Considerable firm scandals that have been experienced in recent years, have reduced the confidence to financial statements and have caused amendments to be made on existing regulations. This situation brought attention to accountants and auditors that expose the financial conditions of the...

The economic development of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus remains to be volatile mainly due to the isolation of the de facto Turkish Cypriot state. While on one hand, high costs of energy in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus associated with the isolation, remains as a huge...

Even though the name is Arab Spring, neither the protests nor the effects of them seem to remain confined just to the Arab world. The reason for that is simple; increasing globalization. Due to our present world of globalization and the opportunities that it presents, the wave of protests have...

As the global crisis surrounds us, Turkey, as a country with huge prospects, needs to establish new political and commercial links with the rest of the world in order to lessen the effects of the global crisis. This can be a way to take the load off Turkey’s shoulders. These links can be found...

For a growing country, the most needed stimulus is energy. Without any access to adequate energy resources it is hard for a growing country to sustain economic development. Especially after the 1973 Oil Crisis, the importance of energy resources has been well understood. Most of the developed...

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firms choose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing and discussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which, in our view, are...

In 2003, Swiss Re introduced a mortality-based security designed to hedge excessive mortality changes for its life book of business. The concern was apparently brevity risk, i.e., the risk of premature death. The brevity risk due to a pandemic is similar to the property risk associated with...

New approaches in health care, such as e.g. Integrated Delivery Systems, affect the role and tasks of medical suppliers. More and more, medical suppliers are incorporated into the process of guiding patients to medical specialists and hospitals and thus managing the course of disease. In this...