Competition and Contestability in Central and Eastern European Banking Markets

This study attempts to analyze the effects of financial liberalization and deregulation on competitive conditions in the banking industries of fourteen Central and Eastern European (CEE) transition economies using firm-level data for the period 1993-2000. The basis for the evaluation of competitive situation is the extant oligopoly theory in the new industrial organization literature, specifically, the competition model developed by Rosse and Panzar (1977), and Panzar and Rosse (1982,1987). This approach relies on the premise that, in their long-run equilibrium, banks will employ different pricing strategies in response to a change in input costs depending on the market structure in which they operate. The results of the competition analysis suggest that the banking markets of CEE countries cannot be characterized by the bipolar cases of either perfect competition or monopoly over 1993-2000 except for FYR of Macedonia and Slovakia. That is, banks earned their revenues as if operating under conditions of monopolistic competition in that period. Overall, large banks in transition countries operate in a relatively more competitive environment compared to small banks, or in other words, competition is lower in local markets compared to national and international markets. Finally, the cross-sectional analysis of competitive structure shows initially a decreasing trend between 1993 and 1996 and a subsequent increasing trend in competitive conditions after 1996. Having determined the degree of competition, this study further examines the relationship between competition, concentration and bank performance. The result of the empirical analysis does not yield any significant relationship between competition and concentration, suggesting the possibility that higher contestability, in part due to the recent technological advances, have resulted in an overall increase in competition, despite high level of market concentration. Furthermore, I find that the average bank deviates substantially from the best-practice frontier. The managerial inefficiencies in CEE banking markets were found to be significant, with average cost efficiency levels of 72 and 76 percent by the Distribution-free Analysis (DFA) and the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). These average estimates suggest that an average bank would have incurred 28 to 24 percent less of its actual costs had it matched its performance with the best-practiced bank. The alternative profit efficiency levels are found to be significantly lower relative to cost efficiency. According to SFA, approximately one-third of banks’ profits are lost to inefficiency, and almost one-half according to the DFA. In explaining the cross-sectional determinants of efficiency, the results suggest that higher efficiency levels are associated with larger banks, higher profitability and better capitalization. Banks that heavily rely on core deposits in funding their assets are found to be more efficient. Consistent with most prior research, higher level of problem loans is associated with lower efficiency levels. Regarding the effect of market structure on bank performance, the level of competition is found to increase efficiency while market concentration is negatively linked to efficiency. Finally, foreign banks operating in transition countries are found to be more cost efficient but less profit efficient relative to domestically owned private banks and state-owned banks. Overall, findings of competition analyses are consistent with previous research on competitive conditions in the banking industries of developed countries that generally report varying degrees of monopolistic competition. The notion that high concentration in CEE banking markets will result in monopoly rents as suggested by SCP paradigm is not supported by empirical results. These results seem to be compatible with contestable markets theory (CMT), if one can assume that incumbent firms set their prices close to the competitive level because of potential competition; otherwise higher prices will attract potential entrants with hit-and-run strategies. These results are also consistent with the expectation that liberalization and deregulation of CEE financial markets have increased the competitive conditions in CEE banking markets. Recommendations for transition strategies for government efforts in designing and implementing transition program are provided as well as avenues for future research

Cytotoxic and antibacterial activity of the mixture of olive oil and lime cream in vitro conditions

The mixture of olive oil and lime cream has been traditionally used to treat external burns in the region of Hatay/Antakya and middle Anatolia. Olive oil and lime cream have been employed by many physicians to treat many ailments in the past. A limited number of studies have shown the antibacterial effect of olive oil and that it does not have any toxic effect on the skin. But we did not find any reported studies on the mixture of olive oil and lime cream. The aim of this paper is to investigate the cytotoxic and antibacterial activity of olive oil and lime cream individually or/and in combination in vitro conditions, by using disk-diffusion method and in cell culture. The main purpose in using this mixture is usually to clear burns without a trace. Agar overlay, MTT (Cytotoxicity assay) and antibacterial susceptibility tests were used to investigate the cytotoxic and antibacterial activity of olive oil and lime cream. We found that lime cream has an antibacterial activity but also cytotoxic on the fibroblasts. On the other hand olive oil has limited or no antibacterial effect and it has little or no cytotoxic on the fibroblasts. When we combined lime cream and olive oil, olive oil reduced its cytotoxic impact. These results suggest that mixture of olive oil and lime cream is not cytotoxic and has antimicrobial activity.Keywords: Olive oil, lime cream, burn, in vitro, cytotoxic activity, antibacterial activit

Electronic, dynamical, and thermal properties of ultra-incompressible superhard rhenium diboride: A combined first-principles and neutron scattering study

