Regulatory Reforms to Unlock Long–Term Growth in Turkey

In the 2000s, Turkey has enjoyed rapid catching–up. This was possible despite the adverse business environment, as the semi–formal and informal economy had a significant contribution to the expansion of the private sector. Productivity growth was strong, but labour utilisation remained very low. Looking forward, higher employment and productivity growth will not be possible without profound regulatory reforms of minimum wages, severance payments, social security contributions and flexible job contracts. These reforms have been discussed for a long time, but political obstacles prevented implementing them. Resolving this deadlock calls for advancing an integrated strategy of labour reforms and formalisation via experimenting with new regulation on the voluntary basis to identify the most successful solutions that can be later rolled out to the whole economy. Moreover, Turkey has to ease further anti–competitive product market regulations by reducing barriers to entrepreneurship and foreign direct investment, and by limiting government involvement in business. A successful implementation of these reforms would allow Turkey to enjoy golden decades.

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Imperial Users onl

The lesson from the Greek crisis should be that economics exists for the good of society, not for its own sake

A Greek bailout deal has been agreed in principle between the country’s government and its creditors. Defne Gonenc writes that throughout the crisis there has been a tendency to view economics as detached from politics, with the impact of economic policies on individual citizens largely pushed to the sidelines in discussions surrounding the technicalities of a bailout deal. She argues that rather than pursuing economics for its own sake, a better approach would be to adopt a narrative that focuses on what economic solutions can do for society

The Sardar Sarovar dam: drowning out citizens but who benefits?

The controversial damming of the Narmada river in central India goes on, even though the project has been plagued by escalating costs, corruption scandals and protests over human rights and environmental abuses. Yet despite financial, social and environmental deficiencies Defne Gonenc writes that the main beneficiaries are multinationals and large contractors, rather than the hundreds of ordinary Indians who need clean drinking water and access to the river for their livelihoods

Family Control and Financing Decisions

Empirical studies examining the financing decisions of the firm focus exclusively on publicly held firms, not family-controlled firms despite their economic importance. This study investigates the external financing behavior of family-controlled firms, using a comprehensive sample of 777 large European firms during the period 1998 to 2008. We document that, unlike nonfamily-controlled firms, the external financing decisions of family-controlled firms are influenced by control incentives and information asymmetry considerations. We find that family firms have a strong preference for debt financing, a noncontrol diluting security, while they are more reluctant to raise capital through equity offerings in comparison to nonfamily firms. We also find that credit markets, view family firms as more risk-averse and that family firms invest more in low-risk (fixed-asset capital expenditures (CAPEX)), than in high-risk investments (R&D expenditures) confirming their non-risk seeking behavior.Family firms, financing decisions, equity issues, debt issues, capital structure.

The Long-Term Performance of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs): Venture Capitalists, Reputation of Investment Bankers, and Corporate Structure

The Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) literature has uncovered the underpricing, hot issue markets, and long-term underperformance anomalies. The long-term underperformance of IPO firms has gained the focus of recent academic attention. Recent studies document that venture capitalists, and the reputation of investment bankers are associated with the long-term performance of firms going public. The lack of venture capitalists has been shown to relate with the long-term underperformance of IPO firms. On the other hand, IPO firms underwritten by less reputable underwriters have been found to experience more negative long-term market adjusted returns. Unlike previous studies, this study examines the interactive effects of venture capitalists, and the reputation of investment bankers on the long-term performance of IPOs using alternative performance measures. Moreover, we examine the possible interactive effects of institutional ownership with venture capitalists and the reputation of investment bankers. It is argued that the investigation of the joint effects of venture capitalists, reputation of investment bankers, and institutional investors on the long-term performance of IPO firms is more likely to throw additional light on the long-term underperformance of IPO firms than examining the role of these factors independently. In addition, this study investigates whether the corporate structure of the firm is associated with the long-term performance of IPOs. This investigation relies on 456 IPO transactions over the period of 1989–1994. Results based on raw and adjusted buy- and-hold returns show that the reputation of investment bankers on the long-term performance of IPO firms is negligible, if any. These results are inconsistent with the findings of Carter, Dark, and Singh (1998). However, venture backed IPOs with considerable institutional ownership experience superior long-term performance. Consistent with Brav and Gampers (1997), our evidence shows that long-term performance of IPO firms is not significantly different from counterpart IPO firms. Size/book-to-market/industry adjustment not only decreases underperformance of non-venture backed IPO firms, but also eliminates the superior performance of venture-backed IPO firms relative to both, market and non-venture backed IPO firms. Finally, the analysis provides little evidence in support of the corporate diversification hypothesis which states that diversified IPO firms have lower long-term performance in comparison to focused IPO firms

