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Abstract
This paper examines the military expenditure (milex) economic growth nexus, in selected Balkan and peripheral countries from 1990 to 2022, considering the presence of informality within an institutional framework. Specifically, we employ Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to formulate an index of informality and use the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) and Fully-Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) methods to identify the long-run equilibria. To provide a more comprehensive insight, the study also incorporates two types of causality tests – Dumitrescu-Hurlin and Juodis et al. – to determine the direction of the relationships. Our findings indicate that in the long-run milex can be detrimental to economic growth whilst informality boosts it.

[Abstract] Wall lizards of the genus Podarcis (Sauria, Lacertidae) are the predominant reptile group in southern Europe, including 24 recognized species. Mitochondrial DNA data have shown that, with the exception of P. muralis, the Podarcis species distributed in the Balkan peninsula form a species group that is further sub-divided into two subgroups: the one of "P. tauricus" consisting of P. tauricus, P. milensis, P. gaigeae, and P. melisellensis, and the other of "P. erhardii" comprising P. erhardii, P. levendis, P. cretensis, and P. peloponnesiacus. In an attempt to explore the Balkan Podarcis phylogenomic relationships, assess the levels of genetic structure and to re-evaluate the number of extant species, we employed phylogenomic and admixture approaches on ddRADseq (double digested Restriction site Associated DNA sequencing) genomic data. With this efficient Next Generation Sequencing approach, we were able to obtain a large number of genomic loci randomly distributed throughout the genome and use them to resolve the previously obscure phylogenetic relationships among the different Podarcis species distributed in the Balkans. The obtained phylogenomic relationships support the monophyly of both aforementioned subgroups and revealed several divergent lineages within each subgroup, stressing the need for taxonomic re-evaluation of Podarcis' species in Balkans. The phylogenomic trees and the species delimitation analyses confirmed all recently recognized species (P. levendis, P. cretensis, and P. ionicus) and showed the presence of at least two more species, one in P. erhardii and the other in P. peloponnesiacus. ; This study was funded by NSFR 2007-2013 programme for development, European Social Fund, Operational Programme, Education and Lifelong Learning investing in knowledge society, Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Managing Authority, Co-financed by Greece and the European Union. Part of this work was funded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (PID2019-104184RB-I00 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033), and by the Xunta de Galicia and FEDER funds of the EU under the Centro de Investigación de Galicia accreditation 2019-2022 (ED431G 2019/01) ; Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/01

The phenomena of secret diplomacy and spheres of influence are closely related. History of international relations testify that the most common areas of interest are established through secret diplomacy. Nothing in this sense isn't changed even in the modern world. When you establish a balance of power between the great powers, then you must agree about access on the division of influence spheres. These arrangements are kept at a diplomatic level with the absence of the public. This agreements are secretly signed and its waiting for decades and centuries, and with many of that public will never be aware of. Spheres of influence (zone of interest) are usually created by a secret agreement between two or more major powers through secret diplomacy, and always at the expense of third countries (nation). It can be said that the struggle for spheres of influence was basically the cause of many, including world wars and after World War II continued the USA and the SSSR. History of the Balkan region and relations among people who inhabit it, clearly shows that he was for centuries the scene of clashes geopolitical interests of global power centers. At the present moment Balkan geopolitical scene is area for dominance of the great powers. At some point it will become the space establishment of interested spheres. That will happen through secret diplomacy.

International audience ; The main issue in this paper is cities' size distribution and urban hierarchy. The aim of the paper is to study whether different regions or countries follow Zipf's law in the long term. By applying this analysis on theBalkan Peninsula, a region which has gone through a major political, institutional and demographic upheaval, during the last thirty years, this paper shows that Zipf's law holds whatever the conditions of the evolution of an urban system. Meanwhile, it proposes an analysis on the most recent work in estimating Pareto exponent (the hierarchy coefficient), which is crucial in characterizing the shape of urban hierarchies. ; De nombreux auteurs se sont penchés, ces dernières années, sur le thème des hiérarchies urbaines et de leur évolution afin d'étudier et interpréter la régularité extraordinaire de la distribution des villes selon leur taille, connue, plus généralement, sous le nom de loi de Zipf. Tout en contribuant au débat méthodologique relatif à la détermination et au choix le plus efficace des méthodes d'estimation du coefficient de hiérarchisation d'une distribution rangtaille des villes, cet article tend à mettre en évidence la permanence de la validité de la loi de Zipf au sein des Balkans, une région qui a pourtant connu, durant ces trente dernières années une mutation politique, économique et institutionnelle majeure et dont les conséquences migratoires ont fortement affecté sa démographie.