Rhenium diboride is a recently recognized ultra-incompressible superhard material. Here we report the electronic (e), phonon (p), e-p coupling and thermal properties of ReB$_2$ from first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) calculations and neutron scattering measurements. Our calculated elastic constants ($c_{11}$ = 641 GPa, $c_{12}$ = 159 GPa, $c_{13}$ = 128 GPa, $c_{33}$ = 1037 GPa, and $c_{44}$ = 271 GPa), bulk modulus ($B$ $\approx$ 350 GPa) and hardness ($H$ $\approx$ 46 GPa) are in good agreement with the reported experimental data. The calculated phonon density of states (DOS) agrees very well with our neutron vibrational spectroscopy result. Electronic and phonon analysis indicates that the strong covalent B-B and Re-B bonding is the main reason for the super incompressibility and hardness of ReB$_2$. The thermal expansion coefficients, calculated within the quasi-harmonic approximation and measured by neutron powder diffraction, are found to be nearly isotropic in $a$ and $c$ directions and only slightly larger than that of diamond in terms of magnitude. The excellent agreement found between calculations and experimental measurements indicate that first-principles calculations capture the main interactions in this class of superhard materials, and thus can be used to search, predict, and design new materials with desired properties.Comment: submitted to pr

Structural, Vibrational and Thermodynamic Properties of AgnCu34-n Nanoparticles

We report results of a systematic study of structural, vibrational and thermodynamical properties of 34-atom bimetallic nanoparticles from the AgnCu34-n family using model interaction potentials as derived from the embedded atom method and in the harmonic approximation of lattice dynamics. Systematic trends in the bond length and dynamical properties can be explained largely on arguments based on local coordination and elemental environment. Thus increase in the number of silver atoms in a given neighborhood introduces a monotonic increase in bond length while increase of the copper content does the reverse. Moreover, based on bond lengths of the lowest coordinated (6 and 8) copper atoms with their nearest neighbors (Cu atoms), we find that the nanoparticles divide into two groups with average bond length either close to (~ 2.58 A) or smaller (~ 2.48 A) than that in bulk copper, accompanied by characteristic features in their vibrational density of states. For the entire set of nanoparticles, vibrational modes are found above the bulk bands of copper/silver. Furthermore, a blue shift in the high frequency end with increasing number of copper atoms in the nanoparticles is traced to a shrinkage of bond lengths from bulk values. The vibrational densities of states at the low frequency end of the spectrum scale linearly with frequency as for single element nanoparticles, however, the effect is more pronounced for these nanoalloys. The Debye temperature was found to be about one third of that of the bulk for pure copper and silver nanoparticles with a non-linear increase with increasing number of copper atoms in the nanoalloys.Comment: 37 pages, 12 figure

Assaying locomotor activity to study circadian rhythms and sleep parameters in Drosophila.

Most life forms exhibit daily rhythms in cellular, physiological and behavioral phenomena that are driven by endogenous circadian (≡24 hr) pacemakers or clocks. Malfunctions in the human circadian system are associated with numerous diseases or disorders. Much progress towards our understanding of the mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms has emerged from genetic screens whereby an easily measured behavioral rhythm is used as a read-out of clock function. Studies using Drosophila have made seminal contributions to our understanding of the cellular and biochemical bases underlying circadian rhythms. The standard circadian behavioral read-out measured in Drosophila is locomotor activity. In general, the monitoring system involves specially designed devices that can measure the locomotor movement of Drosophila. These devices are housed in environmentally controlled incubators located in a darkroom and are based on using the interruption of a beam of infrared light to record the locomotor activity of individual flies contained inside small tubes. When measured over many days, Drosophila exhibit daily cycles of activity and inactivity, a behavioral rhythm that is governed by the animal's endogenous circadian system. The overall procedure has been simplified with the advent of commercially available locomotor activity monitoring devices and the development of software programs for data analysis. We use the system from Trikinetics Inc., which is the procedure described here and is currently the most popular system used worldwide. More recently, the same monitoring devices have been used to study sleep behavior in Drosophila. Because the daily wake-sleep cycles of many flies can be measured simultaneously and only 1 to 2 weeks worth of continuous locomotor activity data is usually sufficient, this system is ideal for large-scale screens to identify Drosophila manifesting altered circadian or sleep properties

Fruit characteristics of the selected fig genotypes

The aim of this research was determine of fruit characteristics and select of some significant fig genotypes grown in Kiziltepe district of Mardin province. No studies have been made on the fig genotypes in Kiziltepe district by researchers up to now. Therefore, this study was very important. In this research, six fig genotypes were evaluated for two years. A lot of pomological characteristics of the selected fig genotypes were determined during years 2007 and 2008. According to the averages in two years, fruit weight ranged between 68.04 and 43.96 g,ostiolum width ranged between 4.55 and 2.46 mm, total soluble solids (TSS) ranged between 21.10 and 16.78% and acidity ranged between 0.28 and 0.22%. In addition, KZTP-32 and KZTP-30 fig genotypes scored the highest in overall quality according to the results of the weighted ranked method.Key words: Ficus carica L., genotype, fruit characteristics, quality, selection

Inflation and Inflation uncertainty: A dynamic framework

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This paper aims to investigate the direct relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty by employing a dynamic method for the monthly country-region-place United States data for the time period 1976-2007. While the bulk of previous studies has employed (ARCH models in investigating the link between inflation and inflation uncertainty, in this study Stochastic Volatility in Mean models are used to capture the shocks to inflation uncertainty within a dynamic framework. These models allow researchers to assess the dynamic effects of innovations in inflation as well as inflation volatility on inflation and inflation volatility over time, by incorporating the unobserved volatility as an explanatory variable in the mean (inflation) equation. Empirical findings suggest that innovations in inflation volatility increases inflation. This evidence is robust across various definitions of inflation and different sub-periods. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved