Corrupt Local Government as Resource Farmers: The Helping Hand and the Grabbing Hand

We study the role of tax share and transparency of governance on growth and stagnation. A local government maximizes its private benefits using two activities. The first one consists of providing local public goods that help local firms to increase profits, thus enlarging tax revenue. The second one consists of extortion. We show that there is a threshold level of local government tax share, and a threshold level of transparency. Below these thresholds, the economy will stagnate and above them, the economy will achieve perpetual growth.corruption, growth, local government, tax share.

Design and implementation of interface units for high speed fiber optics local area networks and broadband integrated services digital networks

The design and implementation of interface units for high speed Fiber Optic Local Area Networks and Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks are discussed. During the last years, a number of network adapters that are designed to support high speed communications have emerged. This approach to the design of a high speed network interface unit was to implement package processing functions in hardware, using VLSI technology. The VLSI hardware implementation of a buffer management unit, which is required in such architectures, is described

The effects of stress and managers\u27 behaviour on the job satisfaction and organisational citizenship behaviour of hotel employees

Hotel business\u27 organizational success depends heavily on the employees\u27 performance because of its labor-intensive structure. In the industry, levels of employees stress and manager behaviors directly affect the employees\u27 behaviors. These effects could be either negative (turnover intentions, absenteeism, deteriorated performance etc.) or positive (job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior etc.). This study, performed in hotel businesses, delved into investigation of managers\u27 support and feedback behaviors to employees; perceptions of hindrance and challenge stress; job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior of the employees. The purpose of this study was to determine the impacts of hindrance and challenge stress and managers\u27 support of employees, feedback and self-serving leadership behaviour on employees\u27 job satisfaction and organisational citizenship behaviour. The study collected data on a sample of 410 employees in a five-star hotels in Turkey. By using structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses, the results revealed that employees\u27 job satisfaction is negatively affected by managers\u27 support and self-serving leadership behaviour. However, employees\u27 job satisfaction is positively affected by managers\u27 feedback. It was also determined that, although organisational citizenship behaviour is positively affected by managers\u27 support, this behaviour is negatively affected by managers\u27 self-serving leadership behaviour

Hadronic Form Factors: Combining QCD Calculations with Analyticity

I discuss recent applications of QCD light-cone sum rules to various form factors of pseudoscalar mesons. In this approach both soft and hard contributions to the form factors are taken into account. Combining QCD calculation with the analyticity of the form factors, one enlarges the region of accessible momentum transfers.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, Talk at the Workshop "Shifmania, Crossing the boundaries: Gauge dynamics at strong coupling", May 14-17,2009, Minneapolis, USA; table entry and reference update

Costs of trade and self-selection into exporting and importing: the case of Turkish manufacturing firms

This paper focuses on self-selection into trade by exporting and importing firms, and on the presence of differential variable and sunk costs between exporters and importers across different categories of imports. We use a rich and recent dataset for Turkish manufacturing firms for the period 2003-10.This allows us to provide a comprehensive analysis of firm heterogeneity and the connection between firm-level performance and international trade. We provide evidence on the remarkable heterogeneity across firms where only-importers (importers) perform better than only-exporters (exporters). We detect a self-selection effect for both importing and exporting firms with a stronger effect for importers. The results suggest that the nature of sunk costs varies between importing and exporting activities with importers facing higher sunk costs. Tari§s represent a potentially important source of variation in the variable costs of trading. When taking the tariffs faced by firms into account, we find that the self-selection effect associated with sunk costs is still present but greatly reduced with a smaller reduction for importers compared to exporters

The effects of stress and managers\u27 behaviour on the job satisfaction and organisational citizenship behaviour of hotel employees

Hotel business\u27 organizational success depends heavily on the employees\u27 performance because of its labor-intensive structure. In the industry, levels of employees stress and manager behaviors directly affect the employees\u27 behaviors. These effects could be either negative (turnover intentions, absenteeism, deteriorated performance etc.) or positive (job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior etc.). This study, performed in hotel businesses, delved into investigation of managers\u27 support and feedback behaviors to employees; perceptions of hindrance and challenge stress; job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior of the employees. The purpose of this study was to determine the impacts of hindrance and challenge stress and managers\u27 support of employees, feedback and self-serving leadership behaviour on employees\u27 job satisfaction and organisational citizenship behaviour. The study collected data on a sample of 410 employees in a five-star hotels in Turkey. By using structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses, the results revealed that employees\u27 job satisfaction is negatively affected by managers\u27 support and self-serving leadership behaviour. However, employees\u27 job satisfaction is positively affected by managers\u27 feedback. It was also determined that, although organisational citizenship behaviour is positively affected by managers\u27 support, this behaviour is negatively affected by managers\u27 self-serving leadership behaviour

The Staging of Venture Equity Capital and Venture Capitalist Bargaining Power

In this paper we look at the effects of bargaining power on the types of entrepreneurial projects chosen by venture capitalists and show that a wealth-constrained venture capitalist prefers to provide equity financing to a two-stage rather than to a similar single-stage project. While the venture capitalist does not have bargaining power over the entrepreneur of a single-stage project and is thus unable to extract any surplus, the venture capitalist does have this advantage in a two-stage project and, provided the project is good, can demand a portion of the surplus as a pre-condition for providing follow-on capital. This suggests that venture capitalists should stage their capital investments in order to improve their bargaining power, allowing them to earn greater profits from successful entrepreneurial projects

Constraints on B--->pi,K transition form factors from exclusive semileptonic D-meson decays

According to the heavy-quark flavour symmetry, the $B\to \pi, K$ transition form factors could be related to the corresponding ones of D-meson decays near the zero recoil point. With the recent precisely measured exclusive semileptonic decays $D \to \pi \ell \nu$ and $D\to K \ell \nu$, we perform a phenomenological study of $B \to \pi, K$ transition form factors based on this symmetry. Using BK, BZ and Series Expansion parameterizations of the form factor slope, we extrapolate $B \to \pi, K$ transition form factors from $q^{2}_{max}$ to $q^{2}=0$. It is found that, although being consistent with each other within error bars, the central values of our results for $B \to \pi, K$ form factors at $q^2=0$, $f_+^{B\to \pi, K}(0)$, are much smaller than predictions of the QCD light-cone sum rules, but are in good agreements with the ones extracted from hadronic B-meson decays within the SCET framework. Moreover, smaller form factors are also favored by the QCD factorization approach for hadronic B-meson decays.Comment: 19 pages, no figure, 5 table