COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCY MEASUREMENT OF TURKISH AND CHINESE MANUFACTURING FIRMS

In this paper, the efficiency of manufacturing companies of China, one of the countries (BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India, China) that are expected to dominate the world economy in 2050's, and Turkey, that is an attracting emerging market1 with great potential, will be compared. Namely it will be determined the relative performance of Turkish and Chinese manufacturing firms using weight restricted Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Weights of inputs and outputs are estimated by canonical correlation analysis. Mean efficiency of the firms of the two countries are compared by t-test. The result of DEA and statistical analyses indicate that Chinese manufacturing firms are highly efficient than Turkish manufacturing firms on average

Determination of women’s voting behavior; A machine learning approach in the Turkish political arena

Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been the ruling and biggest party in Turkey (AKP) since it has been established in 2002 and Republican People’s Party (CHP) has been the main opposition party (CHP) since then. These two parties receive about 75% of all the votes and half of the voters are females.  To our knowledge, there is no such a study focusing on women’s party preferences in Turkey. Additionally, this is one of the very few studies in Turkey concerning voters’ party preferences. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature. In this study, the important attributes of women in party selection decisions are analyzed. Center-periphery and social mobility theories are the two main theories explaining Turkish political life. The analyzed ideological, cultural, religious, social, economic and demographic characteristics of women supporters are selected according to these theories. Machine-learning techniques are employed as predictive tools. Results show that ideological attitudes like being leftist-rightist and religious values like headscarf, fasting in Ramadan, and praying are the most important effective attributes on party selection of women. However, socioeconomic, cultural, educational and demographic atributes are not effective on party selection of women in Turkey

Service Quality And Determinants Of Customer Satisfaction In Hospitals: Turkish Experience

Service quality has increasingly been the subject of research in recent years. Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry presented and tested a generic model SERVQUAL to measure the perceived quality of a service. James Carman adapted and applied this instrument for use in the hospital industry. In this study, we use the instrument developed by Carman to collect data from the hospitals in Turkey. The purpose of the study is to examine the important criteria for measuring service quality in the health care industry in Turkey. The relationship between customer satisfaction and serqual measures are investigated for this purpose. In our study customer satisfaction measured by three criteria by asking customers; their future purchase intention, how they evaluate overall service quality and how they see overall quality of the hospital. Service quality was measured by the difference between perceived service and expected service and rated on a seven point Likert scale. Serqual measures consist of 6 criteria; tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, courtesy, and empathy. The techniques of factor analysis and the logistic regression models are used to investigate the relationships. Like the linear regression analysis, most of the usual statistical methods assume that the residuals, or errors, must follow a normal distribution. If they are not the methods should not be used. Unlike ordinary linear regression, logistic regression does not assume that the dependent variable or the error terms are distributed normally. Also, it doesn’t assume that the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable is linear. Logistic regression is a variation of ordinary regression which is used when the dependent variable is a categorical variable. The results of our analysis confirm that while tangibility, reliability, courtesy and empathy are significant for customer satisfaction, responsiveness and assurance are not

Good Governance and Agricultural Efficiency

This study aims to understand the effects governance indicators on the agricultural efficiency using European countries as a tool. It focuses on the efficiency of EU countries together with Turkey. In the first stage Data Envelopment Analysis and Malmquist Index are used to derive efficiency scores and the Total Productivity Change in time for 24 countries during the study period. A panel data Tobit regression is employed in the second stage to assess the key governance indicators explaining the observed variations in the efficiency levels. Four governance indicators namely, voice and accountability control of corruption, government effectiveness and regulatory quality together with the control variables; agricultural exports, education, research and development expenditures are analyzed in this stage. Findings show that the average efficiency of EU countries was slightly increased during the study period. The impact of voice and accountability, the share of R&D in GDP and the share of food products in exports upon the agricultural efficiency are positive whereas the impacts of the share of GDP allocated to education upon agricultural efficiency is negative

The professional service firm (PSF) in a globalised economy: A study of the efficiency of securities firms in an emerging market

This study explores the efficiency of securities firms in Turkey and offers conceptual and managerial insights utilizing data envelopment analysis. Through a sample of local and foreign owned securities firms in Turkey, we examine the impact of liabilities of foreignness (LOF) and localness (LOL) upon knowledge intensive firm efficiency in an emerging market economy. We have extended this approach through our consideration of liability associated with market globalness (LOMG). Our findings indicate the importance of size for firm efficiency with bank affiliation and foreign ownership also having positive effects on efficiency. Our study makes a contribution conceptually, methodologically and empirically to a growing literature on emerging economies. We also make a valuable addition to the limited empirical work conducted on the securities industry to date. Finally, through our contextualization of Turkish securities firms as professional services firms (PSFs), our research extends the narrow focus on law and accounting which currently dominates the burgeoning research strand on PSFs

Context, law and reinvestment decisions: Why the transitional periphery differs from other post-state socialist economies

