This paper analyzes the role of the initial allocation of ownership rights in transactions where parties make relationship-specific investments and contracts are incomplete. If there is high mutual dependence in production, the initial allocation of ownership rights is irrelevant. This result...

In this paper we construct thirteen different types of composite indices by linear combination of indicator variables (with and without outliers/data corruption). Weights of different indicator variables are obtained by maximization of the sum of squared (and, alternatively, absolute)...

Our objective in this paper is to compare the performance of the Differential Evolution (DE) and the Repulsive Particle Swarm (RPS) methods of global optimization. To this end, some relatively difficult test functions have been chosen. These functions are: Perm, Power-Sum, Bukin, Zero-Sum,...

This paper investigates the wage and employment perspectives of low-wage labour market entrants, using panel data from the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany. We apply a competing risks hazard model of transitions from low pay to higher pay, to unemployment or to inactivity. Low pay is found to be...

Provincial governments in the Netherlands have only one general tax at their disposal. However, it has become an insufficient source of revenue for this level of government in the Dutch system. To increase the revenue raising capacity of the provincial governments, thirteen broad-based general...

Professional development and the continuous improvement of the public servants and auxiliary personnel competence in public institutions have become one of the main necessities in public institutions all over the area of the well-developed countries. In every country member of the European...

In the spectrum sections of its "Proposed Changes" to the Review of the European Union Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications Networks and Services, the European Commission establishes a coherent, comprehensive and original set of forward-looking spectrum policy principles. By...

This paper offers a social accounting matrix (SAM) based analysis leading to a better understanding of the way various agents in the real economy interact, the way socio-economic groups make their living, the channels through which demand driven interventions may affect the poor, and the...

We propose a country classification of economic growth currency crisis consequences based on the entropic analysis of the real exchange rate. We show that this ranking is highly correlated with the annual minimum rate of growth, a proxy used to quantify real currency crisis effects.

We empirically explore the influence of loan characteristics, banking and financial structure, and regulatory and institutional factors on the design of 10,930 bank loan syndicates in emerging market economies from 1990 to 2006. Our results show that the structure of syndicates is adapted to...