The role of progress factors explaining inefficiencies in Transition countries

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This paper examines whether progress in transition has a significant effect on the economic efficiency for 24 transition countries from 1990 to 2006. It uses nine progress factors to analyze the role of the progress factors to explain inefficiencies. It also questions the effect of the transition countries that recently joined the European Union on efficiency. The results suggest that the average efficiency scores for EU-N10 are much higher than the average efficiency scores for SEE/CIS. The scores increase over time for both groups of transition countries. Reforms also contribute to efficiency in general. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Wien

Technical Effieciency in Cotton Production: The Role of Premium Payments in Turkey

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Providing about two million employments from textile to agriculture, cotton is an important and a strategic product for Turkey. Thus, support programs become critical and crucial for the cotton production. For cotton farmers, premium payments affecting the cost measures become vital next to the market prices. This study measures the technical efficiency of cotton production, incorporating support premium payments as one of the background variables to capture the effect of premiums on efficiency scores for cotton production using stochastic frontier model. The premium payments found to be the most important determinant of inefficiencies, and the results of our analysis suggest that premiums paid to farmers increase efficiency for cotton production. In addition, regional production was important explaining inefficiencies. Although three regions in Turkey did not behave parallel and showed different characteristics in production, efficiency gap between these regions is closed recently

The role of gender diversity on firm performance: a regression quantile approach

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The relationship between gender diversity and firm performance has been investigated using a regression quantile approach for the largest Turkish firms. Overall, results show that gender diversity has a different effect on firm performance over the different points of the conditional distribution. Moreover, the type of industry seems to be important for the sign and significance of the impact of gender diversity on performance. © 2013 Copyright Taylor & Francis

Sentimental Herding in Borsa Istanbul: Informed versus Uninformed

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This study searches for sentimental herding in Borsa Istanbul (BIST) using a state-space model for two distinct groups of investors/traders. We expect to find no sentimental herding in BIST30 as the investors are closely following the market, given their access to maximum amount of information and high quality of guidance from the world-known intermediaries that reduce information asymmetries. However, as the SNM investors are mostly local investors with smaller assets and with higher level of information asymmetry, we expect to find evidence of sentimental herding. As expected, we find no evidence of herding by the BIST30 investors from 2000 to 2013. In contrast, our findings provide evidence that the SNM investors demonstrate sentimental herding persistently and independently from market fundamentals in three stages: evidence of herding in the first stage (2000-2004), a 4-year (2005-2008) no-herding calm period and finally a volatile adverse herding pattern (2009-2013) where fundamentals about the firm values became more important. © 2014 Taylor & Francis

A Test for a Functioning Market Economy: Seton'S Eigenprices of Turkey

We use Seton's eigenprices to see if some evidence can be found in support of the European Commission's official statement that the Turkish economy can be considered as a functioning market economy. Given an input–output flows matrix, there is a unique set of prices for outputs and production factors compatible with final demand, generating demand for factors. The findings based on Turkey's most recent I–O table and comparable I–O matrices for Romania and Poland (two EU members) in 2005 show that price distortions were on average five times larger in Turkey. Hence, based on price distortions alone, there was no solid evidence in support of the statement that Turkey had a functioning market economy. © 2015 The International Input–Output Association

The role of firm characteristics on the relationship between gender diversity and firm performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of gender diversity on firm performance and evaluate how that relationship is influenced by some firm-specific factors for firms in an emerging market. Design/methodology/approach – The authors collected firm level financial data and firm level characteristics for the firms listed in BIST100 index of Borsa Istanbul for the period between 2002 and 2006. Due to endogeneity of gender diversity and firm performance, the authors utilize unbalanced panel data with 2SLS specification. To observe the sensitivity of results across measures of performance, three measures of performance, two accounting-based and one market-based, are utilized. Findings – Overall, the authors find some weak evidence that gender diversity impacts firm performance. In particular, the findings imply significant association between gender diversity and firm performance for firms that are targeting local markets, for firms in the financial sector and for firms that are family or block-owned. Moreover, findings are fragile with respect to the measures of diversity and performance selected. Originality/value – Although the relationship between gender diversity and firm performance are investigated several times in the past, there are not many studies that examines the role of firm-specific factors on that relationship. By revealing the factors that are important, this study provides an explanation why the existing literature leads to mixed results. © 2016, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

