Credit Expansions and Financial Crises: The Roles of Household and Firm Credit

The literature has identified credit expansions to the private sector as an important predictor of financial crises in developing countries. We extend the literature by decomposing credit into credit extended to households and credit extended to firms. We compile a unique disaggregated data set and find evidence that household credit growth and firm credit growth have positive, distinct, and statistically significant effects on the likelihood of banking and currency crises. Furthermore, household credit growth is a particularly important predictor of banking crises in countries with a high propensity to consume. Working Paper 06-5

Housing market dynamics and welfare

We augment a closed-economy DSGE model with collateral constraints tied to real estate values by incorporating the time-to-build phenomenon in the housing construction sector. Adding construction sector delays significantly improves business cycle properties of the model relative to the versions with no time-to-build delays or with permanently fixed housing stock. We also find that in the presence of construction lags adding housing prices to the central bank policy function increases aggregate welfare in the economy by up to 0.3 percent of consumption. This result is robust to several specifications of the Taylor rule and to changes in key parameter values.Housing prices; housing construction; time-to-build; welfare.

Examination of Secondary School Students' Attitudes towards Communication and Collaboration Skills in Terms of Some Variables

This study aims to examine the communication and collaboration attitudes of secondary school students according to some variables and to determine if there is a relationship between students' communication and collaboration attitudes. The survey model was used in the study, and the sample consists of 405 secondary school students studying in Salihli, Manisa. “Secondary school students’ communication attitude scale (SSSCAS)” and “Scale for Self-Evaluation of Collaboration Skills (SSCS)” were used to collect data. According to analysis results of the data obtained, it was found out that the communication and collaboration attitudes of the secondary school students were at a high level and did not show statistically significant differences in terms of gender and educational status of the parents. On the other hand, there was a significant difference according to owning tablet/PC variable. Besides, there is a positive relationship between secondary school students' communication skills attitude and collaboration attitudes

Who gets the credit ? and does it matter ? household vs. firm lending across countries

While the theoretical and empirical finance literature has focused almost exclusively on enterprise credit, about half of credit extended by banks to the private sector in a sample of 45 developing and developed countries is to households. The share of household credit in total credit increases as countries grow richer and financial systems develop. Cross-country regressions, however, suggest a positive and significant impact on gross domestic product per capita growth only of enterprise but not household credit. These two findings together partly explain why previous studies have found a small or insignificant effect of finance on growth in high-income countries. In addition, countries with a lower share of manufacturing, a higher degree of urbanization, and more market-oriented financial systems have a higher share of household credit. It is thus mostly socio-economic trends that determine credit composition, while policies influencing banking market structure and regulatory policies are not robustly related to credit composition.Access to Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,,Debt Markets

AGE-RELATED DISABILITY IN BATHING: A REVIEW OF THE RESEARCH LITERATURE

Disability in bathing is an important problem for older adults, affecting their daily lives and turning a pleasurable activity into a challenging task. In respond to it, modifications are being made either in bathing task or in bathing environment. The purpose of this review of the research literature is to answer some key questions about the nature of the modifications made in respond to disability in bathing and the efficacy of these modifications, to inform the new product design processes, and to set an agenda for future research. This article presents a review of literature on age-related disability in bathing and the modifications mentioned in published literature related to disability in bathing in older adults either by changing the environment to improve the ability of older adults to perform specific subtasks or by altering the bathing task, or both. Across sources, modifications that are made in respond to disability in bathing in older adults were listed and broad list of arguments both for and against these modifications were identified. Based on the review, it is being argued that environments need to be designed to prevent from disability, not modified in respond to it. Moreover, preferences of older adults needed to be taken to account more when designing aids and products for the bathroom. Disability in bathing needs to be researched with a focus on culture and religion, since they are important variables affecting older adults’ decisions

The Scale Development Study on Class Teachers’ Perceived Self-efficacy in Creating an Effective Classroom Environment

The aim of this study is to develop a five point likert scale called “Class teachers’ Perceived Self-efficacy in Creating an Effective Classroom Environment.” Following this aim, a draft scale that included 44 items was developed and given to 248 class teachers working in Manisa and Uşak cities of Turkey. The principal components analysis was used in factor analysis of the scale in order to to examine structural validity. As a result of the analysis, 12 items were excluded and remaining 32 items were grouped into 5 factors. The explained variance is 65,157% of the total variance. The Cronbach’s Alpha value that indicates the internal consistency of the scale is 0,85. The scale is accepted to be valid and reliable according to these findings. Besides, item-total and item-remaining correlations that were analyzed through Pearson are significant (p<,001) and item discrimination that was tested for each item by applying t-test to the bottom and top 27% is also significant. After exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis was carried out and goodness of fit indexes were seen to be acceptable (RMSEA=0,075; AGFI=0,75; SRMR=0,69; RMR=0,68; CFI=0,92; NFI=0,92). Keywords: class teachers, class environment, self-efficac