The determinants of local government performance have long been of interest, and have been empirically investigated in a number of recent studies. A general question in this area is: why have some local governments across the countries achieved high rates of performance whilst the others remained at lower levels? Evidence from the relevant literature indicates that some local governments or municipalities, particularly in developed countries, achieve very good performance. Others, in particular those from underdeveloped or developing, have very little or almost no performance.

This research empirically investigates the budgeting conditions in North Cyprus and evaluate how budgeting conditions vary from one municipality to the other in the five major municipalities; Lefkosa, Magusa, Girne, Guzelyurt and Iskele over the period 2004Q1 to 2012Q4. Two types of methodologies are conducted. First; it empirically investigates the determinants of local government deficit by using cointegration techniques. The Johansen co-integration and The Vector Error Correction model (VECM) are applied to test the effect of each element such as own-source revenue, grants, expenditures and debt services on the budget deficit. Second, the study test the convergence hypothesis if similar regions within the country converge to the same long-run steady state by considering five major Cypriot municipalities in the North Cyprus economy.

The results from the empirical analysis on budget deficit findings show that there is evidence of a long-run relationship between general deficit and its determinants. The evidence of causality is found from expenditure and debt to general deficit for Lefkosa municipality. There is unidirectional causality from grant and revenue through deficit for Magusa municipality. Third empirical analysis on convergence introduced that the municipalities with the lowest number of people per staff, commonly diverge from the group mean.

The book “Money laundering phenomenon – foundations, trends, impact and governance in banking industry” explores foundation, models (methods) to measure money laundering, trends, auditing Anti-Money Laundering structures in banking industry, AML risk assessment, impact/effects of money laundering, governance, and regulatory point of view.

The book includes some models that have been used to measure the amount of money laundering, respectively the effect of money laundering in various macroeconomic variables such as economic growth, consumption, investment, government expenditure, export and import. Moreover, there are presented some trends that may dominate in the AML field for coming years.

The strengthening of international cooperation in the field of anti-money laundering have given power to international organisations to recommend mitigating measures, standards and principles and applying them in practise, this is why in the book a special chapter is dedicated to international bodies and organisations to fight money laundering phenomenon.

Due to high importance of the AML risk assessment, as a risk management mechanism framework, a specific chapter is dedicated to it.

A special attention is dedicated to the auditing of AML structures in banking and the role of audit in general to AML field.

Last, but not least, in the book a chapter is dedicated to determinants of informal economy, since money laundering and informal economy are interconnected and needs to be studied as one of the challenges for countries.

We believe our book contributes to current literature on money laundering phenomena and that it is important for bankers, policy makers, strategists, academics, and students.