SPOUDAI - Journal of Economics and Business

3-17

Authors: Stephan Humpert

This paper analyses gender-specific differences in working time mismatches by using three different measures for representing satisfaction and work life balance. Results show that, while male satisfaction with life or work is in general not affected by working for more or less hours, over-time is found to significantly lower male work life balance. Women are more sensitive to the amount of working hours as they prefer part-time employment and they are dissatisfied with changes towards working more or less hours than agreed. JEL classification: J22, I31, J16 Keywords: Working Hours, Gender Differences, Work Life Balance, European Social Survey

39-66

Authors: Alexandros M. Goulielmos, Ioannis M. Sitzimis

The great deficits created in the pursuit of the Keynesian welfare state led to governmental failure. This increasingly posed a greater risk to financial system than market failure, due to the increasing scale effects. Competition ceases to exist. The operations of markets first described by Adam Smith (1776) and confirmed by Alfred Marshall (1920). As a result of the increasing risk of governmental failure, legal barriers to ‘entry’ removed (liberalization) and private ownership promoted (privatization). Here, we investigate the impact of the ‘liberalization processes of (private)’ ‘Aegean Ferry System’ since 2001, and look at the effect on passenger fares and private cars freight rates under ‘free entry’. Quality of service was never regulated…We showed the existence of increasing returns to scale in the ferry system and in the individual ship, basing our arguments on empirical data and on theory. The fixed cost of the ferry system is 68%, indicating failure of the ferry market, when prices had to be determined by marginal cost leading to operational losses, since average cost is twice greater than marginal cost. Despite the hopes of the users that Greek Aegean ferry system’s liberalization would lead to reduction in fares and freight rates, this did not happen. Reforms paralleled those in air transport in USA, and a similar “hub and spoke” network system proposed and adopted careless by Greece, following the ΣΕΘΑΜ study. Fares and private car freight rates rose in a series of waves, owners frequently blaming the rising oil prices… JEL Classification : D4, L1, R49. Keywords: Liberalization of the Greek Aegean Ferry system, Fares and freight rates, increasing returns to scale

75-86

Authors: Ioanna Reziti

This paper examines the farm-retail price transmission mechanism in the Greek milk market by using monthly data for the period from January 1998 to June 2014. Through this period, the dairy industry underwent significant changes, resulting in increasing concentration in the market for fresh pasteurized milk. On the other hand, in the past five years, the number of dairy farms has decreased dramatically. The milk supply chain can be described as an atomized raw milk production sector confronted by a quite concentrated dairy sector. We apply an error correction model to test for asymmetric behaviour in the transmission process. The empirical results indicate that transmission between producer and consumer milk prices in Greece is asymmetric in both the short and the long run, implying that retailers exercise market power over producers. JEL classification: C10, L11, Q10. Keywords: asymmetric price transmission, cointegration, error correction, milk market.