An Analysis of Inflation Expectations of the Turkish Private Manufacturing Industry

The main purpose of this paper is to make a detailed analysis of the quantified expected inflation series obtained from the Business Tendency Survey conducted by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Different representations of simple expectation formation mechanisms that appeared in the literature are discussed in the context of Turkey. In selecting the most appropriate mechanism, instead of an ad hoc and an arbitrary methodology, nested hypotheses and the sequential testing procedure are applied. A general first order extrapolative mechanism is found as a result of this procedure. But, the selected mechanism is far from being satisfactory. Therefore, a new augmented model. in which one lag of inflation, exchange rate, private sector capacity utilization rate, stock evaluations of the last three months and average cost expectations of the next three months are employed as explanatory variables, is proposed. Finally, taking into account problems regarding the tests of rationality, efficiency and orthogonality tests are carried out. As a result of these tests, rationality assumption cannot be rejected very powerfully. However, this is not stemmed from the accuracy of the expectations, but from the structure of the economy that precludes accurate short-term forecasting.Quantification, Sequential Testing Procedure, Formation of Inflation Expectations, Rationality

Clinical Utility of Respiratory Scores at Admission for Estimating the Definitive Microbiological Diagnosis in Lower Respiratory Tract Infections in Infants

We aimed at determining the clinical utility of respiratory scores and the durations of wheezing or respiratory distress during hospitalization in infants with lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) at admission for estimating the definitive microbiological diagnosis. We obtained data from a study population of 201 patients, 79 girls and 122 boys. There was a significant divide in the causative agents of LRTI among patients younger and older than 6 months of age (P = .002), and significantly different respiratory score findings were determined in infants with viral LRTI: a low respiratory score in a younger-than-6 month infant suggests Adenovirus as the causative agent and a high respiratory score suggests Parainfluenza 1 or 2; as for infants of 6 months of age or older, a low respiratory score indicates Influenza A or B or a mixed infection, whereas a high respiratory score is likely an indication of Parainfluenza 3 or RSV.Peer reviewe

Effect of Breastfeeding and Preterm Births on the Severity of Lower Respiratory Tract Infections and Associated Risk of Hospitalization in Infants and Toddlers

We studied the effect of duration of breastfeeding and history of prematurity on the duration of hospitalization in infants with lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) because these may reflect the severity of illness as well as sizable direct and indirect healthcare costs. One hundred twenty-five patients (49 girls, 76 boys; aged 1-24 months) were hospitalized for LRTI during a period of 102 days and studied prospectively. We found a significant difference (P = .045) between the durations of hospitalization of the 92 patients breastfed for at least six months, compared to the other group of 33 patients who were breastfed for less than six months. The durations of hospitalization among the groups with and without a history of prematurity were not statistically different (P = .78). A history of breastfeeding for more than six months had significant effect on the duration of hospitalization, but this was not true for children with a history of preterm birth.Peer reviewe

Three Essays on Trading by Members of Congress

My dissertation examines the information content of stock trades by members of Congress (politicians) in three separate essays. In my first essay, based on approximately 62,000 common stock transactions over the 2004--2010 period, I present evidence that past firm-level trading activity by politicians predicts future firm-level stock returns, and this prediction is stronger for the pre-recession period and for small firms. By constructing buy-minus-sell transactions-based portfolios, I document that the portfolios of Republicans outperform those of Democrats. Also, being a powerful member of Congress is associated with substantially higher abnormal returns for Republicans, but not for Democrats. Among powerful Republicans, the portfolios of unsophisticated traders perform significantly better than those of sophisticated ones with abnormal returns exceeding 34% on annual basis under one-week holding period. The abnormal returns in general disappear beyond three-month holding period suggesting that politicians trade on time-sensitive value-relevant information. This study contributes to the literature showing that power, party membership, and investor sophistication are important determinants of the abnormal returns in congressional stock portfolios.;In my second essay, I , for the first time in the literature, separately examine the performance of common stock transactions of politicians and their family members (spouses and dependent children). I document that the transactions by both politicians and spouses contain value-relevant information, but the content of information is less time-sensitive for spouses. On the other hand, the transactions in the accounts of the dependent children perform very poorly. I also present evidence that the transactions in tax-deferred accounts such as 401(k)s contain less information than those in taxable trading accounts for both politicians and their spouses. I finally show that the portfolios of the powerful politicians\u27 spouses outperform those of the non-powerful politicians\u27 spouses. These results suggest that members of Congress take advantage of their informational advantage trading through the accounts of their spouses.;My third essay examines the properties of aggregate congressional trading. I investigate the ability of aggregate trading activity by members of Congress to predict stock market returns using 77,663 stock transactions over the 2004-2010 period. I find that aggregate congressional trading predicts excess market returns 2 to 3 months in advance. These findings imply that politicians, similar to corporate insiders, trade on information containing macroeconomic components

Tuition Increases Geaux Away? Evidence from Voting on Louisiana\u27s Amendment 2

In many states, public institutions of higher education have the autonomy to raise tuition. This has not been the case in Louisiana since a 1995 constitutional amend-ment required a two-thirds majority of the state legislature for any tuition increase. In November of 2016, voters in Louisiana rejected Amendment 2, a constitutional amendment that would have given state institutions of higher education autonomy in setting tuition. We examine parish-level voting on Amendment 2 using an empirical political economy model and find that parishes with a greater percentage of African-Americans and university employees were more likely to vote yes. Student enrollment at public institutions seemingly did not play a role in Amendment 2 losing

Evolving Deep Neural Networks for Continuous Learning: Addressing Challenges and Adapting to Changing Data Conditions without Catastrophic Forgetting

Continuous learning plays a crucial role in advancing the field of machine learning by addressing the challenges posed by evolving data and complex learning tasks. This thesis presents a novel approach to address the challenges of continuous learning. Inspired by evolutionary strategies, the approach introduces perturbations to the weights and biases of a neural network while leveraging backpropagation. The method demonstrates stable or improved accuracy for the 16 scenarios investigated without catastrophic forgetting. The experiments were conducted on three benchmark datasets, MNIST, Fashion-MNIST and CIFAR-10. Furthermore, different deep learning models were used to evaluate the approach, such as MLP and CNN. The data was split considering stratified and non-stratified sampling and with and without missing classes. The approach adapts to new classes without compromising performance and offers scalability in real-world scenarios. Overall, it shows promise in maintaining accuracy and adapting to changing data conditions while retaining knowledge from previous tasks

The effect of patient aggression on healthcare workers’ mental health and anxiety mediated by psychological well-being during the COVID-19 outbreak

oai:repository.canterbury.ac.uk:97017The aftermath effects including overstressed health systems, increased number of cases, death rates, and patient aggression have significant implications on the healthcare workers’ psychological well-being. Building on both the Health Belief Model and Conservation of Resources theory, this study examined the impact of patient aggression on healthcare workers’ psychological well-being, anxiety, and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the study tested the mediating role of psychological well-being in the abovementioned relationships. Data obtained from 549 Lebanese healthcare workers in private hospitals in a two-wave survey was used to evaluate the proposed study’s relationships, using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results indicated that patient aggression has significant negative impact on healthcare workers’ psychological well-being and mental health while it increases anxiety. Further, psychological well-being partially mediated the relationship between patient aggression and anxiety. Theoretical contributions, practical implications of the study, and suggestions for further studies are discussed