Bank Quality,Loan Demand,and Market Discipline

In this paper, we examine the disciplinary role of borrowers, who are one of the key stakeholders in Turkish banks and are heavily affected when their banks experience difficulty. In the theoretical model, we show that borrowers prefer to have a relationship with less risky banks although it increases their cost of getting funds. Empirically, we examine the relationship between quality of a bank and its loan demand and find that as riskiness of a bank decreases, its loan demand increases significantly, suggesting the disciplinary role of borrowers in Turkey.     

Macro explanatory factors of Turkish tourism companies’ stock returns

This study examines whether the stock prices of Turkish tourism companies respond to growth in eight macro-economic variables namely, consumer price index, imports, exchange rate, consumer confidence index, oil price, money supply, foreign tourist arrivals, and monthly stock market return. By applying the Granger causality procedure, we find that growth in the consumer confidence index and imports could Granger cause tourism companies’ stock returns among eight macro factors in Turkey during the 2005 to 2013 period. After considering the structural break that occurred in 2007, the pre-break results indicate that the consumer confidence index, exchange rate, and foreign tourist arrivals could Granger cause tourism stock returns. However, the results in the post-structural break period reveal that only growths in oil prices and imports are significant.     

The cyclical behavior of R&D investment during the Great Recession

This paper investigates the cyclicality of research and development (R&D) activities during the Great Recession period by incorporating the role of cre     

Foreign banks and short-term macroeconomic fluctuations: Do financial development and regions matter?

In this paper, we investigate the association between bank integration, measured with the share of foreign banks in the banking industry, and macroeconomic volatility in emerging economies. We find a negative and significant relationship between bank integration and short-run fluctuations in output, consumption and investment, controlling for financial development, bank concentration and the real effective exchange rate. However, this relationship is found to be positive at high levels of financial development. We also explore the association at the regional level and show that the presence of foreign banks in Latin America is negatively and significantly correlated with macroeconomic volatility both in normal times and times of crisis. Despite widespread concerns in emerging Europe, which experienced greater financial vulnerability during the global financial crisis, we find no significant association between growth volatilities and bank integration.     

Mobility and optimal tenure choice

In this paper, we offer a dynamic model of the optimal tenure behavior of an individual who faces the possibility of moving multiple times during his lifetime. We also investigate the lifetime effects of such factors as income tax, property tax, transaction costs, and mortgage rates on the household’s tenure choice. The agents in the model utilize a genetic algorithm, a probabilistic search approach, to determine their optimal lifetime tenure choice path. The agents are forward looking in that they anticipate such possible events as changes in jobs, marital status, household size, or dissatisfaction with current residence. Our results suggest several housing policy implications and explain some of the empirical findings in the literature.     

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.     

Cyclical Dynamics of the Turkish Economy and the Stock Market

Abstract

We analyze the cyclical dynamics of the Turkish economy and the stock market as well as their interactions. We use hidden Markov models that are robust to parameter instability arising from major shifts in economic policy, which have been typically observed in the Turkish economy. These models provide estimates of turning points for the growth, business, and stock market cycles. We identify three states of growth cycles and two states of business cycles in Turkey characterized by different mean estimates. We find that the economy went through five recessions since 1987. Crises are characterized by sharp drops in economic activity and are preceded by slowdowns. These crises are typically followed by strong recoveries during which the economy grows above its long-run average rate. We show that the Turkish stock market goes through three regimes having distinct risk-return dynamics. Bear markets associated with negative returns precede every recession with an average lead time of three quarters, suggesting that the stock market may be a useful forward-looking indicator of the Turkish economy.     

The role of materialism,religiosity, and demographics in subjective well-being

In appealing to consumers, marketers need to know what the good life means across various consumer segments. The present study seeks to deepen the understanding of consumer subjective well-being (SWB) by exploring its relationship with selected secular and sacred values. SWB, defined as individuals' cognitive and affective assessments regarding their life satisfaction (Diener, 1984), is treated as the dependent variable in investigating how SWB is influenced by individual consumer materialistic attitudes (a secular value), religiosity (a sacred value), and demographics. Significant differences between high and low religiosity consumers regarding the role of income and materialistic attitudes in predicting SWB were found. Although income and some aspects of materialism are positively related to the SWB of low religiosity consumers, these variables are negatively related to the SWB of high religiosity consumers. This study implies that marketers might benefit from considering consumer religiosity as a segmentation and targeting direction in the design of materialistic positionings and communications. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Staffing effectiveness across countries: An institutional perspective

This study draws on institutional theory to investigate why and how staffing effectiveness varies across countries. Utilising data from multiple sources (Cranfield Network on Comparative Human Resource Management [CRANET], Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness [GLOBE], World Economic Forum [WEF], Transparency International, Tightness-Looseness Index), it covers 2,918 organisations in 11 countries. Extending earlier research on comparative staffing that focuses on cultural or regulatory differences separately, our findings show that companies in different countries implement staffing practices in line with their normative (i.e., cultural), regulatory, and cognitive institutions. A second key finding shows that institutionally embedded staffing practices are associated with organisational turnover, thus challenging dominant universalist perspectives on staffing effectiveness. Finally, we shed light on a central yet understudied boundary condition of contextual perspectives on staffing by identifying the strength of institutional pressures (i.e., societal tightness-looseness) as a moderator of the relationships between national institutions, staffing, and turnover.