Role of Strong versus Weak Networks in Small Business Growth in an Emerging Economy

The study tests whether strong rather than weak ties account for small business growth in Turkey. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire filled out by the owners of small firms operating in four cities. Growth is comprised of two main areas, production expansion and knowledge acquisition. Results show that strong ties are positively related to both types of growth. In contrast, loose ties have no effect on small business growth in either area. This finding is attributed to the influence of the collectivistic nature of the mainstream Turkish culture, where owners of small businesses are likely to rely on in-groups rather than out-groups for advice and for financial support. Implications of relative absence of weak ties for small business growth and innovation in emerging economies are discussed. The findings suggest that culture should be included as a contingency variable in future studies of network strength and growth relationship. The paper also discusses the possible moderating role of affective and cognition-based trust in the relation of strong and weak ties to small business growth

Do Stock Index Futures Affect Economic Growth? Evidence from 32 Countries

This article investigates the relationship between stock index futures markets development and economic growth using time-series methods for 32 developed and developing countries. Evidence of cointegration between stock index futures and real economy in 29 countries suggests the presence of co-movements among the variables, indicating long-run stationarity in those countries. Our findings show that there is Granger-causality from stock index futures markets development to economic growth for middle-income countries with relatively low real per capita GDP, and Granger-causality in the reverse direction for the countries with high real per capita GDP. Variance decomposition and impulse-response function (IRF) analyses results support the existence of a relationship between stock index futures and real economy

Effect of adenomyosis on prognosis of patients with endometrial cancer

OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to contrast the prognoses of patients with endometrial cancer who had adenomyosis against those that did not. METHODS: All patients who had received surgical staging for hysterectomy-based endometrial cancer had their medical data retrospectively examined. The analysis covered 397 patients, who were split into two groups depending on the presence of adenomyosis. Comparisons were made between patients covering type of surgery, histopathology, endometrial cancer stage, lymphovascular space invasion, presence of biochemical or histochemical markers, adjuvant therapy, presence of adenomyosis in the myometrial wall, and outcomes in terms of overall survival and disease-free survival. RESULTS: There is no statistically significant difference in the 5-year disease-free survival or overall survival rates between endometrial cancer patients with and without adenomyosis. This is based on comparisons of tumor stage, tumor diameter, histological type and grade of tumor, myometrial invasion, lymphovascular space invasion, and biochemical markers that affect the course of the disease. The median follow-up times were 61 months for the adenomyosis-positive group and 56 months for the group without adenomyosis. CONCLUSION: Coexisting adenomyosis in endometrial cancer has no bearing on survival rates and is not a prognostic factor

Attitudes of Pregnant Women toward the COVID-19 Vaccine

Objective: It was carried out to determine the attitudes of pregnant women toward the Covid-19 vaccine and related factors. Methods: The correlational and descriptive study was conducted with 356 pregnant women. In the study, data were collected using an introductory questionnaire, "Attitudes towards Covid-19 Vaccine Scale", "Vaccination Hesitancy in Pandemics Scale", and "Covid-19 Vaccine Literacy Scale". Research data were analyzed with SPSS 25 package program. One-way ANOVA and Student-t test were used to determine the difference between the descriptive characteristics of the pregnant women participating in the study and the total and sub-dimension mean scores of the Attitude Scale towards the Covid-19 Vaccine. Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale in Pandemics, the Covid-19 Vaccine Literacy Scale, and the Attitudes Towards Covid-19 Vaccine Scale. Linear regression analysis was used to determine the factors affecting the Attitudes of Pregnants towards the Covid-19 Vaccine. Results: It was concluded that 37.4% of the pregnant women did not have any Covid-19 vaccine, 62.6% had the Covid-19 vaccine before pregnancy, and 22.5% had the vaccine during pregnancy. In pregnant women, those who have hesitations about the vaccine in cases such as working, increase in education level, fear of contracting Covid-19 before birth, having pre-pregnancy Covid-19 vaccine, thinking that pregnant women may have Covid-19 vaccine, getting Covid-19 vaccine during pregnancy, etc. increase their attitudes towards vaccination. Conclusion: Consider to change the conclusion: It was found that quite a few pregnant women received the Covid-19 vaccine during their pregnancy. Pregnant women's vaccination hesitancy influences their attitudes toward Covid-19

Role of Strong versus Weak Networks in Small Business Growth in an Emerging Economy

The study tests whether strong rather than weak ties account for small business growth in Turkey. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire filled out by the owners of small firms operating in four cities. Growth is comprised of two main areas, production expansion and knowledge acquisition. Results show that strong ties are positively related to both types of growth. In contrast, loose ties have no effect on small business growth in either area. This finding is attributed to the influence of the collectivistic nature of the mainstream Turkish culture, where owners of small businesses are likely to rely on in-groups rather than out-groups for advice and for financial support. Implications of relative absence of weak ties for small business growth and innovation in emerging economies are discussed. The findings suggest that culture should be included as a contingency variable in future studies of network strength and growth relationship. The paper also discusses the possible moderating role of affective and cognition-based trust in the relation of strong and weak ties to small business growth

Risk and Return in a Dynamic Asset Pricing Model

In this study we combine the dynamic programming method with the projection methods for solving stochastic growth models. One of the inconveniences of Judd's projection technique is that finding a good initial guess is not that easy or it is time costly especially when the dimensionality of the problem is high. Secondly, there is no theoretical assurance that projection technique converges to the true policy function. First we use the dynamic programming method to obtain an approximate solution for the policy function. Since the approximate solution is in the vicinity of the true solution, we use those coefficients as the initial guess for the projection method. Then we use Judd's projection method to find an exact solution for the policy function. Once we find the exact solution for the policy function we check whether or not projection method converged to the true policy function. We do that by using the dynamic programming method to test whether the policy function satisfies the Bellman equation.

Does ADR Listing Affect the Dynamics of Volatility in Emerging Markets?

This paper analyzes the time-series variation in the return volatility of non-US stocks from emerging markets that are cross-listed on US exchanges. Unlike previous studies in the cross-listing literature, return volatility is modeled using conditional heteroscedasticity models. We find that firms’ exposure to risks such as local and global market betas remain unchanged after cross-listing. Moreover, we do not identify notable changes in the dynamics of the volatility of cross-listed stocks after cross-listing except for leverage effects. We further show that the mean level of conditional variance is not affected after cross-listing. Thus, our results provide counter-evidence to the belief that foreign investor participation drives volatility upward