FDI and economic growth: the role of local financial markets

In this paper, we examine the various links among foreign direct investment (FDI), financial markets, and economic growth. We explore whether countries with better financial systems can exploit FDI more efficiently. Empirical analysis, using cross-country data between 1975 and 1995, shows that FDI alone plays an ambiguous role in contributing to economic growth. However, countries with well-developed financial markets gain significantly from FDI. The results are robust to different measures of financial market development, the inclusion of other determinants of economic growth, and consideration of endogeneity.     

What lies beneath the euro's effect on financial integration? Currency risk, legal harmonization, or trade?

Although recent research shows that the euro has spurred cross-border financial integration, the exact mechanisms remain unknown. We investigate the underlying channels of the euro's effect on financial integration using data on bilateral banking linkages among twenty industrial countries in the past thirty years. We also construct a dataset that records the timing of legislative-regulatory harmonization policies in financial services across the European Union. We find that the euro's impact on financial integration is primarily driven by eliminating the currency risk. Legislative-regulatory convergence has also contributed to the spur of cross-border financial transactions. Trade in goods, while highly correlated with bilateral financial activities, does not play a key role in explaining the euro's positive effect on financial integration.     

Debt Crises and Risk‐Sharing: The Role of Markets versus Sovereigns

Using a variance decomposition of shocks to gross domestic product (GDP), we quantify the role of international factor income, international transfers, and saving in achieving risk‐sharing during the recent European crisis. We focus on the subperiods 1990–2007, 2008–2009, and 2010 and consider separately the European countries hit by the sovereign debt crisis in 2010. We decompose risk‐sharing from saving into contributions from government and private saving, and show that fiscal austerity programs played an important role in hindering risk‐sharing during the sovereign debt crisis.     

Does the Mortality Decline Promote Economic Growth?

This paper analyzes qualitatively and quantitatively the effects of declining mortality rates on fertility, education and economic growth. The analysis demonstrates that if individuals are prudent in the face of uncertainty about child survival, a decline in an exogenous mortality rate reduces precautionary demand for children and increases parental investment in each child. Once mortality is endogenized, population growth becomes a hump-shaped function of income per capita. At low levels of income population growth rises as income per capita rises leading to a Malthusian steady-state equilibrium, whereas at high levels of income population growth declines leading to a sustained growth steady-state equilibrium.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Ethical Perceptions of Future Managers with a Special Emphasis on Gender – Turkish Case

This study presents an empirical investigation of the ethical perceptions of the future managers – Turkish university students majoring in the Business Administration and Industrial Engineering departments of selected public and private Turkish universities – with a special emphasis on gender. The perceptions of the university students pertaining to the business world, the behaviors of employees, and the factors leading to unethical behavior are analyzed. The statistically significant differences reveal that female students have more ethical perceptions about the Turkish business climate, behavior of employees, and the ethicalness of the behavior of the employees in comparison with their male counterparts. M.G. Serap Atakan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Administration of Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. She is teaching and conducting researches on business ethics, corporate social responsibility and retailing. She has two co-authored articles published in the Journal of Business Ethics. Sebnem Burnaz is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Istanbul Technical University. She holds Ph.D. degree in management with major in marketing. Her teaching and research interests are in the field of Marketing, Retailing, Decision Making, and Business Ethics. She has published articles which have appeared in Advances in International Marketing, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. Y. Ilker Topcu is an Associate Professor of decision sciences in Istanbul Technical University. He has finished his Ph.D. studies in I.T.U., Faculty of Management. His teaching and research specialties are in the field of Operations Research/Management Science, Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Logistics, Transportation Planning, and Business Ethics. He has published papers which have appeared in Journal of the Operational Research Society, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, Journal of Global Optimization, Transportation Research Part A, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Energy, and Building and Environment.     

FDI,Productivity and Financial Development

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth by focusing on the complementarities between FDI inflows and financial markets. In our earlier work, we found that FDI is beneficial for growth only if the host country has well‐developed financial institutions. In this paper, we investigate whether this effect operates through factor accumulation and/or improvements in total factor productivity (TFP). Factor accumulation – physical and human capital – does not seem to be the main channel through which countries benefit from FDI. Instead, we find that countries with well‐developed financial markets gain significantly from FDI via TFP improvements. These results are consistent with the recent findings in the growth literature that shows the important role of TFP over factors in explaining cross‐country income differences.     

Agricultural Policies and Trade Paths in Turkey

In 1959, shortly after the European Economic Community was founded under the 1957 Treaty of Rome, Turkey applied for Associate Membership of the then six‐member common market. By 1963, a path for integrating the economies of Turkey and the eventual European Union had been mapped. As with many trade agreements, agriculture posed difficult political hurdles, which were never fully cleared, even as trade barriers to other sectors were eventually removed and a Customs Union formed. In this paper, we trace the influences the Turkey‐EU economic institutions have had on agricultural policies and the agricultural sector. Using an applied general equilibrium framework we provide estimates of what including agriculture under the Customs Union would mean for the sector and the economy. We also discuss the implications of fully aligning Turkey's agricultural policies with the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, as would be required under full membership.     

HIV and fertility revisited

Young (2005) argues that HIV related population declines reinforced by the fertility response to the epidemic will lead to higher capital-labor ratios and to higher per capita incomes in the affected countries of Africa. Using household level data on fertility from South Africa and relying on between cohort variations in country level HIV infection, he estimates a large negative effect of HIV prevalence on fertility. However, the studies that utilize the recent rounds of Demographic Health Surveys, where fertility outcomes are linked to HIV status based on testing, find no effect of the disease on the fertility behavior. This paper tries to bridge this gap by revisiting Young's findings. Young (2005) includes data before 1990, when no data are available on HIV prevalence rates. He assigns all the fertility observations before 1990 with HIV prevalence rates of zero, and this appears to drive the significant negative effect found in his study. When one restricts the sample to the period 1990-1998, where actual HIV data are available, the effect of HIV prevalence on fertility turns out to be positive for South Africa. Simulating Young's model utilizing these new estimates shows that the future generations of South Africa are worse off.     

The Effects of Corporate Ethical Values and Personal Moral Philosophies on Ethical Intentions in Selling Situations: Evidence from Turkish, Thai, and American Businesspeople

The goals of this study are to test a pattern of ethical decision making that predicts ethical intentions of individuals within corporations based primarily on the ethical values embedded in corporate culture, and to see whether that model is generally stable across countries. The survey instrument used scales to measure the effects of corporate ethical values, idealism, and relativism on ethical intentions of Turkish, Thai, and American businesspeople. The samples include practitioner members of the American Marketing Association in the U.S., and full-time businesspeople enrolled in executive MBA programs in Thailand and Turkey. The study is positioned within a fairly new stream that assesses patterns across countries, rather than differences between them, in a way that might be called “culture free.” The results show a generally positive influence between cultural ethical values and ethical intentions. The results also indicate that the positive effect of corporate ethical values on ethical intentions is greater for managers with low idealism and high relativism. We also discuss the implications of our results for managers of international businesses.     

Risk sharing through capital gains

Abstract We estimate channels of international risk sharing between European Monetary Union (EMU), European Union, and other OECD countries, 1992–2007. We focus on risk sharing through savings, factor income flows, and capital gains. Risk sharing through factor income and capital gains was close to zero before 1999 but has increased since then. Risk sharing from capital gains, at about 6%, is higher than risk sharing from factor income flows for European Union countries and OECD countries. Risk sharing from factor income flows is higher for euro zone countries, at 14%, reflecting increased international asset and liability holdings in the euro area.