Does stock market performance affect the government satisfaction rating in the UK?

In this study, we attempt to answer the question of whether stock market performance affects the government satisfaction rating in the long run in a sample period spanning 1984:Q1 to 2013:Q2 in the UK. We examine both the equilibrium relationship and the causality relationship between stock market performance and government satisfaction rating. The results indicate that the voters are sensitive to the economic shocks and hold responsible for the government. The empirical results confirm the responsibility hypothesis.     

Competition in the general insurance industry

Using a large sample of cross-sectional data for 1998 of companies operating in the general insurance industry we attempt to shed some light on the issue of competition in this industry. Companies offering products and services in the general insurance market are believed to trade under very competitive conditions. In order to test this widely-held claim we investigate whether firms’ pricing policies reflect competitive or monopolistic market features. Under competitive conditions companies are forced to pass on any increase in costs in prices and thus their revenues will rise pari passu should wages, underwriting costs or other expenses are increasing. By contrast, a firm operating under monopolistic competition responds to an increase in marginal and average costs by increasing price and reducing output, resulting in a less then complete pass-through in revenue; profit falls. Our study is the first, to our knowledge, to apply this research methodology to the general (casuality/liability) insurance industry. Firms in this industry generate revenue through underwriting of insurance risks and from investing their assets. As underwriting and capital markets are in general segmented (catastrophe bonds apart), our empirical approach is based on the insurance and portfolio behaviour of firms and not on an integrated view of both. Previous investigations of this kind have focussed on the banking industry. Contrary to widely held views we find that competition is less than perfect.     

Seasonal employee leadership and turnover intention in the hospitality and tourism industry: Serial mediation model workplace ostracism and work alienation

Based on the Conservation of Resources Theory, this research aims to examine the relationship between seasonal employee leadership (SEL) and turnover intention (TI). The data was obtained by administering a survey to 450 seasonal employees working in 15 five-star hotels in Antalya. The findings revealed that SEL reduces TI, which is an important problem for the tourism industry. The study results show that SEL was negatively related to workplace ostracism (WO) and work alienation (WA) and TI. Further, the findings show the serial mediating effect of WO and WA between SEL and TI. The study makes useful recommendations to managers to eliminate ostracism, curb the feeling of alienation and decrease TI.     

Using survival modeling for turn-time predictions in foodservice settings

Within the competitive foodservice industry, the ability to accurately measure the meal process known as turn-time is critical to the success of the firms in the industry. This is traditionally done through linear techniques such as multiple least squares (aka linear regression) or analysis of variance (ANOVA). However, linear techniques have theoretical properties that can potentially lead to bias in measurements of time duration variables, while survival models were designed for that purpose. This study utilized simulated data of a dine-in restaurant to test and compare the ability of linear regression to five survival models (proportional hazard models) for predicting the duration of turn-time. The results from the simulated trials show that while some of the survival models held incremental improvements, linear regression performed adequately for predicting the duration of turn-time even when taking the biased predictions into account. For operators who are in their infancy of developing restaurant revenue management systems, linear regression is recommended due to the practical ease of the models. On the other hand, operators who have well-established restaurant revenue management systems interested in incremental improvements should opt for survival models in predicting turn-time.     

Low Wage Returns to Schooling in a Developing Country: Evidence from a Major Policy Reform in Turkey

In this paper, we estimate returns to schooling for young men and women in Turkey using the exogenous and substantial variation in schooling across birth cohorts brought about by the 1997 reform of compulsory schooling within a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We estimate that the return from an extra year of schooling is about 7–8% for women and an imprecisely estimated 2–2.5% for men. The low level of the estimates for men contrasts starkly with those estimated for other developing countries. We identify several reasons why returns to schooling are low for men and why they are higher for women in our context. In particular, the policy alters the schooling distributions of men and women differently, thus the average causal effect puts a higher weight on the causal effect of schooling at higher grade levels for women than for men.     

Does credit composition matter for current account dynamics? Evidence from Turkey

Based on a dynamic approach using the Kalman filter we depict effects of time-varying interactions between different components of credit stock on the current account in the Turkish Economy for the period 2002Q3–2014Q3. We decompose the credit stock into consumer and non-financial corporate sector credit and show empirically that both types of credit stock have negative effects on the current account dynamics.     

On the Middle Income Trap,the Industrialization Process and Appropriate Industrial Policy

In the 1960s, Kaldor defined the manufacturing sector as the engine of growth, suggesting that industrialization might help accelerate growth rates in low income economies. This is still relevant in today’s world, where growth rates in countries in the middle income trap slow down, extending their time in the trap. In some of these economies, industrialization slows down while others face “premature deindustrialization.” Adding to this scenario, this paper describes, in Kaldorian fashion, the streamlined features of industrialization, technical capabilities and technical progress, which offer explanations as to why sectoral industrial policies are necessary in releasing countries from the trap. It presents a taxonomy of industrial policies and discusses how industrial policy and science, technology and innovation policies should be sequenced along the process of industrialization. Finally, the paper develops a methodology to identify the “strategic” sectors on which industrial policy could focus.     

Patent Protection and Strategic Delays in Technology Development: Implications for Economic Growth

We present an endogenous growth model in which both the investment to develop a new technology—that upgrades the quality of machines—and entry of imitators are determined endogenously. According to the model, how soon the new‐technology machine is launched after the patent is granted is influenced by two factors: returns to scale in technology development and “strategic delays.” Strategic delays in technology development are most likely to occur when earlier dates of success enable imitators to enter an industry, that is, when imitation is swift and relatively cheap and/or patent protection is relatively lengthy. We then explore the link between the optimal patent length and economic growth and find that the equilibrium investment in technology development and thus the expected rate of technological progress exhibit an inverted U‐shape relationship with respect to the legal patent length.     

Financial liberalization and banking efficiency: evidence from Turkey

This paper examines the banking efficiency in a pre- and post-liberalization environment by drawing on the Turkish experience by using DEA. The paper also investigates the scale effect on efficiency. Our findings suggest that liberalization programs were followed by an observable decline in efficiency. Another finding of the study is that the Turkish banking system had a serious scale problem during the study period. The second part of our analysis relied on econometric methods and found that one major reason for such system-wide efficiency decline has been the growing macroeconomic instability of the Turkish economy in general and financial sector in particular.