The day of the week effect on stock market volatility and volume: International evidence

This study investigates the day of the week effect on the volatility of major stock market indexes for the period of 1988 through 2002. Using a conditional variance framework, we find that the day of the week effect is present in both return and volatility equations. The highest volatility occurs on Mondays for Germany and Japan, on Fridays for Canada and the United States, and on Thursdays for the United Kingdom. For most of the markets, the days with the highest volatility also coincide with that market's lowest trading volume. Thus, this paper supports the argument made by Foster and Viswanathan [Rev. Financ. Stud. 3 (1990) 593] that high volatility would be accompanied by low trading volume because of the unwillingness of liquidity traders to trade in periods of high stock market volatility.     

Day of the week effect on foreign exchange market volatility: Evidence from Turkey

This paper assesses the day of the week effect of the daily depreciation of the Turkish lira (TL) against the US dollar (USD) and its volatility. The empirical evidence from Turkey presented here suggests that Thursdays are associated with higher and Mondays with lower depreciation rates compared to those of Wednesdays. Moreover, Mondays and Tuesdays are associated with higher volatility than Wednesdays.     

Residents’ attitudes to tourists visiting their mosques: a case study from Istanbul,Turkey

Resident perception of tourism impacts has been one of the most studied areas of tourism. However, there is an extremely limited literature on resident perceptions of religious tourism development, especially in non-Western countries. This study investigated the attitudes of local residents toward tourists visiting four important mosques in Istanbul, Turkey and their perception of religious tourism development. All residents surveyed were practicing Muslims who prayed in a mosque at least once a year. We found that, in general, local residents are supportive of tourists visiting their mosque, but the level of support may differ based on the demographic and cultural background of the residents as well as on the number of tourists visiting the mosque.     

Follow the Crowd or Follow the Trailblazer? The Differential Role of Firm Experience in Product Entry Decisions in the US Video Game Industry

Firms take cues from their external environment under uncertainty and imitate the actions of others. However, a firm’s own experience may either substitute for these external clues because the firm can evaluate uncertain situations more accurately, or it may complement them because the firm can act more successfully on the external cues. We argue that the type of external cues determines which of the two holds in the context of product entry decisions into market niches. If firms observe a large wave of entrants, own experience conveys more information than the imprecise signal of a mass of other firms. Conversely, if firms observe trailblazers, i.e., highly successful and influential products in a niche, own experience can help firms develop a strategy as a fast follower in a growing niche. We expect the supporting role of own experience in following trailblazers to be especially pronounced in niches that have not been discovered by a large mass of other firms. We study and test our hypotheses in the context of the US PC video game industry between 1991 and 2010 and find support for both the substitutive relationship between own experience and niche popularity and the complementary relationship of own experience and niche trailblazers. However, support for the complementary relationship is limited to less populated niches.     

Religion and Economic Development in History: Institutions and the Role of Religious Networks

I argue that the role of religion on economic performance is mainly through the networks of small religious groups. These groups form social networks that enable individuals to conduct non-formal contract enforcement mechanisms. I analyze the effects of religions on societies, focusing mainly on the institutional aspects that affect the capabilities of creating social capital via networks which enhance cooperation and decrease transaction costs. Since the interaction between institutions and organizations is expected to shape the institutional evolution and economic performance of an economy, religions that have a communal form of organization rather than a vertical (hierarchical) structure, thus allowing many different denominational sub-communities within a society, can be more beneficiary for development and growth. Such institutions may not only provide allocative and production efficiency, but also adaptive efficiency that is a key to long-run growth. However, these effects may turn negative depending on these institutions’ role in causing group hostility and exclusion.     

The heterogeneous impact of taxation on economic development: New insights from a panel cointegration approach

In this paper, we study the role of taxation on long-run income performance. In the theoretical part of the study, we develop a stylized model based on Barro (1990), in which income taxation has two contradictory roles in the standard Solow (1956) setup: on the one hand, taxation appropriates resources that would otherwise be used for physical capital accumulation, and on the other, it is the source of government spending, which is used to support private production. In the empirical part of the study, the impact of consumption tax, personal income tax, corporate profit tax and property tax on income is estimated using the common correlated effects (CCE) panel cointegration approach, which allows for cross-sectional dependencies and provides both panel- and country-specific results. The panel findings for 30 OECD countries for the period of 1995–2016 indicate that only consumption tax has a statistically significant negative effect on long-run income. However, because the type and sign of the tax coefficients are heterogeneous for the country-specific results, we conclude that taxation has heterogeneous effects on income.     

Welfare calculations in discrete choice settings: An exploratory analysis of error term correlation with finite populations

A difference in logsum terms (also known as inclusive values) is becoming a standard practice for anticipating the welfare impacts of transport policy when choice alternatives are discrete and behavior is (assumed to be) random-utility maximizing. However, this calculation is only an approximation when the population under study is finite. This paper examines the effect of error term correlations in such welfare analyses with finite samples, recognizing that individual preferences and unobserved attributes influencing choice are unlikely to change much, if at all, across scenarios or across alternatives. Such measures appear reasonably robust to deviations in assumptions of correlation. Nevertheless, we identify cases when the synthetic population samples need to be quite large for the average logsum to be realized. Another finding in these results is the substantial variation that emerges across synthetic populations, suggesting that policies that appear welfare-improving (when evaluated with average welfare formulations) may well be welfare-reducing (or vice versa) for a wide variety of actual, finite populations.     

An interest-rate-spread-based measure of Turkish monetary policy

A coherent method to measure the effectiveness of a monetary policy improves the monetary authority’s management capacity and renders the possibility of applying sound policies prior to and during a crisis. The trend in employing complicated and ambiguity-bearing unconventional monetary tools in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis has increased the value of such a method. The aim of this article is to introduce a coherent and consistent monetary policy evaluation method for Turkey. Accordingly, we suggest that innovations in the spread between overnight interest rates and Treasury auction interest rates are informative for exchange rate, output, and prices. Empirical evidence for this identification reveals that positive innovation in spread (implying a tight monetary policy measure) decreases output temporarily, permanently decreases prices, and appreciates local currency. This result is also robust to alternative specifications.     

Tourist Word of Mouth and Revisit Intentions to Rural Tourism Destinations: a Case of North Dakota,USA

Destination managers in rural states, like North Dakota, understand the benefits of tourism and, thus, the importance of studying visitors' intentions. This study investigated visitors' perceptions of destination image, value and satisfaction and those variables’ relationship with future behaviors, with a specific focus on their intent to return and make recommendations to others. The results showed that destination image directly affects visitors' perception of value and revisit intentions, and it indirectly affects satisfaction and recommendation intentions. The results also demonstrate how tourism practitioners can apply past models to their destination. The overall findings support the concept that a positive image is important to attracting repeat visitors. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Denomination composition of trade and trade balance: evidence from Turkey

The currency denominations of a country's exports and imports are not necessarily the same. If this is the case, then a change in the exchange rate parity among major currencies will affect the trade balance. The empirical evidence provided from Turkey – where exports are mostly denominated in Euros and imports are mostly denominated in USD – suggests that an appreciation of the Euro against the USD would increase the output in the long-run, appreciate the local currency and improve the trade balance for the 1985:01 2003:07 period.