Impact of ICT on the productivity of the firm: evidence from Turkish manufacturing

This paper aims to explore the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on labor productivity growth in Turkish manufacturing. This is the first attempt at exploring the impact of ICT on productivity in Turkish manufacturing at the firm level. The analysis is based on firm level data obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) and covers the period from 2003 to 2012. The data used in the analysis includes all firms employing 19+ workers in Turkish manufacturing industry. Growth accounting results show that the contributions of conventional and ICT capital to value added growth are not significantly different from each other. On the other hand, results based both on static (fixed-effects) and dynamic panel data analysis highlight the positive influence on firms’ productivity exerted by ICT capital. The findings show that the impact of ICT capital on productivity is larger by about 25 to 50% than that of conventional capital. This contribution of ICT capital is higher than that of non-ICT capital for small sized and low-tech firms. Our findings imply that investing in ICT capital increases firm productivity by increasing the productivity of labor and also that convention growth accounting approaches may not be adequate to identify such linkages.     

All-pay war

We study a model of conflicts and wars in which the outcome is uncertain not because of luck on the battlefield as in standard models, but because countries lack information about their opponent. In this model expected resource levels and production and military technologies are common knowledge, but realized resource levels are private information. Each country decides how to allocate its resources to production and warfare. The country with the stronger military wins and receives aggregate production. In equilibrium both comparative and absolute advantages matter: a larger resource share is allocated to warfare by the country with a comparative advantage in warfare at relatively low realized resource levels, and by the country with an absolute disadvantage in warfare at relatively high realized resource levels. From an ex-ante perspective the country with a comparative advantage in warfare is more likely to win the war unless its military potential is much lower.     

Merits of Task Advice during New Product Development: Network Centrality Antecedents and New Product Outcomes of Knowledge Richness and Knowledge Quality

Utilizing new product development (NPD) teams to accomplish complex tasks in firms has been an emergent issue in many industries throughout the last couple of decades. Despite numerous studies, formation and efficient management of NPD teams is still a developing research domain. Using the knowledge‐based view of the firm and social network theories complementarily, this paper contributes to literature by examining the intrafirm social relational structures of NPD teams. Focusing specifically on the network centrality of the NPD teams, this paper argues that network centrality types of closeness, betweenness, and degree centralities influence the quality and richness characteristics of knowledge received through task advice seeking. Subsequently, the knowledge gained with these characteristics enhances product innovativeness and new product success. Consequently, the second contribution of this paper is to conceptualize the effect of the task advice‐seeking activities of NPD teams on NPD outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the empirical testing of the proposed model, including suggestions for focal construct operationalizations as well as other future research directions.     

Perceptions and knowledge of accounting professionals on IFRS for SMEs: Evidence from Turkey

This exploratory study extends the literature on IFRS for SMEs issued by the IASB in July 2009, and adopted by Turkey in November 2010. A questionnaire survey, based on the relevant literature and IFRS for SMEs, was developed. The aim was to investigate basic knowledge and perceptions of accountants regarding IFRS for SMEs. Our findings suggest that proponents of stand-alone IFRS for SMEs outnumber its opponents. The respondents are not highly informed about the omission of certain topics in IFRS for SMEs. Their awareness of valuation methods/concepts in IFRS for SMEs is at a moderate level. Inadequacy of accounting personnel’s training and lack of training programs arranged by professional bodies are considered to be the most serious obstacles in implementation of the standards. The majority of the participants are not aware of the key differences between full IFRS and IFRS for SMEs and simplifications made in IFRS for SMEs. Accounting professionals who are trained about IFRS for SMEs and the employees of Big4 auditing firms are more knowledgeable about the standards in comparison to others. Education level and experience of respondents have partial positive impact on knowledge of the standards.     

Innovation,networking and the new industrial clusters: the characteristics of networks and local innovation capabilities in the Turkish industrial clusters

Elaborating on the literature on industrial districts, this paper suggests that innovation and networking are the two key issues, which provide the new generation industrial clusters’ competitive capacity in the globalization process. The paper presents the findings on the innovative and networking capabilities of the three important industrial clusters of Turkey based on the data collected from the sample firms in each of these industrial clusters through in-depth interviews. The findings clearly show the importance of local and national networking as well as global linkages and confirm the positive relation between intensity of local networking and innovativeness. Moreover, the paper provides evidence that firms within global networks have higher numbers of innovations than firms with higher intensity of locally embedded linkages.     

Prediction of bank financial strength ratings: The case of Turkey

Bank financial strength ratings have gained widespread popularity especially after the recent financial turmoil. Rating agencies were criticized because of their ratings and failure to predict the bankruptcy of the banks. Based on this observation, we investigate whether the forecast of the rating of bank's financial strength using publicly available data is consistent with those of the credit rating agency. We use the data of Turkish banks for this investigation. We take a country-specific approach because previous studies found that proxies used for environmental factors (political, economic, and financial risk of the country) did not have any explanatory power and it is hard to find international data for other important factors such as franchise value, concentration, and efficiency. We use two popular multivariate statistical techniques (multiple discriminant analysis and ordered logistic regression) to estimate a suitable model and we compare their performances with those of two mostly used data mining techniques (Support Vector Machine and Artificial Neural Network). Our results suggest that our predictions are consistent with those of Moody's financial strength rating in general.. The important factors in rating are found to be profitability (measured by return on equity), efficient use of resources, and funding the businesses and the households instead of the government that shows efficient placement of the funds.     

“Modeling the impact of wars and terrorism on tourism demand in Kurdistan region of Iraq”

Portuguese Economic Journal - Recent political instabilities in the Middle East have led to strong negative impacts on the tourism sector. The aim of this study is to investigate the extent and the...     

Asymmetric government expenditure: a comparison of advanced and developing countries

This paper studies the responsiveness of government expenditures to business cycles and introduces an index of asymmetric government expenditures using panel data for advanced and developing countries during the period 1981–2014. The empirical findings show that government expenditures tend to be procyclical in developing countries but acyclical in advanced economies. In addition, it is found that government expenditures respond in a countercyclical manner during bad times in advanced countries, but in a strongly procyclical manner during good times in developing countries. The index of asymmetric government expenditures for developing countries tends to be higher than that of the advanced countries.     

Volatility Spillover Effects in Interregional Equity Markets: Empirical Evidence from Brazil and Turkey

We investigate volatility spillovers between two stock markets: Turkey and Brazil. Using a misspecification-robust causality-in-variance test, we find evidence supporting volatility spillovers from the São Paulo Stock Exchange to the Istanbul Stock Exchange. Moreover, the results imply that financial crises may change the nature of volatility spillovers between the two markets by adding an additional channel of volatility transmission from Turkey to Brazil.