International audience ; The main issue in this paper is cities' size distribution and urban hierarchy. The aim of the paper is to study whether different regions or countries follow Zipf's law in the long term. By applying this analysis on theBalkan Peninsula, a region which has gone through a major political, institutional and demographic upheaval, during the last thirty years, this paper shows that Zipf's law holds whatever the conditions of the evolution of an urban system. Meanwhile, it proposes an analysis on the most recent work in estimating Pareto exponent (the hierarchy coefficient), which is crucial in characterizing the shape of urban hierarchies. ; De nombreux auteurs se sont penchés, ces dernières années, sur le thème des hiérarchies urbaines et de leur évolution afin d'étudier et interpréter la régularité extraordinaire de la distribution des villes selon leur taille, connue, plus généralement, sous le nom de loi de Zipf. Tout en contribuant au débat méthodologique relatif à la détermination et au choix le plus efficace des méthodes d'estimation du coefficient de hiérarchisation d'une distribution rangtaille des villes, cet article tend à mettre en évidence la permanence de la validité de la loi de Zipf au sein des Balkans, une région qui a pourtant connu, durant ces trente dernières années une mutation politique, économique et institutionnelle majeure et dont les conséquences migratoires ont fortement affecté sa démographie.

International audience ; The main issue in this paper is cities' size distribution and urban hierarchy. The aim of the paper is to study whether different regions or countries follow Zipf's law in the long term. By applying this analysis on theBalkan Peninsula, a region which has gone through a major political, institutional and demographic upheaval, during the last thirty years, this paper shows that Zipf's law holds whatever the conditions of the evolution of an urban system. Meanwhile, it proposes an analysis on the most recent work in estimating Pareto exponent (the hierarchy coefficient), which is crucial in characterizing the shape of urban hierarchies. ; De nombreux auteurs se sont penchés, ces dernières années, sur le thème des hiérarchies urbaines et de leur évolution afin d'étudier et interpréter la régularité extraordinaire de la distribution des villes selon leur taille, connue, plus généralement, sous le nom de loi de Zipf. Tout en contribuant au débat méthodologique relatif à la détermination et au choix le plus efficace des méthodes d'estimation du coefficient de hiérarchisation d'une distribution rangtaille des villes, cet article tend à mettre en évidence la permanence de la validité de la loi de Zipf au sein des Balkans, une région qui a pourtant connu, durant ces trente dernières années une mutation politique, économique et institutionnelle majeure et dont les conséquences migratoires ont fortement affecté sa démographie.

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ; This thesis presents estimates and analysis of the informal economy for ten countries in the Balkan Peninsula region. It is the first attempt to study the size and development of the informal economy in these southeastern European countries from 1996 to 2014 using a special case of the Structural Equation modelling, which is the MIMIC model. There is currently a gap in the literature focusing on measuring the size of the informal economy in the Balkan countries especially after social, economic, political and judiciary reforms that the region has undergone. Such reforms are likely to influence the trend of the informal economy, and hence it is important to study the development of the informal economy. Different from existing literature, this research uses policy-driven indicators as well as macroeconomic variables in the model to estimate the size of the informal economy in this part of the world. The estimates indicate that there is a declining trend in the size of the informal economy in most of these countries. The yearly average size of the informal economy in these ten countries started from around 31 percent in 1996 and dropped to around 26 percent in 2014. However, the overall average size of the informal economy in these Balkan countries remains high relative to GDP, and it is just over 30 percent. The results indicate that countries, where the overall average size of the informal economy is found to be the highest as a proportion to their GDP, are FYR Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Turkey with 38.4 percent, 33.3 percent, 33.0 percent, and 32.1 percent, respectively. Countries with the lowest informal economy, on the other hand, are Slovenia and Greece, with 25 percent and 26.9 percent, respectively. The average size of the informal economy in Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia approximates to slightly under or slightly over 30 percent. The analysis also reveals that the key driving causes of the informal economy in these countries are the regulation burden, level of corruption, the dominance of the agriculture sector, degree of urbanisation, macroeconomic developments and the size of the government. This research concludes with some recommendations.