The urban growth potential of second-generation migrant entrepreneurs: A sectoral study on Amsterdam

A rise in second-generation migrant entrepreneurs and an increasing focus on modern economic sectors have become new trends in migrant entrepreneurship in recent years. Although traditional sectors are still the most popular among the first-generation migrant entrepreneurs, because of the increasing pressure and their high competitiveness in traditional areas, nowadays new market niches are rapidly developing. While the first generation has more often become active in new areas such as the producer services sector which includes finance, insurance, real estate and business-related professional services, the second generation has contributed to the emergence of new areas of immigrant business activity such as the ICT sector and the creative industries.Against this background, this study focuses on the external orientations of the second-generation migrant entrepreneurs by addressing in particular the way – and the extent to which – the choice for entrepreneurship is made by higher-educated young ethnic generations. This is a new field of entrepreneurship research in many European countries. The empirical data of our study is based on in-depth personal interviews held in the first half of 2007. We employed a recently developed multivariate qualitative classification method, coined rough set analysis, in order to investigate the motivation, goals and strategies of second generation Turkish entrepreneurs in the ICT and the financial services sector in the Netherlands.The results of our study show that the second generation Turkish entrepreneurs in the Netherlands have started to be involved in new and non-traditional sectors like ICT and financial services sectors. The motivation and driving forces of the second-generation Turkish entrepreneurs are stemming from both their personal characteristics shaped by their higher educational level and their previous working experience as an employee or entrepreneur in the same sector. The demand for and a gap in the sector as well as the growing and promising structure of the sector play also an important role in pulling the second generation Turkish immigrants to become entrepreneur in these new sectors.     

Nanotechnology awareness, opinions and risk perceptions among middle school students

The present study investigates awareness, factual knowledge, opinions, and risk perceptions of students from Turkish middle schools with regard to nanotechnology in a very general sense. The study was carried out among 1,396 middle school 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. The students’ perceptions of and opinions about nanotechnology were elicited through a questionnaire developed by the authors. Students have some awareness of nanotechnology and most students had positive emotions and opinions about it. Students’ risk perceptions of nanotechnology and the influence of the demographic and affective domain, achievement in science courses, and science motivation on these perceptions were also investigated. The results show that, for gender, no significant difference was observed. However, for some of the demographic and affective domain factors, and achievement in science courses, significant differences were found.     

Political instability,political freedom and inflation

Using a dynamic panel data approach, we estimate the impact of the political and institutional factors on inflation. Estimation results show that a lower degree of political instability generates lower inflation only for developed and low-inflation countries. However, when political freedom is taken into account, political instability appears to be influential on inflation also for developing countries and turns out to be significant only for high-inflation countries. Such findings emphasize the inflation-reducing effects of political stability depending on democratic political structure.     

Capacity inefficiencies of teaching and non-teaching hospitals

This paper investigates capacity-based inefficiency causes and the existence of any differences between the improvement processes of teaching and non-teaching hospitals. In an effort to comparatively evaluate the inefficiency causes of hospitals in Turkey, this study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA can simultaneously assess the relationship between capacity (physical capacity and medical labor capacity) as inputs and the utilization of capacity (utilization of institution capacity for patients, utilization of physical capacity, and utilization of technological capacity) as outputs. In addition, the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) is used to analyze the patterns of efficiency change for the study years from 2001 to 2007. Several improvement suggestions have been provided to health care policy makers regarding inefficiency causes and ways of optimizing hospital efficiency.     

Can free-shipping hurt online retailers?

Quantitative Marketing and Economics - In this paper, we investigate optimal pricing strategies for an online grocery retailer that derives its profits from delivery fees and grocery sales. We base...     

International ethnic entrepreneurship: Antecedents, outcomes and environmental context

The paper presents an overview of articles on international ethnic entrepreneurship between 1936 and 2009 from 32 journals published in SSCI using content analysis. The insights gained from the studies are used to make recommendations for future studies on international ethnic entrepreneurship. The most important findings of this study are the crucial effects of transnationalism, mixed-embeddedness and the interaction among social, human and financial capital on ethnic entrepreneurship.     

Maritime transport policy of Turkey

The purpose of this paper is to review recent aspects of the maritime transport policy of Turkey in an explanatory approach. The decisions taken by the Turkish authorities for Turkish maritime policy are analysed both at international and national levels. The decisions are discussed for the current situation in Turkey.     

Nonlinearity and structural stability in the Phillips curve: Evidence from Turkey

In this paper, we investigate possible nonlinearities in the inflation–output relationship in Turkey for the 1980–2008 period. We first estimate a linear bivariate model for the inflation rate and output gap, and test for linearity of the estimated model against nonlinear alternatives. Linearity test results suggest that the relationship between the inflation rate and output gap is highly nonlinear. We estimate a bivariate time-varying smooth transition regression model, and compute dynamic effects of one variable on the other by generalized impulse response functions. Computed impulse response functions indicate that inflation–output relationship in Turkey during the analyzed period was regime dependent and varied considerably across time.