A comparison of the effect of retail purchase and direct marketing on the endowment effect

This article reports on a study comparing the effect of the retail and direct marketing channels of delivery on the endowment effect. The results demonstrated the endowment effect for both retail and direct marketing channels of product delivery. In addition, in the direct marketing channel, the endowment effect was strengthened by the physical, tangible possession of products at the point of product receipt compared to its virtual possession value at the point of purchase. In the retail channel of delivery, confirming consumer expectation with the possession of the product at the point of purchase resulted in the strengthening of the endowment effect compared to the unexpected out‐of‐stock retail situation. Contrary to expectations, the duration of the product possession did not affect product valuation. Managerial implications are discussed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Determinants of private savings behaviour in Turkey

This study investigates the effects on private saving rates of a number of policy and non-policy variables. The analysis covers the period 1968–1994. The empirical private saving model for Turkey is estimated. The findings support the hypothesis that private saving rates have strong inertia. The evidence indicates that government saving does not tend to crowd out private savings and the Ricardian equivalence does not hold strictly. Income level has a positive impact on private saving rate, and growth rate of income is not statistically significant. From a policy point of view, financial depth and development measures in Turkey suggest that countries with deeper financial systems tend to have higher private saving rates. Private credit and real interest rates try to capture the severity of the borrowing constraints and the degree of financial repression for Turkey. Moreover, the negative impact of life expectancy rate lends support to the life-cycle hypothesis. The precautionary motive for saving is supported by the findings that inflation captures the degree of macroeconomic volatility and has a positive impact on private saving in Turkey.     

An empirical investigation of consumers’ willingness-to-pay and the demand function: The cumulative effect of individual differences in anchored willingness-to-pay responses

Extant literature on anchoring demonstrates that priming affects willingness-to-pay (WTP), but it mainly focuses on average WTP values, neglecting the aggregate effects of priming on WTP distributions. In this research, we argue that when priming is in effect, WTP distribution rather than the average should be analyzed because important pricing decisions, such as optimal price determination or price customization, require an assessment of distributions. Therefore, the objective of this research is to uncover how priming affects WTP distributions and, consequently, the demand curve. The results of these two studies suggest that priming affects not only the average but also the whole distribution and that this effect is in the form of a shift/stretch to the right for high-priming manipulations and to the left for low-priming manipulations.     

Money demand, the Cagan model, testing rational expectations vs adaptive expectations: The case of Turkey

This paper estimates the Cagan type demand for money function for Turkish economy during the period 1986:1–1995:3 and tests whether Cagan's specification fits the Turkish data using an econometric technique assuming that forecasting errors are stationary. This paper also tests the hypothesis that monetary policy was implemented in aiming to maximize the inflation tax revenue. Finally, the Cagan model is estimated with the additional assumption of rational expectations for Turkey for the considered period. First version received: March 1998/final version received: October 1998     

A survey on time-varying parameter Taylor rule: A model modified with interest rate pass-through

Today, the prime aim of central banking is to achieve price stability and, to a lesser extent, output stability. To this end, central banks use various monetary policy rules. This paper intends to provide a broad survey of the literature on Taylor-type monetary policy rules with a time-varying parameter (TVP) specification. To include the TVP feature, some modification is made in the monetary transmission mechanism of Taylor-type monetary policy models to account for the changing risk preference of individuals. In line with this approach, we introduce an interest rate pass-through specification of the monetary transmission process in a general equilibrium model to account for the varying perceptions of risk by individuals. We include an application for Turkey and estimate the time-variable parameters of the model by employing a structural extended Kalman filter (EKF). The results indicate that the EKF performs better than the standard Kalman filter in estimating the reaction function of the central bank.     

Real wages,profit margins and inflation in Turkish manufacturing under post-liberalization

This article reports investigations into the behaviour of gross profit margins (mark-ups) in Turkish manufacturing industries for the post-1980 liberalization period in relation to price inflation, trade liberalization (openness) and real wage costs. Panel data econometrics over 29 subsectors of Turkish manufacturing are used over the period 1980–1996. Results suggest that profit margins are positively and significantly related both to price inflation and real wage costs. However, openness is found to have very little impact on profit margins.