Building,Marketing and Living in an Islamic Gated Community: Novel Configurations of Class and Religion in Istanbul

This article analyses the development and marketing of Islamic gated communities in Basaksehir, Istanbul. It demonstrates how a blueprint of public–private urban development was appropriated by middle‐class Islamists. The gated communities in Basaksehir—which, at the outset, were not explicitly religious—gradually became attractive to religious actors searching for enclosed urban enclaves where Islamic communities would be protected against perceived moral‐urban threats. While urban‐religious enclaves appear to bear similarities to pre‐modern Ottoman Islamic urban enclaves, the rise of contemporary Islamic gated communities should be understood in light of the recent coming to power of the Islamist Turkish government. In cooperation with this government, housing development agencies approached Islamic investors to find capital for their public–private housing projects. One of the results of this form of urban development is that, contrary to pre‐modern Ottoman Islamic urban enclaves, the Islamic gated communities are homogenous in terms of economic class, catering specifically to the Islamic middle classes. Moreover, people who invest in Basaksehir desire an urban‐religious lifestyle that differs from the ‘traditional' religious lifestyle experienced in ‘traditional' Islamic neighbourhoods. The specific urban‐religious configuration generates a new type of Islam that better fits middle‐class values and a middle‐class lifestyle.     

POSTERIOR‐PREDICTIVE EVIDENCE ON US INFLATION USING EXTENDED NEW KEYNESIAN PHILLIPS CURVE MODELS WITH NON‐FILTERED DATA

Changing time series properties of US inflation and economic activity, measured as marginal costs, are modeled within a set of extended New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) models. It is shown that mechanical removal or modeling of simple low‐frequency movements in the data may yield poor predictive results which depend on the model specification used. Basic NKPC models are extended to include structural time series models that describe typical time‐varying patterns in levels and volatilities. Forward‐ and backward‐looking expectation components for inflation are incorporated and their relative importance is evaluated. Survey data on expected inflation are introduced to strengthen the information in the likelihood. Use is made of simulation‐based Bayesian techniques for the empirical analysis. No credible evidence is found on endogeneity and long‐run stability between inflation and marginal costs. Backward‐looking inflation appears stronger than forward‐looking inflation. Levels and volatilities of inflation are estimated more precisely using rich NKPC models. The extended NKPC structures compare favorably with existing basic Bayesian vector autoregressive and stochastic volatility models in terms of fit and prediction. Tails of the complete predictive distributions indicate an increase in the probability of deflation in recent years. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Security in a sea of insecurity: job security and intention to stay among service sector employees in Turkey

This article examines the association between job security and intention to stay for those who are employed in Turkey. There is a high level of unemployment in the country and many workers there are concerned about their job security. Job security refers to the objective dimensions of continuous contract, working full-time hours and paid and unpaid overtime. Job security also refers to the subjective dimension of perceived job security. We surveyed 407 employees in banking and related sectors' call centres, five-star hotel front-line staff and airline cabin crews. Results show that objective dimensions of job security are not associated with intention to stay. However, perceived job security is significantly and positively associated with intention to stay. We recommend that human resource managers focus on the perceived job security aspect of employment to keep valuable employees with the company.     

Real interest rates: nonlinearity and structural breaks

Real interest rate is a crucial variable that determines the consumption, investment and saving behavior of individuals and thereby acts as a key policy tool that the central banks use to control the economy. Although many important theoretical models require the real interest rates to be stationary, the empirical evidence accumulated so far has not been able to provide conclusive evidence on the mean reverting dynamics of this variable. To resolve this puzzle we re-investigate the stochastic nature of the real interest rates by developing unit root tests for nonlinear heterogeneous panels where the alternative hypothesis allows for a smooth transition between deterministic linear trends around which stationary asymmetric adjustment may occur. When the newly developed panel unit root tests are applied to the real interest rates of the 17 OECD countries, we were able to uncover overwhelming empirical support in favor of mean reversion in the short-run and long-run real interest rates. Therefore, these results show that the conclusions drawn from a miss-specified test that ignores the presence of either nonlinearity, structural breaks or cross sectional dependence can give quite misleading results about the stochastic behavior of the real interest rates.     

Speculative attacks and currency crises: The Mexican experience

By using data from the Mexican economy, this paper estimates a speculative attack model of currency crises in order to identify the role of macroeconomic fundamentals and early warning signals of a potential currency crisis. A deterioration in fundamentals appears to generate high one-step-ahead probabilities for the observed regime changes during the sample period 1982–1994. Particularly, foreign reserve losses, expansionary output, monetary and fiscal policies, an increase in inflation differentials and the share of short-term foreign currency-indexed debt, and an appreciation of the real exchange rate appear to have contributed to the speculative pressures and the associated regime changes.     

Research on the Credit Cycle and Business Cycle with a Focus on Ten States from Central,Eastern, and Southeastern Europe

By performing an econometric analysis of the credit cycle and business cycle from an individual as well as a comparative perspective, with a focus on ten relevant economies from the areas of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, this research offers a fresh view regarding the importance of banks in promoting long-term economic growth through their lending capacity. The purpose is to better understand the behavior (the short- and medium-term dynamics) of the credit cycle and business cycle and the effects of the interactions between them. The results of this study offer valuable insights for both academics and policymakers and provide a warning to regulators not to overregulate or put too much pressure on banking activity.     

Information Technology Tools in New Product Development: The Impact of Complementary Resources*,†

Emergent research has examined the antecedents to using information technology (IT) in the new product development (NPD) process and the impact of IT on NPD performance. Based on the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm, this study hypothesizes that particular resources create IT capabilities that significantly enhance NPD outcomes. More specifically, this research extends previous work by investigating whether three complementary resources, namely an executive champion for IT, global engagement, and organizational innovativeness, influence IT capabilities (IT use frequency and IT replacement frequency), which in turn affect NPD outcomes (NPD task proficiency and NPD performance). To test the conceptual model, survey data were collected from 220 NPD and IT managers in a variety of large Japanese firms. The results show that an executive champion for IT and global engagement are predictors of both IT tool use and replacement frequency while organizational innovativeness contributes only to IT tool replacement frequency. The results also indicate that both IT tool use and replacement frequency have a positive effect on NPD task proficiency, which improves NPD performance. This research contributes to the literature by adding understanding of the role of IT in NPD at the firm level in four ways. First, it examines particular organizational complementary resources and their relationship to IT capabilities. Second, it examines the RBV and IT in the context of NPD, an important business process. Third, it measures IT usage in a more granular fashion (i.e., IT tool use frequency and IT replacement frequency) rather than simply IT usage as a dichotomy. Finally, through testing the proposed model with data collected from Japanese firms, this study provides empirical evidence from an Asian country to answer the call for more NPD research to be conducted in countries other than North American and Western European contexts. The findings of the study also provide implications for managers. Importantly, they indicate that an executive level champion for IT is a key influencer in facilitating IT usage and replacement, and likely can help generate awareness of and support for greater IT investments so the firm can create IT capabilities for effective NPD.     

Locating leisure as the route to well-being: challenges of researching women’s leisure in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article interrogates the relation of leisure to subjective well-being by focusing on the language-based challenges during empirical research, which deeply impact upon both the substance of the data collected and its interpretation, thereby the knowledge that is produced on leisure. Drawing upon the empirical data collected via qualitative methods, the article seizes on the relationship between women’s free-time, labour, leisure and subjective well-being. The findings of the research suggest that the translation of leisure as ‘free time activities’ in Turkish creates serious challenges in researching women’s leisure. Women in this research understand leisure in multiple ways, such as an escape from boredom, a sphere of recuperation, pleasure and self-fulfilment which altogether represent their understanding of leisure as a route to their subjective well-being. Building on these findings, the article aims to highlight the importance of ethnographically guided qualitative research in uncovering both the meanings of and the interdependence between leisure and subjective well-being in both Turkey, the focus of the study, and other comparable societies around the world.     

Industrial design students’ perceptions towards a career in user experience field in Turkey

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - The rapid growth of the user experience (UX) field has brought efforts to meet the increasing demand for specialists by welcoming...