Empirical essays on employment, financial development and stability

This thesis is a collection of essays on the important problems in developing countries and aims to contribute to the empirical literature on the i) financial services sector expansion and its implications on formal employment, i) impact of early retirement incentives on labour force participation rates and finally on the iii) effectiveness of stabilization funds on reducing the boom and bust cycles in light of fluctuating international commodity prices. Chapter 1 investigates the role of financial services expansion, especially the impact of increase in consumer credits on the reduction of informal employment. I argue that liberalization should naturally lead to a decline in the share of informal employment due to the fact that international firms are less likely to employ informally and consumers whose borrowing constraints are relaxed due to more credit availability are more likely to prefer goods that are paid with consumer credits. I test this hypothesis by exploiting the regional variation in Turkey. Due to the possible endogeneity problem, I employ several instruments and find positive impact of consumer services expansion on formal employment. Two unique datasets that I explore for for possible instruments are i) the religiosity and political tendencies surveys of 2011 and 2013, and ii) regional Armenian population loss data between 1914-1917 in the former Ottoman Empire that preceded the Turkish Republic. The exogenous variation that I seek to explore accordingly are; i) Islam bans all sorts of interest charges in financial transactions and therefore residents of more conservative regions are on average less likely to demand consumer credits, and ii) Armenians were the trading and artisan class of the Empire and therefore the main users of the financial instruments and when they perished. Chapter 2 is about the impact of a Social Security System that allowed women and men to retire as early as 38 and 44 years old on labour supply decisions in Turkey. Before the pension reform of 1999, the Law 3774, dated 1992 brought incentives to those individuals who several conditions to retire at a much earlier age than the conventional 60-65 years window. Using the Statistics on Income and Living Condition (SILC) panel dataset between 2007-2010 in a Fuzzy Regression Continuity Design, we find that these incentives let to an average decline of about 16.9 hours in weekly hours worked by men aged 44-52 and 20.6 hours decline in weekly hours worked by women who are aged between 39-49 in a bandwidth of three years around the eligible age for retirement. Moreover, we find that the entitlement for retirement after 44 years old reduced the probability of labour force participation of men by about 28% to 37% while we did not find a statistically meaningful impact on the participation decisions of women. Chapter 3 explores whether sovereign wealth or stabilization funds created by governments in oil rich countries are effective in reducing volatility and ensuring a counter-cyclical or acyclical fiscal policy in line with the optimal fiscal policy literature or whether they are just another government account in practise. The existing literature on the effectiveness of stabilization funds suffers from endogeneity problems, namely i) the endogeneity between gdp and government expenditures and ii) the endogenity of the decision to establish stabilization funds. In this paper, I contribute to the literature by addressing both of these problems by using a series of Two Stage Least Square Estimations and find positive evidence in favour of stabilization funds in reducing volatility and pro-cyclicality of the fiscal policy in oil rich countries. The findings are relevant for the wider discussion of the procyclicality in developing countries, as one third of the countries which are documented to improve fiscal policy cyclicality seem to be the ones that are resource rich and have a stabilization fund in place

Genotypic analysis of S segment of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus in Turkey

The Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus (CCHFV) is a tick-borne virus, whose viral RNA consists of S, L, and M segments. The virus is migrating through the ticks with animals and migratory birds and the geographical distribution can be investigated based on genetic analysis. To better understand the connection between the seropositivity and the mortality rate, the key factor could be the temporal and spatial analysis of the different strains. In this study, serum samples (n = 26) were selected from CCHFV RNA-positive patients and subjected to sequence analysis of the gene regions encoding the S segments. According to the neighbor-joining analysis, the obtained partial sequences were linked to the European strain. The strains were closely related to Turkey-Kelkit06, Turkey 200310849 viruses, and viruses from Russia and Kosovo. The comparison with previously analyzed isolates from the GenBank showed 95%–99% sequence similarity. The isolates in phylogenetic branches were divided into two groups. AST, platelet, and APTT levels were found significantly higher in Group 2 compared to Group 1. Nucleotide differences can be prognostic factor in CCHF disease. Increasing CCHF cases not originating from local isolates were circulating strains imported from different neighboring countries of Turkey. The results show new evidence to the emerging threat of the CCHF disease

Agenesis of Isthmus of the Thyroid Gland in a Patient with Graves-Basedow Disease and a Solitary Nodule

The thyroid is a vascular endocrine gland with two lateral lobes connected by a narrow, median isthmus. Although a wide range of congenital anomalies of the thyroid gland has been reported in the literature, agenesis of the thyroid isthmus is a very rare congenital anomaly. Thyroid isthmus agenesis does not manifest clinical symptoms, and it can be confused with other thyroid pathologies. We describe a patient with no isthmus of the thyroid, associated with Graves-Basedow disease. Thyroid isthmus agenesis should be kept in mind in order for surgical procedures involving thyroid pathologies to be carried out safely

OPTIMIZATION OF THE CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL MODIFICATION OF THE YEAST WASTE FROM BEER MANUFACTURING TO PRODUCE ADHESIVE COMPOSITIONS

During the production of beer large amounts of yeast waste are generated. This paper considers the possible making of environmentally friendly adhesive compositions from such wastes. Chemical treatment of yeast wastes increases their adhesive characteristics. Chemical cross-linking with glutaric aldehyde and biological cross-linking by enzyme transglutaminase improves the moisture resistance of the adhesive compositions. In terms of their physical and mechanical parameters they are not inferior to glues of natural origin and can be used for bonding paper, cardboard, and wood. The bonding strength of paper was 421.8 N / m, and that of wood was 27.8 MPa