Infant mortality in Turkey: Causes and effects in a regional context

This study attempts to identify the causal and/or direct effects of sociocultural determinants of infant mortality in Turkey within a regional context using causal graph analysis and global and local spatial models. The conceptual framework, combined with the data, shows that fertility and consanguinity have direct effects on infant mortality rates, and that female illiteracy, as a proxy for maternal education, is the main cause of rising infant mortality even in the presence of latent confounding. The surface of estimates further shows that the local effects of female illiteracy and consanguinity are non-stationary across space, calling for location-specific policies.WOS:000577774900001Scopus - Affiliation ID: 60105072Social Sciences Citation IndexQ2Article; Early AccessUluslararası işbirliği ile yapılmayan - HAYIREkim2020YÖK - 2020-2

The determinants of Canadian provincial health expenditures : evidence from dynamic panel

This thesis aims to reveal the magnitude of the income elasticity of health expenditure and the impact of non-income determinants of health expenditures in the Canadian Provinces. Health can be seen as a luxury good if the income elasticity exceeds unity and as a necessity good if the income elasticity is below unity. The motivation behind the analysis of the determinants of health spending is to identify the forces that drive the persistent increase in health expenditures in Canada and to explain the disparities in provincial health expenditures, thereby to prescribe sustainable macroeconomic policies regarding health spending. Panel data on real per capita GDP, relative price of health care, the share of publicly funded health expenditure, the share of senior population and life expectancy at birth have been used to investigate the determinants of Canadian real per capita provincial total, private and government health expenditures for the period 1975-2002. Dynamic models of health expenditure are analyzed via Generalized Instrumental Variables and Generalized Method of Moments techniques. Evidence confirms that health is far from being a luxury for Canada and government health expenditures are constrained by the relative prices. Results also cast doubt upon the power of quantitative analysis in explaining the increasing health expenditures

The economic costs of separatist terrorism in Turkey

Turkey has been suffering from separatist terrorism and the political conflict it implies since the mid 1980s, both of which are believed to have a negative impact on economic welfare. This article investigates the economic costs of PKK -Kurdistan Workers’ Party- terrorism, particularly in the Eastern and Southeastern provinces of Turkey by invoking the synthetic control method. We create a synthetic control group that mimics the socioeconomic characteristics of the provinces exposed to terrorism before the PKK terrorism emerged in the mid-1980s. We then compare the real GDP of the synthetic provinces without terrorism to the actual provinces with terrorism for the period 1975-2001. Causal inference is carried out by comparing the real per capita GDP gap between the synthetic and actual provinces and the intensity of terrorist activity as measured by the number of terrorism casualties. We find that after the emergence of terrorism, the per capita real GDP in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia declined by about 6.6 percent relative to a comparable synthetic Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia without terrorism

Paying for Altruism: The Case of Organ Donation Revisited

Although many commentators have called for increased efforts to incentivize organ donations, theorists and some evidence suggest these efforts will be ineffective or even could perversely crowd out altruistic efforts. Prior papers examining the impact of tax incentives for donations generally report zero or negative coefficients. We argue these studies incorrectly define their tax variables, and rely on difference-in-differences methods despite likely failures of the requisite parallel trends assumption. We therefore aim to identify the causal effect of tax incentive legislation to serve as an organ donor on living related and unrelated kidney donation rates in the U.S states using more precise tax data and allowing for heterogeneous and time-variant causal effects. Employing a synthetic control method, we find that the passage of tax incentive legislation increased living unrelated kidney donation rates by about 52 percent in New York relative to a comparable synthetic New York in the absence of legislation. We show that this causal effect is robust to the exclusion of any particular state as well as to the use of a very small number of comparison states

Social Exclusion and Quality of Life: An Empirical Study from Turkey

Quality of life, Social exclusion, WHOQOL-BREF,

The economic costs of separatist terrorism in Turkey

Turkey has been suffering from separatist terrorism and the political conflict it implies since the mid 1980s, both of which are believed to have a negative impact on economic welfare. This article investigates the economic costs of PKK -Kurdistan Workers’ Party- terrorism, particularly in the Eastern and Southeastern provinces of Turkey by invoking the synthetic control method. We create a synthetic control group that mimics the socioeconomic characteristics of the provinces exposed to terrorism before the PKK terrorism emerged in the mid-1980s. We then compare the real GDP of the synthetic provinces without terrorism to the actual provinces with terrorism for the period 1975-2001. Causal inference is carried out by comparing the real per capita GDP gap between the synthetic and actual provinces and the intensity of terrorist activity as measured by the number of terrorism casualties. We find that after the emergence of terrorism, the per capita real GDP in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia declined by about 6.6 percent relative to a comparable synthetic Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia without terrorism