News Releases and Stock Market Volatility: Intraday Evidence from Borsa Istanbul

In this study, we investigate the effect of public information arrival on return volatility for Borsa Istanbul (BIST) using intraday, 60-min returns between October 3, 2013 and March 31, 2014. Stock return and return volatility is expected to react to news arrival if such news causes market participants to adjust their portfolios. To measure new information arrival, we count the number of daily news headlines for Turkey, the United States, and a sample of European countries with close trading ties with Turkey. Furthermore, we focus on economic news and particularly on news on real economy and inflation. In addition, along with the BIST100 index, which is the most commonly used market portfolio index, we also utilize Second National Market (SNM) index. Our results show that news arrival influences return volatility negatively, and it has no significant effect on index returns. Moreover, return volatility responds significantly to negative surprises in GDP and inflation announcements. Finally, we do not provide evidence that indicates differences in the usage of information that arrives to the market between BIST100 and SNM investors. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Herding in Middle Eastern Frontier Markets: Are Local and Global Factors Important?

In this study we look for sentimental herding in a sample of frontier markets in the Middle East, using a state-space approach. The stock markets we consider are Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait. We use daily data to estimate monthly betas from a market model and test to see whether estimated monthly betas are biased, which would indicate the existence of herding or adverse herding. We also analyze the effect of extreme global and local events, and market conditions, on herding behavior. For extreme global market conditions we use major events such as the 2007-08 global financial crisis, as well as extreme variations in market returns. Furthermore, given the significance of petroleum in these markets, extreme price changes in spot-oil prices are also used for extreme market conditions. As for local events, we also test to see if events during the so-called Arab Spring in the region-eg, the Syrian internal war and Egyptian political movements-have had any impact on herd behavior. We find the existence of herding and adverse herding in Kuwait and Qatar, but not in Bahrain and Oman, revealing that market category is not a determinant of herding. In addition, our results show that while herding in Kuwait is influenced by local and global factors, herding in Qatar is influenced by oil returns and oil return volatility. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Sentimental herding in Borsa Istanbul: informed versus uninformed

This study searches for sentimental herding in Borsa Istanbul (BIST) using a state-space model for two distinct groups of investors/traders. We expect to find no sentimental herding in BIST30 as the investors are closely following the market, given their access to maximum amount of information and high quality of guidance from the world-known intermediaries that reduce information asymmetries. However, as the SNM investors are mostly local investors with smaller assets and with higher level of information asymmetry, we expect to find evidence of sentimental herding. As expected, we find no evidence of herding by the BIST30 investors from 2000 to 2013. In contrast, our findings provide evidence that the SNM investors demonstrate sentimental herding persistently and independently from market fundamentals in three stages: evidence of herding in the first stage (2000-2004), a 4-year (2005-2008) no-herding calm period and finally a volatile adverse herding pattern (2009-2013) where fundamentals about the firm values became more important. © 2014 Taylor & Francis

Measuring and evaluating efficiency of hospitals through total quality management: A multi-criteria data envelopment analysis model

The purpose of this study is to measure and evaluate the efficiency of 12 hospitals in Turkey using a multi-criteria Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology. Number of beds, number of physicians and the critical factors of total quality management in the health care sector were used as inputs of the model. The outputs used in this analysis incorporated financial and non-financial performance of hospitals, number of outpatients and number of patient days. Performance of the hospitals was measured using subjective measures based on executive's perception of how their organization performed relative to the competition. Results provide management with information regarding the relatively best practice hospitals in the observation sets and locate the relatively inefficient hospitals by comparison with the best practice ones. At last some suggestions are made for the least efficient hospital. © 2007 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved