Incomplete integration and contagion of debt distress in economic unions

This paper compares different fiscal integration schemes on the basis of their ability to finance public investments and resilience to debt distress and contagion. Complete integration schemes, where a central authority chooses the level of public investments with productivity‐enhancing externalities across different jurisdictions, are shown to be superior to incomplete integration schemes, where member governments choose public investments unilaterally. As a result, equilibrium income is greater for citizens of both member states under a complete integration scheme. Moreover, complete integration schemes are shown to be more resilient to idiosyncratic shocks and more effective in limiting contagion of debt distress. This is mainly because the central authority can credibly borrow more without risking default than member states taken together can and it can “transfer resilience” across them if needed. These findings inform discussions on structural aspects of secular stagnation in Europe by emphasizing a potential challenge in the institutional design of fiscal responsibilities.     

The Inherited Inequality: How Demographic Aging and Pension Reforms can Change the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth

The role of inherited wealth in modern economies has increasingly come under scrutiny. This study presents one of the first attempts to shed light on how demographic aging could shape this role. It shows that, in the absence of retirement annuities, or for a given level of annuitization, both increasing longevity and decreasing fertility should reduce the inherited share of total wealth in a given economy. Thus, aging is not likely to explain a recent surge in this share in some advanced economies. Shrinking retirement annuities, however, could offset and potentially reverse these effects. The paper also shows that individual bequests will be more unequally distributed if aging is driven by a drop in fertility. In comparison, the effect of increasing longevity on their distribution is non‐monotonic.     

Comparative analysis of recruitment qualifications of industrial designers in Turkey through undergraduate education programs and online recruitment resources

Although the term “industrial designer” is a well known title, the understanding of industrial design as a profession is still unclear, as evidenced by its application in the sector. In light of this, schools of industrial design should, despite the immense contributions to the sector made by their past graduates, continuously revise their curricula and review their deficiencies to provide a better correlation between their graduates and the needs of the industry. The aim of this study is to ascertain the role of the industrial designer from the perspective of industry by analyzing the specifications stated in job adverts for the recruitment of industrial designers. This study was conducted in three phases. In the first phase, an in-depth literature review was completed. The second phase was dedicated to the identification of the industrial designer in terms of education institutions, and to realize this, the curricula and course contents of industrial design undergraduate programs selected from ten universities in Turkey were analyzed. The third phase was directed towards identifying the profile of the industrial designer from the perspective of industry. Thus, the analyses were made through an investigation of the job opportunities available in the industrial design profession announced in seven major job search websites during the last 4 months of 2009. The results of this study are crucial for all parties involved as they help to satisfy the recruitment expectations of industrial design education, the industry, and the graduates.     

High inflation and returns on residential real estate: evidence from Turkey

This study examines the hedging behaviour of real estate investment in a high inflationary environment. The hypothesis that the real estate investment hedges both expected and unexpected inflation is tested. The returns of investment on residential apartments in several neighbourhoods in the capital of Turkey are used in the analysis. Expected inflation is measured by three proxies. It is found that in a high inflationary environment, real estate investment does not provide hedge against inflation. A reverse causality between returns on real estate and changes in expected inflation is not observed. However, a relationship between real returns and changes in inflationary expectations seem to be different in relatively low and relatively high income neighbourhoods.     

Political Connection,Bank Credits and Growth: Evidence from Turkey

The pervasive existence of government‐owned banks in emerging economies is often justified by their provision of access to credit in remote and underdeveloped regions that are ignored by private banks. This paper analyses whether credits provided by government‐owned and private banks have a significant role in regional growth and whether this role changes in politically connected areas in Turkey. Our findings imply that private banks significantly improve the economic well‐being in all Turkish provinces regardless of their development level or their political connection with the ruling party. However, credits by government‐owned banks are found to be positively related to the per capita growth rate only in the less developed provinces that are advocates of the ruling political party and also developed but not politically connected provinces. These results suggest that government‐owned bank credits, as implied by the political view, are used for funding politically desirable projects or politically connected borrowers.     

Analyses of non-fatal accidents in an opencast mine by logistic regression model – a case study

Accidents cause major damage for both workers and enterprises in the mining industry. To reduce the number of occupational accidents, these incidents should be properly registered and carefully analysed. This study efficiently examines the Aegean Lignite Enterprise (ELI) of Turkish Coal Enterprises (TKI) in Soma between 2006 and 2011, and opencast coal mine occupational accident records were used for statistical analyses. A total of 231 occupational accidents were analysed for this study. The accident records were categorized into seven groups: area, reason, occupation, part of body, age, shift hour and lost days. The SPSS package program was used in this study for logistic regression analyses, which predicted the probability of accidents resulting in greater or less than 3 lost workdays for non-fatal injuries. Social facilities-area of surface installations, workshops and opencast mining areas are the areas with the highest probability for accidents with greater than 3 lost workdays for non-fatal injuries, while the reasons with the highest probability for these types of accidents are transporting and manual handling. Additionally, the model was tested for such reported accidents that occurred in 2012 for the ELI in Soma and estimated the probability of exposure to accidents with lost workdays correctly by 70%.