A Duration-Dependent Regime Switching Model for an Open Emerging Economy

We employ duration-dependent Markov-switching vector auto-regression (DDMSVAR) methodology to construct an economic cycle model for an emerging economy. By modifying the software codes for DDMSVAR methodology written by Pelagatti (2003), we show how to estimate the economic cycles in an emerging economy where macroeconomic shocks are suddenly observed and their levels are deep. The monthly values of net international reserves, domestic debt, inflation and industrial production in the Turkish economy from January 1989 to July 2007 are used for constructing the empirical analysis. Empirical evidence shows that DDMSVAR model can be successfully used in an emerging economy to estimate the cycles using basic macroeconomic indicators.duration dependent regime switching model, economic cycles, Markov models, Turkish economy

Education policy issues in Turkey

Since the mid-1990s, public education provision in Turkey has been in constant transformation, a result of modernization efforts connected to the political determination of governments to complete Turkey's accession to the European Union. During this period two nation-wide reforms stand out due to their dramatic impact on children, students, teachers and the education system as a whole. First, the Compulsory Education Law enacted in 1997 required that all the children enrolled in grade 4 or lower must stay in school until the completion of the eighth grade. Second, in 2002, the Ministry of National Education (MONE) abandoned recruiting teachers based on lottery and started to use teachers' test scores instead. Following new legislation, the Center of Measurement, Selection and Placement (ÖSYM) launched a central examination process which is known as the Public Servant Selection Examination (KPSS). This dissertation provides an econometric evaluation of the impact of these interventions on education outcomes in Turkey. The dissertation seeks to establish a causal link between the enactment of KPSS and student achievement. It presents evidence indicating that teacher recruitment via a meritocratic, test-based assessment instead of a lottery may have a positive impact on student achievement. The research also shows that the increase in the average student achievement displayed by Turkey in international assessments such as PISA (Programme of International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) may be partially explained by the inception of KPSS. The identification strategy for this assessment is based on the fact that the TIMMS data includes information on teachers and test scores for each student sampled in Turkey in both1999 and 2007, that is, before and after KPSS was enacted in 2002. This allows the estimation of a difference-in-differences model with student fixed effects. The findings highlight that students whose teachers were recruited after the enactment of KPSS perform 0.2 standard deviations higher than their counterparts whose teachers were recruited before the enactment of KPSS. This finding remains stable in several sensitivity and robustness checks.The dissertation then turns to analyzing an earlier intervention, the Compulsory Education Law of 1997. The research estimates the impact of the Compulsory Education Law on the years of schooling of women aged between 18 and 29. For this purpose, the dissertation uses the Turkey Demographic Health Survey 2003 and 2008. The identification strategy is based on the fact that, first, cohorts born after 1986 (children enrolled in grade 4 in the1996-1997 school year and later) were subject to the Compulsory Education Law and earlier cohorts were not, and, second, the intensity of the intervention varied between regions. Hence the investigation exploited the between-cohort and between-region variation in intensity of the intervention to estimate the causal impact of the Compulsory Education Law on years of schooling. The findings suggest that the Compulsory Education Law led to a 34 percentage point increase in the probability of completing eight years of schooling and an additional 1.5 years of schooling. Also, the econometric results indicate that the Compulsory Education Law affected high school completion rates, i.e. eleven years of schooling. The analysis of the impact of the Compulsory Education Law is extended to a two-stage least-squares (TSLS) estimation of the impact of completing eight years of schooling/additional years of schooling on teenage marriage and fertility. The between-cohort and between-region variation in intensity of the intervention are used to instrument completing eight years of schooling and additional years of schooling. However, in contrast with the existing research on this issue in Turkey, these TSLS estimations did not supply any evidence in favor of the presence of a causal link between completing eight years of schooling/additional years of schooling and teenage marriage and fertility

Dynamic behavior of reinfor ced concrete frames with infill walls

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Civil Engineering, Izmir, 2011Includes bibliographical referencesText in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxiv, 132 leavesCurrent practices utilize infill walls as insulation or partition material but not as a structural material. The main reason for this choice is the complexity of the partition wall-frame interaction behavior. Therefore infill walls typically ignored in the structural designs. However, existence of partition walls heavily effect stiffness, strength and behavior of structures. The main purpose of the presented study is the investigation of the dynamic parameters of reinforced concrete frames with and without infill walls. Moreover, lateral strength, stiffness and energy dissipation properties of the frames are also studied. In order to achieve the purpose four planar, one-bay, four story RC frames with 1/5 scale are designed, constructed and tested. In the frames main parameters are selected as presence of partition walls and ductile/non-ductile reinforcement detailing. Experiments are consisted of static and dynamic tests. In static tests each frame subjected to lateral loads that were applied at the each story level to provide a lateral loading increasing with height. Lateral load levels were controlled by the drift levels in the first story. Dynamic tests were performed at the end of each deformation level and modal analysis methods are utilized. Analyses have shown that existence of partition walls in the frame increased the natural frequencies of the frames. However, reinforcement detailing did not have a significant effect on natural frequencies. It is also observed that the natural frequencies of the frames decreased with increasing damage level. On the other hand, presence of partition walls effected the damaged behavior of the frames and drift is observed to concentrate to the first story with the increasing level of damage. And finally stiffness, strength and energy dissipation properties of frames with partition walls are observed to be dramatically higher than the frames without partition walls

Offline and real time noise reduction in speech signals using the discrete wavelet packet decomposition

