Financial Health and the Intensive Margin of Trade

Using data on 2380 firms from nine emerging countries, this paper shows that there is a positive and significant relationship between financial health and the intensive margin of trade. The magnitude of this positive relationship is shown to depend on several firm characteristics, where the effects of financial health on firm-level exports are larger for firms with higher levels of export, bigger size (measured by assets), higher productivity (measured by value added per worker), and moderate levels of financial health (measured by cash flow over total assets). The results are robust to the consideration of foreign ownership and country characteristics as well as industry and time fixed effects.     

Not-quite-great depressions of Turkey: A quantitative analysis of economic growth over 1968–2004

Following the great depressions methodology suggested by Kehoe and Prescott (2002, 2007), we use growth accounting and perfect foresight dynamic general equilibrium models to study growth performance of Turkey from 1968 to 2004. Our benchmark model without any frictions and taxes accounts for 86% of the observed change in the growth rate of GDP per-working age person and once we extend the model with taxes and capital adjustment costs it accounts for 60% of the observed reduction in hours worked per-working age person and 35% of the change in the growth of capital-output ratio. Also, we identify that the Turkish economy experienced a depression from 1976 to 1984 and the extended model performs remarkably well to account for the depression period. Our findings generally suggest that rigidities affecting capital accumulation and government policies using distortionary taxes have a crucial role in the evolution of various variables of the Turkish economy.     

Nepotism,incentives and the academic success of college students

This study investigates the role of parent-owned businesses on children's college success and post-college aspirations by using a unique data set from a private university in Turkey. The data set matches college students' administrative records with survey responses. The presence of self-employed parents and family businesses has a strong negative association with college success even after accounting for observed ability, parental background, and various individual characteristics. An explanation for the lower GPAs of the children of self-employed parents is that in the presence of parent-owned businesses students have a larger set of post-graduation options and are more likely to plan on becoming self-employed due to intergenerational transfer of self-employment. Hence, these students may not exert as much effort in acquiring the task-specific career-oriented human capital taught in college. In line with expectations, we find that the children of self-employed parents are more likely to have entrepreneurial intent and are less likely to plan to attend graduate school.     

Housing, credit, and real activity cycles: Characteristics and comovement

This paper describes the characteristics and comovement of cycles in house prices, residential investment, credit, interest rates, and real activity in advanced economies during the past 25 years. Stylized facts and regularities are uncovered using a dynamic generalized factor model and spectral techniques. House price cycles are found to lead credit and real activity over the long term, while in the short to medium term the relationship varies across countries. Interest rates tend to lag other cycles at all time horizons. Although global factors are important, the US business cycle, housing cycle and interest rate cycle generally lead the respective cycles in other countries over all time horizons, while the US credit cycle leads mainly over the long term.     

Public and private measures of consumer confidence in Turkey： Substitutes or complements

Consumer confidence indices are among the major economic variables as private consumption stands as the major component of aggregate demand in many economies. This is also relevant for an emerging economy like Turkey. ＂What determines consumer confidence？＂ is one of the most popular questions in the literature of consumer surveys. There are two consumer confidence indices regularly released in Turkey. One is released by a private corporation, CNBC-e, in the first day of every month since January 2002. The other one is released by two public institutions, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey （CBRT） and Turkish Statistical Institute （TURKSTAT）, jointly since 2004. Although the goal is the same for both indices, there are differences between them in terms of the methodology and sampling size. This study has two aims： One is to detect the degree of correlation between these indices which will allow for commenting on the reliability of the indices; The other one is to test the relation between Gross Domestic Product （GDP）, unemployment rate variables and the consumer confidence in Turkey by using both indices.     

Rise of China and India in International Trade： From Textiles to New Technology

China and India are two demographic giants that have become big developing economic powers. They have maintained their specialization in textiles and developed outward-oriented sectors linked to new technologies, taking advantage of offshoring and outsourcing. Their increasing contribution to international trade is changing the world supply and demand of manufactured goods, primary goods and services. They are new leaders in the international division of labor, but beyond technological catch-up, their challenge is quality upgrading. Both countries are increasingly contributing to global economic growth, but they cannot yet trigger the growth of the rest of the world by themselves.     

Non-linearity in the inflation–growth relationship in developing economies: Evidence from a semiparametric panel model

Using data on developing economies, we estimate a flexible semiparametric panel data model that incorporates potentially nonlinear effects of inflation on economic growth. We find that inflation is associated with significantly lower growth only after it reaches about 12 percent, which is notably lower than the comparable estimate obtained from a threshold model. Our results also suggest that models with restrictive functional form assumptions tend to underestimate marginal effects of inflation on economic growth. We also document significant variation in the effect of inflation on growth across countries and over time.     

The interaction between foreigners' trading and emerging stock returns: Evidence from Turkey

Using monthly foreign flows data on Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) and employing a structural VAR model, we analyze the interaction between foreigners' trading and emerging stock returns. In contrast to most of the available theory and repeated previous findings on other markets, foreign investors negative-feedback-trade with respect to past local returns in ISE, however only in rising markets and especially under macroeconomic instability. Net foreign flows forecast future market returns, but not individual stock returns. Price impacts are permanent, suggesting that foreigners' trading incorporates information. Overall, results reject previous conclusions that foreigners are uninformed positive feedback traders: rather, they are a heterogeneous group dominated by sophisticated investors able to rationally adjust their trading style in line with the market's prevailing characteristics.     

Novice,Serial and Portfolio Entrepreneur Behaviour and Contributions

Policy-makers and practitioners are considering whether to allocate resources towards portfolio and serial entrepreneurs, as well as the provision of additional initiatives to increase the pool of novice entrepreneurs. To inform this policy debate, univariate statistical tests were used to test for differences between 354 firms owned by novice, serial and portfolio entrepreneurs in Scotland. Also, univariate tests were conducted to compare responses made by pairwise groups of entrepreneurs. No significant differences were detected between the three types of entrepreneurs with regard to several entrepreneur and firm demographic characteristics. Additional analysis revealed that portfolio entrepreneurs have more diverse experiences, and more resources than serial or novice entrepreneurs. On average, portfolio entrepreneurs appear to offer more attractive growth prospects than other entrepreneurs.     

The relationship of sport experience and the effect of competitive anxiety during the match for junior handball player students

The main aim of the current study were to find out the effect of competitive anxiety during the match for junior handball player students, and to investigate the relationship between the training experience of students and the level of competitive anxiety during the match for junior handball player students in youth centers of Duhok province in Iraq. A total number of participants was 128 junior handball players divided into 8 youth centers (Akre, Amedi, Bardarash, Domiz, Duhok, Shexan, Sumel and Zaxo) each center contain 16 players. The scale of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 was used to collect the data. The one way ANOVA, Test Least Significant Difference to find out the effect of competitive anxiety during the match for junior handball player students, and the correlation was conducted to find the relationship between the competitive anxiety and the training experience. The results showed that there is a significant differences between junior handball player students in the level of competitive anxiety for the youth centers (p < 0.00), and there is a negative significant correlation between the training experience and the level of competitive anxiety (r = ? 0.423, p = 0.00). This study would show useful information about the effect of competitive anxiety and training experience for junior handball player students.