in overall panel

Do stringent environmental and business regulations, and uncertainty matter for foreign direct investment inflows? Evidence from G7 and BRICS economies

This paper empirically evaluates the impact of environment stringency policy, business regulations, policy and economic uncertainty, and real GDP per capita on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows by employing the autoregressive distributed lag approach and using data from 2000 to 2015. Specifically, we focus on two groups of countries with different economic development, the Group of Seven (G7) and the BRICS countries, and the composite indices of business and environmental regulations and policyinduced uncertainty, along with real gross domestic capital (GDP) per capita, were selected to reflect the multidimensionality of the settings in the selected countries. Our results indicate that only the effect of real GDP per capita turned out to be homogenous and statistically significant across different income groups and time horizons. Findings also show that more friendly business regulations significantly encourage FDI inflows in the long run, but there is a bottom line. When regulations are already at a low level, as is the case with G7 countries, further liberalization would adversely affect FDI inflows. Furthermore, more stringent environmental regulations have a marginally adverse effect on FDI inflows only in the long run. At the same time, they weakly support the pollution haven hypothesis. The impact of policy-induced uncertainty on investment is adverse but largely nonsignificant in the short run. It appears that cross-border investments follow a pattern of the safe-haven effect to avoid uncertainty in the long run

Impact of banking sector development and environment on population health: evidence from EU transition countries

This study explores the short and long-run effects of banking sector development and the environment on population health in EU member transition states through second-generation panel cointegration and causality analyses. The causality analysis revealed a significant causality between banking sector development and population health, but the causality direction varied depending on the indicator of banking sector development. Also, a one-way causality from greenhouse gas emissions per capita to population health was revealed. Furthermore, the cointegration analysis revealed that banking sector development had a very weak positive influence on population health in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, but had a very weak negative influence on population health in Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland. On the other hand, greenhouse gas emissions per capita had a negative effect on population health in Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, and Romania. Lastly, real GDP per capita had a very weak positive influence on population health in Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia. Measures against environmental degradation need to be adopted to improve population health. Since the consumption of fossil fuels is the primary source of CO2 emissions, policymakers should find proper policy tools for reducing emissions by finding the right balance between costs and benefits

Corruption and shadow economy in transition economies of European Union countries: a panel cointegration and causality analysis

Corruption and shadow economy are two critical problems which feed each other and pose an obstacle against the economic development of countries, especially those with weak fundamentals. Central and Eastern European countries have experienced an absolute political and economic transformation after the downfall of the Berlin Wall. This study researches the effect of corruption and rule of law on shadow economy in 11 transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe over the 2003–2015 term with panel cointegration and causality tests considering heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The cointegration coefficients revealed a complementary interplay between size of shadow economy and corruption. Furthermore, the causality analysis indicated that there was a bilateral causality between control of corruption and shadow economy in all the cross-section units. However, there was a two-way causality between rule of law and shadow economy only in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania. Furthermore, there was one-way causality from rule of law to shadow economy in Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia

Orta ve Doğu Avrupa Birliği Ülkelerinde Yolsuzluk, Gelir Dağılımı Eşitsizliği ve Yoksulluk: Panel Nedensellik Analizi

Son yıllarda küresel servet önemli miktarda artmış, gelir dağılımı eşitsizliği ve yoksullukta düşüşler görülmüştür. Bununla birlikte hem gelir dağılımı eşitsizliği hem de yoksulluk hala ciddi boyutlarda bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışma Dumitrescu ve Hurlin (2012) panel nedensellik testini kullanarak Orta ve Doğu Avrupa bölgesindeki Avrupa Birliği geçiş ekonomilerinde 2005-2016 döneminde yolsuzluk, gelir dağılımı eşitsizliği ve yoksulluk arasındaki nedensel etkileşimi araştırmaktadır. Çalışma sonucunda yoksulluktan yolsuzluğa ve gelir dağılımı eşitsizliğinden yoksulluğa doğru tek yönlü nedensellik belirlenmiştir

g_phi-pion-gamma coupling constant in light cone QCD sum rules

The coupling constant of g_phi-pion-gamma decay is calculated using light cone QCD sum rules. A comparison of our result with the ones existing in the literature is presented.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure