The developments in the central business district of Istanbul in the 1990s

Since the 1980s, the economic and political conjuncture of the world has changed to a great extent leading to profound transformations in cities and metropolitan areas. Economic restructuring, globalization process, and re-organization of central-local government relations are the basic factors behind these transformations In a similar vein, after the mid-1980s and throughout the 1990s, the development of Istanbul metropolitan area have been characterized by a variety of factors ranging from the implementation of the neoliberal policies at the national level to the changes in the metropolitan government at the local level. Although the roots of this transformation can be traced back to the late-1970s, the most important changes have taken place in the last two decades. After 1980, Turkey adopted neoliberal policies in order to increase its economic articulation to the international relations. As a result of these measures, starting from the mid-1980s, foreign direct investment inflows into Turkey have increased to a great extent. Moreover, parallel to the worldwide trend of rising importance of producer services, the share of service sector investments has increased in total amount of foreign direct investment inflows into Turkey. During this period, Istanbul metropolitan area and especially its Central Business District (CBD) was affected to a great extent by the implementation of private sector-led projects realized by both foreign and Turkish firms operating in various activities such as retailing, tourism, real-estate, finance and other producer services. The author argues that the neoliberal policies of the central government after the 1980s, the increase in foreign direct investments in service sector, the investment shift from industry to commercial and residential real-estate development and financial activities have brought about significant transformations in Istanbul metropolitan area. In this work, in the light of the above-mentioned factors, the development of the Istanbul metropolitan area (especially its CBD development), in the late 1980s and throughout the1990s, will be analyzed.

Rent-Seeking in Developed and Developing Countries: Cross Section and Time Series Studies

The property rights issue is one of the most important institutional differences between developed/developing countries. The violation of the property rights results with rentseeking. In order to see if the extent of rent-seeking differs significantly between developed and developing countries, I applied a cross section and a time series study with the intention to measure rent-seeking. I found that rent-seeking is low in developed countries whilst it is high in developing counterparts. Turkey, as a developing country was my special case to apply time series study to see if rentseeking vary over the years. In my additional work for Turkey, I found that there is a cointegrating relationship between rent- seeking as a percentage of the budget LnRt and government size ( LnGYt ), and GNP per capita income ( LnGNPCt ).Rent-Seeking; Budgetary Allocation; Cross Section Study; Time Series Study

Brans-Dicke-Maxwell Solutions for Higher Dimensional Static Cylindrical Symmetric Spacetime

In this paper, Brans-Dicke-Maxwell type vacuum solutions are considered for a static cylindrically symmetric spacetime in arbitrary dimensions. Exact solutions are obtained by directly solving the field equations for the case where an azimuthal magnetic field is present. Other configurations such as axial magnetic field case can be obtained by suitably relabeling the coordinates. We have also considered conformally related "Einstein frame" to relate the solutions we have obtained with the dilaton-Maxwell type solutions that exist in the literature. We see that for a special case the general solution we present reduces to Dilaton-Melvin spacetime. The General Relativistic limit of these solutions are also discussed and we found that this limit is different from the four dimensional case.Comment: 9 Pages, articl

Perfect fluid solutions of Brans-Dicke and f(R)cosmology

Brans-Dicke cosmology with an (inverse) power-law potential is revisited in the light of modern quintessence and inflation models. A simple ansatz relating scale factor and scalar field recovers most of the known solutions and generates new ones. A phase space interpretation of the ansatz is provided and these universes are mapped into solutions of f(R) cosmology.Comment: Appendix added for completeness, explanation added in the text, bibliography expanded, figures upgraded for better resolution. Matches version accepted in Annals of Physic