This paper examines the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) for 88 countries in the 1985-2011 period, using a static and dynamic panel data analysis. The results show that urbanization rate, the ratio of population over the age of 65, social security spending and health spending have a negative and statistically significant impact on FDI, while per capita GDP, GDP growth, market size, inflation rate, unemployment rate, labor force growth, credit to private sector, market capitalization and control of corruption have a statistically significant positive impact on FDI inflows. In addition, financial openness and energy imports to the host nation have both statistically significant negative and positive impacts on FDI inflows.

Ternary compositions of Pb(Mg 1/3 Nb 2/3 )O 3 -PbZrO 3 -PbTiO 3 (PMN-PZT) piezoelectric ceramic have been investigated with an aim to optimize the electrical properties for piezoelectric applications. Quenching from temperatures above the Curie point was proved to enhance the properties up to two folds in the 0.40PMN-0.25PZ-0.35PT composition. This enhancement is believed to have arisen as a result of the freezing of defect dipoles in their random distribution, and thus prevention of their domain pinning effect. Texturing the optimum composition using BaTiO 3 template particles through templated grain growth process and quenching the textured ceramic led to further enhancement with piezoelectric charge coefficient increasing from 190 to 750 pC/N, relative permittivity increasing from 860 to 1815 and remanent polarization increasing from 16 to 30 μC/cm 2 . K E Y W O R D Selectrical properties, lead magnesium, niobates, piezoelectric materials/properties, tape casting, texture SUPPORTING INFORMATIONAdditional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section.How to cite this article: Dursun S, Mensur-Alkoy E, Unver MU, Alkoy S. Enhancement of electrical properties in the ternary PMN-PT-PZ through compositional variation, crystallographic texture, and quenching.

In recent years, there have been great interest for solving corruption problems associated with public and private sector. On the other hand, nowadays the rapid development of technology related to transformation in the ICT technologies is observed from many sources in the literature. In this process, implementations of anticorruption policies have been helped by these technologies. In addition to this support, the empirical analyses on relationships between ICT and corruption are still scarce. In this regard, this paper focuses whether ICT technologies reduces corruption, adopting univariate and multivariate models with panel data in 177 countries for the period 2002-2012. It assumes that developments in ICT technologies of countries determine greatly their level of corruption in terms of public institutions. Moreover, we employ four ICT indicators, including internet, cell phone, computer and fixed broadband and two corruption indexes. The results indicate that all of these technologies cause a decrease in the two corruption indexes. On the other hand, we also include four more instrumental variables to check the robust of our models. In this regard, the results showed that trade openness and FDI have a negative and statistically significant relationship with the corruption while poverty and inflation have a positive, statistically significant effect on the corruption.

The main aim of this study is to fabricate hollow fibers using alginate gelation method and to characterize the electromechanical performance of these fibers with microtubular structure for the device applications that are based on hollow piezoceramic fibers working in d 31 mode. However, fabrication of hollow fibers is difficult and problematic. This study originally presents a holistic solution to these problems and it is different from the currently used or investigated methods in terms of method, design, composition and application. The novel points of the study are: fabrication of the hollow fibers by alginate gelation methods, investigation and use of solid solutions of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) with lead zinc niobate (PZN) with low sintering temperatures, preparation of Ag based electrodes during the processing of piezoceramic fibers and using the co-firing process due to the difficulty of obtaining the inner electrode layer.

The purpose of this study is to examine the causal linkage between military expenditures and economic growth in 27 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries. Different periods are studied due to the unavailability of data for the common period for all countries. Both the symmetric and the asymmetric causality between military expenditures and economic growth are investigated under cross-sectional dependence and panel heterogeneity by using the bootstrap panel Granger causality testing approach. The results indicate that there is both symmetric and asymmetric Granger- causality between military expenditures and economic growth, which vary from one country to another. The robust empirical findings support the military expenditures and economic growth nexus in 12 of the 27 NATO member countries. Moreover, the findings show that more empirical evidence between military expenditures and economic growth can be obtained when the asymmetric causality is considered, in addition to the symmetric causality.