The effect of board size and composition on European bank performance

Banks are “special” financial institutions generating distinct corporate governance challenges. The present paper examines the relationship between two of the most pertinent corporate governance factors—that is, the size of the Board of Directors and the proportion of non-executive directors—and firm performance on a sample of 58 large European banks over the period 2002–2004. The empirical analysis embraces a number of bank-specific variables. Our results reveal that bank profitability is negatively related to the size of the Board of Directors, while the impact of Board composition, although positive in all models, is, in most cases, insignificant. The results are robust after controlling for firm-specific variables.      

Structural Reform Policy: Privatisation and Beyond—The Case of Greece

Privatisation, coupled with liberalisation and competition, constitutes one of the most popular policy options to improve the performance of state-owned enterprises. However, in Greece, it was only after 1991 that privatisation started to gain ground in the political and economic agendas of governments. Drawing upon the theoretical underpinnings of privatisation, the paper overviews and critically analyses the new legal framework on denationalisation in Greece. The paper argues that, though the modernisation of the legal regime is welcomed, the Greek government has failed to treat privatisation as part of wider structural reforms aiming at enhancing competition and foreign investment. The paper concludes that wider structural reforms, including regulatory reform and liberalisation, as well as combating corruption and bureaucracy and promoting transparent capital markets, are absolutely necessary in order to create a competitive environment, which would both complement and support privatisation efforts.     

Antecedents of Psychological Empowerment: A Study of Greek Employees in Municipalities

ABSTRACT

Psychological empowerment has received a burgeoning attention among scholars and practitioners in the last decades. However, little is known about its antecedents in the public sector, and even more in municipalities. The present study attempts to fill this gap by examining the relationship of leader-member exchange (LMX), role conflict and role ambiguity with employees’ psychological empowerment. Data were collected from 210 administrative employees of nine Greek municipalities. Results supported our hypotheses that these three factors constitute important antecedents of such employees’ psychological empowerment. Theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.     

Prepartum Psychosis and Neonaticide: Rare Case Study and Forensic‐Psychiatric Synthesis of Literature

Peripartum psychosis is a rare but serious psychiatric disorder characterized by the presence of a mood episode with psychotic features. Although controversy surrounds the nosological status of peripartum mental disorders, these conditions continue to be of exceptional interest to the medical and forensic mental health communities. The aim of this study was to report a rare case of prepartum psychosis which escalated to the endpoint of neonaticide and summarize literature on peripartum mental disorders and infanticide. A 30‐year‐old mother murdered her newborn with the spike of her serum delivery system and planned to commit suicide while in hospital after hallucinating due to an acute puerperal psychotic disorder with a prepartum onset and postpartum deterioration. Her disorder was not managed until neonaticide. Throughout this paper, the significance of a multidisciplinary approach for the optimal management of these incidents is highlighted and diagnostic as well as therapeutic issues are addressed.     

Citizen Satisfaction: A Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis

Governments across Europe face the challenge of responding to public demand for more valuable, responsive, and efficient and effective services. In this article we will evaluate the public services in Greece. More specifically, this article refers to a citizen's satisfaction web survey for Citizens’ Service Centers. The analysis of the data is based on the MUSA (Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis) method. MUSA is an ordinal regression model which is based on the principles of multicriteria decision analysis. The method is an instrument to evaluate quantitative global and partial satisfaction levels and to determine the weak and strong points of citizens Service Centers. Furthermore the results of this study will help the Citizens Service Centers to develop more effective services.     

The early development of the soviet government bureaucracy: Center,localities, nationality areas

The article presents and appraises the innovative performance of Greece from the 1990s to the present and argues that Greece's economic strategy up to now has had little if anything to do with entrepreneurship and innovation. It focuses on two new groundbreaking reform initiatives proposed by the ministries of development and education, that provide, for the first time, the dynamics that could enable the country's economy to overcome some of its crippling dysfunctions and steer it towards entrepreneurship, innovation, and business clusters. The article concludes that where public administration economic strategies and public universities have failed, privately owned universities and the newly proposed entrepreneurial parks could finally guide the economy towards the right path.     

Due Process and 'Good' Regulation Embedded in the GATS - Disciplining Regulatory Behaviour in Services Through Article VI of the GATS

On the occasion of the US – Gambling ruling, the GeneralAgreement on Trade in Services (GATS) came to the forefront.Several critiques against this ruling highlighted the urgentneed to clarify important concepts laid down in the GATS. Domesticregulation is arguably the overarching concept when it comesto trade in services, inter alia, because of the regulatoryintensity that characterizes many service sectors. Article VIof the GATS aspires to discipline non-discriminatory domesticregulatory measures. In this respect, World Trade Organization(WTO) Members are required to adhere to certain due processobligations and to develop additional rules of ‘good’regulation through the completion of the work program set outin Article VI:4 of the GATS. This paper provides a comprehensiveanalysis of Article VI. In doing this, it explores the objectivefunction and the mechanics of this provision bearing in mindthe delicate balance between trade liberalization and regulatorysovereignty that becomes apparent in Article VI more than inany other GATS provision.     

JPEG steganography detection with Benford's Law

In this paper we present a novel approach to the problem of steganography detection in JPEG images by applying a statistical attack. The method is based on the empirical Benford's Law and, more specifically, on its generalized form. We prove and extend the validity of the logarithmic rule in colour images and introduce a blind steganographic method which can flag a file as a suspicious stego-carrier. The proposed method achieves very high accuracy and speed and is based on the distributions of the first digits of the quantized Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients present in JPEGs. In order to validate and evaluate our algorithm, we developed steganographic tools which are able to analyse image files and we subsequently applied them on the popular Uncompressed Colour Image Database. Furthermore, we demonstrate that not only can our method detect steganography but, if certain criteria are met, it can also reveal which steganographic algorithm was used to embed data in a JPEG file.