Search results

The banking system has a huge impact on a nation's economic environment. A concentrated banking system has a negative impact on the economy. Therefore, the research in this paper has two main goals: to explore the main factors that impact the level of concentration in the banking system; and to demonstrate how a reform in a banking system can reduce the negative impact of high levels of concentration.

A sample of 42 nations was used with various levels of concentration in their banking system to examine factors influencing bank concentration. Logit and OLS regressions were conducted to highlight the impact of the independent variables on the level of concentration in those nations. The latest Israeli reforms in the banking system were used to illustrate how reforms reduce concentration.

The empirical results concluded that economic freedom had a positive impact on the level of concentration. It was also found that cultural variables had an impact on the concentration level. Finally, analyzing the banking sector in Israel, it was found that the reform did decrease the level of concentration of the banking system.

The innovation of this paper is that it adds Hofstede's cultural variables as explanatory variables for the level of concentration in the banking system. It also highlights the role of public regulation for achieving efficiency in the banking sector by using the example of Israeli banking reforms.

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the effects of societal culture attributes on regional disparity.

This paper uses cross‐country data to identify the variables that determine the regional disparity and the gap between the richest and poorest regions in the economy.

The most interesting result of this study is that there exists a significant role played by societal cultural differences in the explanation of the regional disparity and the gap between rich and poor regions.

As far as we know, this paper makes the first attempt to explain inter‐regional disparity according to culture attributes. We estimate that cultural variables add about 5 percent to the explanation of the variation of the indices of inequality between regions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify patterns of development that fit the unique attributes of minorities living in peripheral regions and determine the role of public policy in stimulating such patterns.

First, a theoretical model is developed for development measures to be considered for minorities living in a peripheral area, the case of the Bedouins in Israel is analyzed, using secondary data, questionnaires, and focus groups.

The paper finds that economic development among minorities living in a peripheral region could be achieved through the combination of policies at the local, regional, and national levels: support of local economic activities, development of regional activities, and improvement of access to the labor market at the national level.

The Bedouins in Israel present unique cultural attributes that do not necessarily reflect the situation of other minorities in peripheral areas. Consequently, some of the conclusions of this study may not be relevant to other cases.

Public policy should focus on improving education, professional training, infrastructure development, removing barriers, and launching regional economic projects.

This paper suggests an alternative approach to the prevailing policy of social support to retarded regions and populations: using both theory and empirical analysis, it develops an integrative approach at the local, regional, and national level, that would create conditions for healthy and sustainable economic growth.

The purpose of this article is to examine the existence of biased stereotypes about older workers. What are the economic implications of such biased stereotypes? Finally, what policy measures are required in order to achieve efficiency in the labor market?

The authors grouped 25 opinions about older workers into three categories of stereotypes. The first category dealt with the productivity of older staff. The other two categories addressed their reliability and adaptability. The authors then questioned 312 Israeli respondents about the degree to which they agreed or disagreed with the opinions. Finally, the authors examined theoretically the economic effects of biased stereotypes about older workers.

The study demonstrates that individual and organizational characteristics affect employers' attitudes. Age was a significant factor in all three categories. The older the respondent, the fewer prejudices he or she had against older workers. Other characteristics such as gender, interaction with older workers, the nature of the respondent's work in the organization, the age of the employees, and the size of the organization were all significant, but not always, and not in all three categories. The findings imply that there are biased stereotypes about older workers, so the allocation of workers is distorted, which leads to a failure of the market.

The results strengthen the economic justification for policy intervention to correct the distorted level of employment of older workers in the labor market.

The purpose of this paper is to measure and rank nation‐states' governance effectiveness and quality on a quantifying scientific basis, by means of data envelopment analysis.

The principles are first analyzed from a theoretical and normative standpoint, linking to earlier literature. One dimension of the approach is adding the equality in income distribution as an output. Another dimension boils down to environmental performance.

The addition of the Gini index affects the ranking of the developing countries in a more significant manner. Similar results are obtained when the authors add the environmental performance as an input. Another interesting result suggests that conventional ranking methods (i.e gross domestic product per capita or human development index) could be used for representing the country's efficiency only for developed countries.

Future research may be aimed at applying the developed methodology to more countries, both developed and developing, as well as considering inclusion of additional ranking parameters.

The obtained procedure may be regarded as a comprehensive, holistic, mostly objective, and quantifiable method of ranking countries according to their governmental performance accomplishments. The addition of the Gini index and the environmental performance influences the ranking and is a significant improvement as compared to contemporary procedures.

The innovation in this paper is that the authors suggest to measure efficiency of countries not only by their income, but also, looking on wider aspects of efficiency as equity and environmental performance.

The motivation for conducting this research came from the current global economic crisis. One outcome of the crisis is the awareness of the need for a better understanding of what causes people to save. Low savings rates in Western countries in general and in the USA in particular are the roots of the crisis. Furthermore, saving is probably one of the most important economic variables that impact the local and global environment. The current economic literature neglects the crucial impact that culture has on saving as a consequence we do not fully understand the causes of different saving rates in different societies. The purpose of this paper is to explore the variable of cultural attitudes as an explanation for variations in national savings rates.

The phenomenon of diminishing personal savings cannot be explained simply by the variables studied in the current economic literature, such as interest rates, age of the population and wealth as expressed by GDP per capita. This paper explores the role that cultural attributes play in affecting the level of savings in different countries. The paper uses cross‐national data to determine the effect of cultural attributes on savings rates.

Cultural variables, particularly the level of uncertainty avoidance and collectivism, have a significant impact on the level of savings. As the level of uncertainty avoidance increases, the level of national savings increases. In addition, the more collectivist the society, the higher the savings rate.

Policy makers must realize that simply changing economic factors such as interest rates may not have the desired effect of raising savings rates. They must also take into account the cultural attributes of the country when making policy.

It is very important to understand the current (2007‐2009) economic crisis because it is the most severe since the Second World War and is having a tremendous impact on global and national economic environments. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explain the main factors (savings attributes and cultural factors) that created the crisis and better understand which nations will gain in the post‐crisis era.

The paper uses descriptive data to explore the global, Chinese and US economic environments prior to the economic crisis. In addition, the paper used an econometric model in order to evaluate the impact of cultural variables on savings behavior.

The data lead us to one main conclusion: the crisis was created by major changes in global saving rates during the last two decades.

The paper makes two major contributions: first it describes the opportunity that the current international crisis creates for China. The opportunity is an outcome of the high saving rates in China, as compared to the lower saving rates in the western countries. Second it points out the gap in the current academic literature regarding savings, primarily the lack of research on the relationship between savings and culture.