A range of studies has found that corruption has a significant impact upon FDI decisions, however to date there has been scant investigation into longer term investments made by firms and their relative proclivity to reinvest. Further, there is particularly little work on reinvestment choices made on the transitional periphery of post-state socialist countries and how these might differ from the more stable transitional economies of central and Eastern Europe. Utilising 2005 World Bank Enterprise Survey data, this study explores the relationship between corruption and MNEs’ strategic decision to reinvest profits. From an institutionalist starting point, we find variation in the impact of different dimensions of corruption upon reinvestment; pervasive corruption impacts negatively upon reinvestment, but its effects are more pronounced in the transitional periphery. Perceived robust legal institutions have a positive correlation with reinvestment, but again, the positive effects are less pronounced on the transitional peripheral state socialist states. We ascribe this disparity to greater institutional fluidity, and explore why this context has particularly adverse effects. Finally, we find that firm level attributes of larger size and greater age play an important role in positive reinvestment decisions, appearing to mitigate the worst consequences of this fluidity

Determination of women’s voting behavior; A machine learning approach in the Turkish political arena

Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been the ruling and biggest party in Turkey (AKP) since it has been established in 2002 and Republican People’s Party (CHP) has been the main opposition party (CHP) since then. These two parties receive about 75% of all the votes and half of the voters are females.  To our knowledge, there is no such a study focusing on women’s party preferences in Turkey. Additionally, this is one of the very few studies in Turkey concerning voters’ party preferences. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature. In this study, the important attributes of women in party selection decisions are analyzed. Center-periphery and social mobility theories are the two main theories explaining Turkish political life. The analyzed ideological, cultural, religious, social, economic and demographic characteristics of women supporters are selected according to these theories. Machine-learning techniques are employed as predictive tools. Results show that ideological attitudes like being leftist-rightist and religious values like headscarf, fasting in Ramadan, and praying are the most important effective attributes on party selection of women. However, socioeconomic, cultural, educational and demographic atributes are not effective on party selection of women in Turkey.El partido de la Justicia y el Desarrollo (AKP) ha sido el mayor y predominante en Turquía desde que se estableció en 2002, y el partido de la República del Pueblo (CHP) ha sido el principal partido opositor desde entonces. Ambos partidos reciben alrededor del 75% de todos los votos. En Turquía la mitad de los votantes son mujeres. En este estudio se analizan los atributos más importantes en la decisión de las mujeresde escoger partido. No hay un estudio centrado en las preferencias políticas de las mujeres en Turquía. Además, este es uno de los pocos estudios sobre las preferencias de los votantes en Turquía. De ahí que este estudio pretenda llenar este vacío en la literatura.Dos de las principales teorías para explicar la vida política turca son la del centro-periferia y la de la movilidad social. En base a estas teorías se han escogido las características de los apoyos femeninos, tales como las ideológicas, las culturales, las religiosas, las sociales, las económicas y la demográficas. Se han usado técnicas de aprendizaje automático como herramientas predictivas. Los resultados muestran que las actitudes ideológicas como ser de izquierdas o ser de derechas y los valores religiosos como llevar velo, ayunar en Ramadán y rezar son los atributos más importantes y efectivos en la selección de partidos por parte de las mujeres. Sin embargo, los atributos socio-económicos, culturales, educativos y demográficos no son efectivos en la elección de partidos de las mujeres en Turquía

Determination of women voting behavior: A machine learning approach in the turkish political arena

Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been the ruling and biggest party in Turkey (AKP) since it has been established in 2002 and Republican People’s Party (CHP) has been the main opposition party (CHP) since then. These two parties receive about 75% of all the votes. In Turkey half of the voters are females. In this study, the important attributes of women in party selection decisions are analyzed. To our knowledge, there is no such a study focusing on women’s party preferences in Turkey. Additionally, this is one of the very few studies in Turkey concerning voters’ party preferences. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature. Center-periphery and social mobility theories are the two main theories explaining Turkish political life. The analyzed ideological, cultural, religious, social, economic and demographic characteristics of women supporters are selected according to these theories. Machine-learning techniques are employed as predictive tools. Results show that ideological attitudes like being leftist-rightist and religious values like headscarf, fasting in Ramadan, and praying are the most important effective attributes on party selection of women. However, socio-economic, cultural, educational and demographic atributes are not effective on party selection of women in Turkey

Performance Measurement of Turkish and Chinese Manufacturing Firms: A Comperative Analysis.

Abstract The aim of this paper is to compare the relative efficiencies of manufacturing companies of China, one of the BRIC countries (BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India, China) that are expected to dominate the world economy in 2050s, and Turkey, that is an attractive emerging market (Morgan Stanley Index 2006) with great potential. We will determine the relative performances of Turkish and Chinese manufacturing firms using weight restricted Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Weights of inputs and outputs are estimated by canonical correlation analysis. Mean efficiencies of the firms of the two countries are compared by t-test. The results of DEA and statistical analyses indicate that Chinese manufacturing firms are highly efficient than Turkish manufacturing firms on average