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The main aim of this paper is to examine empirically the extent to which firm-specific action, innovation, and an external factor, the quality of regional institution, affect firms' productivity. To this end, a firm-level dataset from 15 African countries was used and the three-step CDM approach was employed to estimate the relationship. The empirical results of the study highlight that firms that invest in R&D are more innovative and innovative firms are more productive, indicating the importance of innovation for firms' productivity. In addition, regional institutional quality has a significant positive effect on productivity, particularly for firms at low productivity distribution. Therefore, improving the quality of regional institutions, in addition to promoting R&D and innovation, is essential to enhance the productive capacity of firms in Africa. The present study contributes to the existing literature by providing new empirical evidence on the role of regional/local institutions on firm productivity for a region, Africa, which needs productivity enhancement the most. It is also recommended that further studies, similar to this one, should be carried out in order to better understand the topic in the context of African firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the impact of government interference to the religious domain has long been discussed in previous literature, empirical evidence on the nexus between government intervention to religion and individuals' giving to religious organizations remains limited. In this study, we aim to fill this gap and examine whether government intervention affects individuals' giving to faith-based charities. To this end, a survey data conducted in 20 European countries and two measures of government intervention to religion were used. Our empirical investigation based on multilevel logistic regression, after controlling for possible confounding factors at individual and country levels, indicates that government regulation of religion has a significant negative impact both on religious donation and volunteering. The findings of the present study add substantially to our understanding of nexus between government and religion and will serve as a base for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study concentrates on answering following questions: (i) Do firm's internal factors such as size, age, ownership, R&D spending, and exporting significantly predict the propensity of firms to engage in innovative activities in Ethiopia? (ii) Do firm's external factors, namely, access to finance and competition, significantly predict the propensity of firms to engage in innovative activities in Ethiopia? The data source of the paper is a survey conducted by World Bank in 2015 on Ethiopian firms. Then, the factors influencing the innovativeness of Ethiopian firms are analyzed by using a logistic regression model. Results obtained through logistic regression suggest that internal factors such as the size of the firms, education level of the employees, technology adoption capability of managers, on-job training, and R&D expenditures have a significant positive impact on both types of innovations, while private and foreign ownership were only found to be significant for process innovation. Estimations also showed that access to finance has a significant (positive) impact on product innovation and the impact of the competition level is significant (negative) only in terms of process innovation. Most importantly, we found that, disregarding their statistical significance, all explanatory variables influence both process and product innovation in the same direction, probably because of the positive correlation between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the socialist era, economists in the Balkan countries rarely published their work in the West due to political restrictions, methodological differences with the West, and inadequacy in Western languages. After the collapse of socialism, political barriers were lifted, a Western style of education in economics was adopted, and English began to be taught widely as the common language in the academic realm. The aim of this study is to discuss the impact of these policies on the publication performance of economists in the former socialist countries of the Balkans region. The results reveal that the number of international publications increased gradually over the post-socialist period and fast-reforming countries performed better than the slow movers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first study of technical efficiencies of higher education institutions and the first study evaluating performance at faculty level in Turkey. The study also compares technical efficiencies of private and public institutions. Estimation shows low overall efficiency with high variations across the faculties of economics. The results also demonstrate that average efficiency of public institutions is higher if the quality of data is not considered. However, when qualities of the outputs are taken into account, average efficiencies of public and private institutions converge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1960s, alternative forms of capitalization have emerged in the absence of an effective capital markets regime in Turkey. We can see these alternative forms in the failed attempts to create Anatolian holding companies through the direct investment of small savings. This article shows how Anatolian holding companies became victims of poor institutional and regulatory regimes, and how the lack of institutions to promote impersonal trust in the economy in turn, permitted widespread abuses. We identify populist politics, lax oversight, and social norms that incorporated gambling as three interlinked reasons which hindered the genesis and development of viable capital market reform and regulatory institutions in Turkey. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]