Nonlinear modelling of the Finnish Banking and Finance branch index

It is well documented that daily returns of several financial assets cannot be modelled by pure linear processes. It seems to be generally accepted that many economic variables follow nonlinear processes. The sources of nonlinearity can be divided in two classes: those where nonlinearities stem from the conditional variance and those where non-linearities enter through the conditional mean. Efforts in modelling the former have resulted in development of the ARCH-family models. There is, however, less evidence on nonlinearity in the mean of financial time series. One family of models that is applied in finance is the STAR. In this paper some nonlinear modelling techniques are applied to a Finnish financial time series, the daily Banking and Finance branch index on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. The techniques include a variance-nonlinear model from the ARCH family, a mean-nonlinear model, namely Smooth Transition Autoregression (STAR)-model and a neural network. Linearity is tested for by standard autocorrelation tests, LM-tests against the specific nonlinear models and the BDS-test. The study provides supplements to a range of earlier research. It demonstrates that the stock series is both linearly and nonlinearly dependent. Adapting an ARCH(3) eliminates the dependencies most satisfactorily. The ARCH-models and STAR-models were estimated using the SHAZAM-package.     

Time variation in Okun’s law in Sweden

In this article we estimate an Okun’s law relationship for Sweden using a model with time-varying parameters. Employing quarterly data from 1982 to 2014, results indicate that the GDP growth needed to keep the unemployment rate unchanged in the long rung has fallen considerably over the last 10 years.     

Explaining influences on career ‘choice’: the case of MBA students in comparative perspective

This study explores the micro-individual, meso-institutional and relational and macro-structural level influences on career choices of MBA students from three countries, questioning the apparent dominance of ‘free choice’ in the context of persistent forms of structural constraints in career markets. The paper takes a critical perspective on career ‘choice’, acknowledging the contested nature of ‘choice’ and identifying career as a socially and historically situated phenomenon. The central hypothesis of the study is that ‘it is more likely for the MBA students to report micro-agentic or meso-instutional and relational rather than macro-structural conditions as key influences on their career choices’. The study draws on the findings of a cross-national survey on careers involving Britain, Israel and Turkey. Findings show that MBA students consider the impact of structural conditions as less significant on their career choices than their own human capital and capacity to make free choices. The study provides an understanding of the main cross-national similarities and differences in reporting of influences on career ‘choice’, and brings to bare interesting theoretical and methodological insights.     

Value-based performance excellence measurement for higher education institution: instrument validation

The purpose of this article is to construct-validate an instrument of value-based performance excellence measurement for higher education institution (HEI) in Malaysia. The HEI performance is measured using 6 value indicators of leadership, culture, productivity, employee, stakeholders and overall performance. 1,100 questionnaires were distributed and 275 questionnaires were used for analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) approach was deployed by using analysis of moment structures software. The results for the hypothesised CFA model revealed the fit statistics of CFI = 0.944, TLI = 0.939 and RMSEA = 0.075. In conclusion, the CFA model fitted the data well. Implications of the study was significant to HEI to consider and adapt the value-based assessment approach in university assessment for total excellence.     

Between a rock and a hard place: corporate elites in the context of religion and secularism in Turkey

Drawing on discourse analyses of 36 in-depth interviews with elite business people from Turkey, the study identifies the networking patterns of new and established business elites in the context of economic liberalization and socioreligious transformation of the country. Through a comparative analysis of the so-called secular and religious elite networks, we demonstrate the role of institutional actors such as the government, and identity networks, based on religion and place of birth in shaping the form and content of social networks among business elites in Turkey. In order to achieve this, we operationalize Bourdieu's notion of theory of practice and Granovetter's theory of social networks, illustrating the utility of combining these approaches in explicating the form and content of social networks in their situated contexts, in which power and divergent interests are negotiated.     

The 1994 currency crisis in Turkey

This paper analyzes the 1994 crisis in Turkey. The period preceding the crisis witnessed a continuous deterioration of macroeconomic fundamentals. However, domestic debt financing of public deficits prevented reserve losses and an increase in inflation rate. It is argued that despite weak fundamentals of the period preceding the crisis, in the absence of policy “mistakes” that played a role of a series of shocks in the second half of 1993, the financial crisis could have been avoided.     

Traffic risk perception,road safety attitudes,and behaviors among road users: a comparison of Turkey and Norway

The present study aims to investigate differences in road safety attitudes, driver behavior, and traffic risk perception between Turkey and Norway. A questionnaire survey was conducted among a sample of Norwegian (n?=?247) and Turkish (n?=?213) road users. The results show that Turkish respondents perceived traffic risk to be higher than Norwegian respondents. Turkish respondents reported safer attitudes towards drinking and driving than Norwegian respondents, while Norwegians reported safer attitudes towards speeding. Turkish respondents reported a lower frequency of speeding behaviors than Norwegian respondents, whereas Norwegian respondents reported a lower frequency of drinking and driving. Traffic risk perception was related to road safety attitudes and behaviors among Norwegian respondents but not among Turkish respondents. The results were discussed with respect to differences in traffic safety, traffic culture, and the development levels in Turkey and Norway.     

FDI and domestic investment in Germany: crowding in or out?

This paper estimates the effects of outward FDI on domestic business investment in Germany at the industry level for a panel of 19 industry and 10 services sectors. We pay particular attention to the different motivations behind FDI, and distinguish between FDI to high-versus low-wage countries, to Europe versus the rest of the world, and FDI in services and industry sectors.We find that, in industry, FDI to low-wage countries crowds out domestic investment, whereas FDI to high-wage countries outside Europe crowds in domestic investment. In services, FDI to Western Europe crowds in domestic investment.     

The Effect of Foreign Affiliate Employment on Wages,Employment, and the Wage Share in Austria

This paper estimates the effects of outward Foreign Direct Investment (employment in affiliates abroad) on employment, wages and the wage share in Austria using panel data for the period 1996–2005. There is evidence of significant negative effects of FDI on both employment and wages, and consequently on the wage share. The results are not limited to workers in low-skilled sectors. The negative employment effect is mainly due to the rise in employment in the foreign affiliates in Eastern Europe. The negative wage effects originate from affiliate employment in both Eastern Europe and the developed countries in the industrial sector, but FDI in Eastern Europe has positive wage effects in the services sector due to possible scope effects.     

A structural Bayesian VAR for model-based fan charts

Inflation forecast uncertainty is of importance for a wide range of agents in the economy, central banks in particular. Ways to describe and account for this uncertainty in a consistent manner have received increasing attention of late, in part due to the growing number of inflation-targeting central banks. This article develops a large structural VAR for the Swedish economy and estimates it in a Bayesian framework. The methodology permits not only structural interpretation and analysis but offers a natural way to formalize forecast uncertainty, as the posterior predictive density from the model has the interpretation of a fan chart.