This thesis describes the development of an offline and real time wavelet based speech enhancement system to process speech corrupted with various amounts of white Gaussian noise and other different noise types

Određivanje izvoznih kompetencija u industriji namještaja uz pomoć modela stabla odlučivanja

In order to increase the competitiveness of companies, there are factors that need to be considered both in the domestic and foreign markets. In particular, companies that want to maintain their presence in the foreign market must differentiate from other companies in the industry and gain significant advantages over their competitors in order to maintain this continuity. If companies pay more attention to the factors that are effective in export, they can be predicted to be successful in competition and especially in export. The aim of this study was to determine the factors and issues affecting export performance in furniture industry and to determine the effect of these factors and issues on exports. In this context, the application data were obtained from the survey of 182 managers of companies operating in the furniture industry in Turkey. The scenarios produced in the study were made with J48 algorithm-decision trees modeling, which is one of the data mining methods. Thanks to these scenarios, road maps were drawn to give ideas to the companies and managers planning to export. As a result of this study, the “staff status” factor, the “manager’s overseas experience” and “the legal form of the company” were identified as the main determinants of export.Kako bi se povećala konkurentnost tvrtke, potrebno je uzeti u obzir čimbenike koji utječu na domaće i inozemno tržište. Tvrtke koje žele biti kontinuirano zastupljene na inozemnom tržištu moraju se izdvajati od ostalih tvrtki i imati znatne prednosti pred konkurentskim tvrtkama. Ako tvrtke više pozornosti pridaju čimbenicima koji utječu na izvoz, može se očekivati da će biti konkurentne u izvozu svojih proizvoda. Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je utvrditi čimbenike i probleme koji u industriji namještaja utječu na izvoz i procijeniti njihov utjecaj na izvoznu uspješnost. U tu su svrhu anketirana 182 voditelja tvrtki za proizvodnju namještaja koje posluju u Turskoj. Scenariji prikazani u ovom istraživanju načinjeni su uz pomoću algoritma J48 – modela stabla odlučivanja, što je jedna od metoda rudarenja podataka. Zahvaljujući tim scenarijima, izrađeni su hodogrami koji mogu pomoći tvrtkama i voditeljima u planiranju izvoza. Rezultati ovog istraživanja pokazali su da su glavne odrednice izvoza status osoblja, inozemno iskustvo voditelja tvrtke i pravni oblik tvrtke

A modular software architecture for UAVs

There have been several attempts to create scalable and hardware independent software architectures for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). In this work, we propose an onboard architecture for UAVs where hardware abstraction, data storage and communication between modules are efficiently maintained. All processing and software development is done on the UAV while state and mission status of the UAV is monitored from a ground station. The architecture also allows rapid development of mission-specific third party applications on the vehicle with the help of the core module

The Relationship Between the Emotion Management Proficiencies of School Admininstrators and The Motivation Level of The Teachers

The aim of this research is to put forth the relationship between the emotion management proficiencies of the managers and the motivation level of the teachers. In this study, the opinions of school administrators on the emotion management behavior and the motivation level of the teachers have been examined.It was determined whether or not the opinions of the teachers differentiate according to the changes of genre, marital status, school type, the number of the teachers and the working time at the school they work.In this scanning model was used in this study. 374 teachers chosen by random sampling from 650 teachers working in primary, secondary and high schools in the district of Simav in Kütahya created the research phase. Two scales, Mottaz's (1985) “Job Motivation Scale” and “Emotion Management Behaviors of Managers in Terms of Management Process developed by Çoruk and Akçay (2012) were used. According to the findings obtained from the research, the motivation perceptions of the teachers and the proficiency levels of the emotion management of the school principals were found. While the proficiency level of the emotion management of the school administrators differentiates significantly depending on the numbers of the teachers in the whole dimensions of the emotion management, it differentiates depending on the school type in the communication and evaluation dimension. The intrinsic and extrinsic motivation opinions of the teachers differentiate significantly depending on the number of the teachers at school. As a result, it has been reached that there is a positive directional strong relationship between the emotional management and and the teacher motivation. Keywords: Emotion management, motivation, School Administrator

Assessment of the quality and reliability of the information on lateral epicondylitis surgery on YouTube

Aim: To investigate the quality and reliability of videos related to lateral epicondylitis (LE) surgery on YouTube® and to define a new scoring system that can be used to assess online information about LE. Method: To conduct the study, a search on YouTube® using the words "lateral epicondylitis surgery" and "tennis elbow surgery" was conducted on February 15, 2022. The first 100 videos that appeared upon the search were included in the study. The videos were classified based on the type of publishing source as a medical doctor, medical center, and Commercial/Medical media agency. Two authors independently analyzed the videos. The quality and reliability of the videos were examined using DISCERN score, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) score, Health on the Net (HON) score, and a novel YouTube® LE-score (LES). Video Power Index (VPI) and View Ratio (VR) were used to assess the popularity of videos. Results: A total of 29 videos were included in the study. There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of DISCERN, JAMA, HON, and LES scores. Although the group of medical doctors had much higher VRs and VPIs, there was no significant difference between the groups. LES score was found to be positively correlated with DISCERN, JAMA and HON (rho 0.879, p< 0.001; rho 0.709, p < 0.001; rho, 0.838, p < 0.001, respectively). Conclusion: The quality and reliability of the online information made available by YouTube® concerning LE surgery had an average level of quality and reliability. In addition, the LES scoring system created by us was highly compatible with the DISCERN and JAMA scoring systems accepted in the literature. It can be used as evaluation scoring in searches about lateral epicondylitis