Housing prices and transaction volume

We use annual, quarterly and monthly data from the US to show that the correlation between housing prices and transaction volume (number of existing houses sold) differs across different frequencies. While the correlation is high at the low frequencies it declines to the levels close to zero at high frequencies. Granger causality tests for different frequencies show that the way of causality in housing market changes from region to region. Our findings provide a litmus test for the existing theories that are proposed to explain the positive correlation between transaction volume and housing prices.     

WAGE INEQUALITY IN TURKEY: DECOMPOSITION BY STATISTICAL REGIONS, 1980–2001

This paper analyzes wage inequality in the Turkish manufacturing sector annually from 1980 to 2001, and also provides some evidence for inequality in the post‐2001 period. Using the between‐groups component of Theil's T statistic, the paper provides more information on wage inequality. It decomposes the evolution of inequality by statistical regions – The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics – (i.e. NUTS‐1 and NUTS‐2). The decompositions show that inequality has increased since the late 1980s in the private sector both between regions of NUTS‐1 and NUTS‐2.     

Do Muslims Believe More in Protestant Work Ethic than Christians? Comparison of People with Different Religious Background Living in the US

This study examines the work ethic characteristics of Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim people who are living in the US. People originally from Turkey were targeted under the Muslim group. Since a significant number of people selected “none” as their religious affiliation in the survey, this group has also been included in the final analysis. Eight hundred and three people (313 Protestants, 180 “none”, 96 Muslims, 86 Catholics, and 128 other) participated in this questionnaire study. The analyses revealed that Muslim Turks reported greater scores on four of the five Protestant work ethic (PWE) characteristics. Protestants scored higher than Catholics on all characteristics, but there was no significant difference.     

Social media adoption: A process-based approach

This research conceptualizes and measures social media adoption (SMA) of companies with a process-based approach and explains its antecedents of micro- and macro-environment, size, and ownership, as well as its consequence of intention to increase resources dedicated to social media. Based on data from 310 Turkish small and medium enterprises, the study first develops a conceptual framework on the pillars of internal and external stakeholder focus as well as relationship and information oriented implementation. Based on these two dimensions, it discusses the novel concepts of social customer relations, social stakeholder communication, social intelligence, and social responsiveness related to SMA. The study further indicates that ownership type and micro environment play a role in SMA and that path dependence exists in the interplay of current adoption and future intentions.     

Internationalisation,growth and pay inequality: a cointegration analysis for Turkey, 1970–2007

The nature of the internationalisation-growth-inequality nexus is very complex; and therefore, not surprisingly, there is no consensus on whether increasing openness to trade leads to higher inequality or not – in fact, there is even no full understanding on the impact of the openness on the economic growth. In the case of Turkey it is observed that there is relatively little empirical work that addresses the issue of inequality. Considering this fact, the study aims to provide some more evidence on the complex relationship between trade openness, foreign direct investment, economic growth and pay inequality by utilising a combination of different Theil Indices of pay inequality. The paper utilises the Johansen Cointegration and Granger Causality methods. Our findings yield that higher economic growth resulting from trade openness comes with higher pay inequality.     

Style investing,comovement and return predictability

Barberis and Shleifer (2003) argue that style investing generates momentum and reversals in style and individual asset returns, as well as comovement between individual assets and their styles. Consistent with these predictions, in some specifications, past style returns help explain future stock returns after controlling for size, book-to-market and past stock returns. We also use comovement to identify style investing and assess its impact on momentum. High comovement momentum portfolios have significantly higher future returns than low comovement momentum portfolios. Overall, our results suggest that style investing plays a role in the predictability of asset returns.     

Business groups and the incorporation of firm-specific shocks into stock prices

Firm-specific information has a damped effect on business group-affiliated firms’ stock prices. Such firms’ idiosyncratic stock returns are less responsive to idiosyncratic commodity price shocks than are the idiosyncratic returns of otherwise similar unaffiliated firms in the same country and commodity-sensitive industry. Using global commodity shocks means we assess responses to common idiosyncratic shocks of the same magnitude, frequency, and observability. Further identification follows from difference-in-difference tests exploiting successful and matched exogenously failed control block transactions. We conclude that business group firms’ stock prices provide less firm-specific information to capital providers and managers.     

Learning and knowledge in early internationalization research: Past accomplishments and future directions

This article provides an evaluative overview of international entrepreneurship literature, in which the issues of learning and knowledge feature as central components underlying the causes, processes, and outcomes of early internationalization. We rely on Huber's (1991) categorization of five knowledge acquisition types - experiential learning, vicarious learning, searching, grafting, and congenital learning - to organize our review and to guide our examination of the literature. We discuss convergent findings in terms of conceptual and empirical issues and set forth areas for future research.     

Does Sustainability Pay? Evidence from the Food Sector

This research investigates sustainability concepts, linking them with social, environmental, and operational activities in the food supply chain. Building on the literature treating social sustainability as an antecedent of environmental sustainability, we present the effects of environmental sustainability on operational performance using constructs that reflect flexibility, quality, and responsiveness. For this purpose, manufacturing companies in the Turkish food industry are surveyed and 101 responses are collected. A partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) is constructed to test the reliability and the validity of the measurement model and the structural model. The results show that social sustainability is positively associated with environmental sustainability. Moreover, environmental sustainability has a positive influence on operational performance measures: flexibility, quality, and responsiveness with effect sizes that range from medium to large. Organizations in the food supply chain should consider not only the economic, but also the social and the environmental aspects of sustainability. To do this, governments could inform manufacturers in the food sector about the importance of sustainability and encourage them with different incentives towards more sustainable operational practices. This work establishes that investing in social and environmental sustainability returns increased operational performance. The limitation of the research is the size of the sample. In the future, the questionnaire can be used to compare results from other countries and other sectors.     

Using OWA aggregation technique in QFD: a case study in education in a textile engineering department

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematic approach that considers customer needs through design, production, marketing, and support stages. Customer needs are the main input for QFD, so voice of customer must be understood well and changes, innovations, and treatments must be held in this view. In QFD applications, determining the priorities of customer needs is a fairly important stage. This is mostly held by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) a multicriteria decision making technique. Nonetheless, Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) is an aggregation technique mostly used in decision making for multicriteria decision problems. So, combining these two techniques will give a different viewpoint for prioritizing the customer needs in QFD applications. The aim of this study is to show the use of Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) aggregation technique in QFD applications. For this purpose a case study in Dokuz Eylül University Textile Engineering Department was held. It was aimed to support the efforts on increasing the education quality by determining the students’ needs and opinions using QFD with OWA.