Convergence of Health Expenditure in OECD Countries: Evidence from a Nonlinear Asymmetric Heterogeneous Panel Unit Root Test

This paper examines the convergence in health expenditure across 22 OECD countries between 1980 and 2012 by implementing panel unit root tests. Contribution of application of the nonlinear asymmetric heterogeneous panel unit root test is twofold. Firstly, it relaxes the assumption of cross-sectional dependency in panel data. Secondly, it incorporates the asymmetric nonlinear mean reversion in a panel setting. Results show that while the conventional panel unit root test cannot reject the null hypothesis of a unit root in relative per capita health expenditures for the whole set of countries, both the symmetric and the asymmetric nonlinear panel unit root tests indicate the stationarity of the panel. Specifically, almost 23 percent of the countries are found to be converging by employing the nonlinear asymmetric panel unit root test. In addition, introducing asymmetric structure helps to uncover additional converging countries which cannot be detected using linear and nonlinear symmetric panel unit root tests

Dynamic Analysis of Maternal Employment, Child Care, Quality and Early Childhood Development

This dissertation analyzes the effects of maternal employment and non-parental child care on early childhood developmental outcomes (i.e., health, cognitive achievement and behavioral problems). For this purpose, hybrid production functions are estimated within a dynamic framework using a two-step system Generalized Method of Moments (two-step system GMM) estimator. Nationally representative data, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), provide information on parenting style as well as both home and child care environments. Using this information, non-parental child care and home quality indices are created from the first principal components derived from a factor analysis and included in the models. My model also allows for an estimation of the causal effects of health variables (obesity and acute health conditions) on both cognitive achievement and behavior problems. The results show that a high quality home environment reduces the risk of childhood obesity, being overweight, and behavior problems and also improves a child's general health status and cognitive achievement in children. In addition, high quality out-of-home child care improves cognitive development and reduces behavior problems. High quality non-parental in-home child care significantly reduces a child's risk of being overweight. More maternal hours of works, particularly combined with child care, increases the obesity risk while decreasing behavior problems and improving general health status. Center-based child care also improves cognitive achievement of children. Another important finding is that childhood obesity significantly reduces cognitive achievement and emotional development. Including quality variables in the estimations alters the magnitude and significance of maternal employment and child care variables. Additionally, the quality variables have theoretically expected signs when the GMM estimator is used to control for unobserved heterogeneity.Doctor of Philosoph

Küreselleşme Yaşam Tatminini Nasıl Açıklar?

As being a multidimensional concept, globalization may influence nations positively or negatively. Although the relationship between life satisfaction and globalization has been investigated by several studies, the impact of globalization on satisfaction in different domains of life are under-researched. This study analyzes the impacts of individuals’ globalization assessment on their satisfaction in different domains of life. Data set is obtained from a survey conducted for individuals from different countries for the year 2014. The survey asks individuals about their opinions on globalization and life satisfaction. The effects of the assessment of globalization variables and socio-demographic factors are estimated via the partial proportional odds model for each satisfaction variable. Results show that individuals who internalize the positive sides of globalization are more likely to be highly satisfied in different areas in their life. Consequently, how people perceive globalization helps to explain their satisfaction in different domains of life. Results also reveal some potential demographic outcomes for satisfaction in different domains of life and most of those results are consistent with the literature

Oil prices and current account: A structural analysis for the Turkish economy

Although there has been an increasing number of studies about the effects of oil prices on the macroeconomic performances, the literature on the interaction between oil prices and current account is limited, especially for oil importing developing countries. This paper analyzes the impact of oil prices on the current account balances for the Turkish economy using a structural vector autoregression model. Our model allows us to identify the net effect of oil prices on current account balances after controlling for other factors such as output gap and exchange rate misalignment. The results show that the response of current account ratio to oil price shock increases gradually up to the first three months and then starts to decrease, which indicates a significant effect of oil price shocks in the short-run. Moreover, when the obtained structural shocks are employed in a simple regression analysis, the parameter regarding the oil price shocks is found to be negative and statistically significant. The final section discusses the policy implications of the results.Oil prices Current account balances Turkish economy

Modeling company failure: a longitudinal study of Turkish banks

Determining the factors related to the financial failure of a company is important. In this paper, we extend literature on bank failure prediction by modelling bank failures in Turkey from 1998 to 2000 using three statistical models combined with a principal component analysis on financial ratios. The three statistical models employed are a logistic regression, a logistic regression that takes serial correlation into account via generalized estimating equations and a marginalized transition model (MTM). Time and financial ratios that are related with capital adequacy and profitability, risk, non-interest income and Fx assets to Fx liabilities are found to be significant in classifying failed banks. Each of our methods achieves a correct classification rate of 93.3%. Among the three models, MTM, which is the soundest model in terms of statistical assumptions, shows slightly better model fit properties

Türkiye'deki sektör bilançolarının istatistiksel modellenmesi ve tahminleri

TÜBİTAK SBB01.01.200