Design and implementation of a control system for use of galvanometric scanners in laser micromachining applications

In the recent years, laser machining technology has been used widely in industrial applications usually with the aim of increasing the production capability of mass production lines - especially for fast marking, engraving type of applications where speed is an important concern - or manufacturing quality of a certain facility by increasing the level of accuracy in material processing applications such as drilling, cutting; or any scientific research oriented work where high precision machining of parts in sub millimeter scale might be required. A galvanometric scanner is a high precision device that is able to steer a laser beam with a mirror attached to a motor, whose rotor angular range is usually limited with tens of degrees in both directions of rotation; and position is controlled either by voltage or current. Due to their lightness, the rotor and the mirror can move very fast, allowing fast marking (burning out) operation with the laser beam. This can be evaluated as a great advantage compared to slower mechanical appliances used for cutting/machining of different materials. This study concentrates on the analysis of galvanometric scanner system components; and the design and implementation of a hardware and software based control system for a dual-axis galvo setup; and their adaptation for use in laser micromachining applications either as a standalone system or a modular subsystem. Analysis part of the thesis work contains: evaluation of dominant laser micromachining techniques, an overview of the galvanometric scanner system based approach and related components (e.g. electromechanical, electrical, optical), understanding of working principles and related simulation work, compatibility issues with the target micromachining applications. Design part of the thesis work includes: the design and implementation of electronic controller board, intermediate drive electronics stage, microcontroller programming for machining control algorithm, interfacing with graphical user interface based control software and production of necessary mechanical parts. The study has been finalized with experimental work and evaluation of obtained results. The results of these studies are promising and motivate the use of laser galvanometric scanner systems in laser micromachining applications

Reforms protecting minority shareholders and firm performance:International evidence

This study investigates the effect of corporate governance reforms protecting minority shareholders on the firm value measured by Tobin’s Q. Using the difference-in-differences estimation and a large international sample from 65 countries for the period 2005–2018, the results show that the firm values increase more in the reform countries than non-reform countries relative to pre-reform levels. This positive effect changes for firms with high and low levels of debt. Moreover, the values after reforms increase more for firms located in civil countries and in countries with rule-based reform approaches and low debt enforcement because the reforms strengthening minority shareholder protection are more efficient in those countries. The evidence is robust to accounting-based performance as well

Environmental and Financial Performance of Fossil Fuel Firms:A Closer Inspection of their Interaction

We investigate the relationship between environmental and financial performance of fossil fuel firms. To this extent, we analyze a large international sample of firms in chemicals, oil, gas, and coal with respect to several environmental indicators in relation to financial performance for the period 2002-2013. We find that these firms have significantly higher scores on environmental performance efforts than other firms. We use a simultaneous equations system to identify the direction of the relationship between environmental and financial performance of the firms. We find that environmental outperformance has no impact on financial performance for chemical firms, reduces returns and risks for coal companies, has a mixed impact on returns in oil and gas, and reduces financial risks for oil and gas firms. Financial outperformance reduces environmental performance in all fossil fuel (sub)industries investigated. Our findings mainly support the opportunistic view regarding the impact of financial returns, which holds that financial performance negatively impacts social performance. Regarding financial risk, we find support for the stakeholder perspective where good environmental performance is beneficial from a finance perspective. We conclude to substantial differences in the environmental-financial performance relationship along fossil fuel firms in different subindustries. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.</p

Creditor Rights and R&D Expenditures

Manuscript Type: Empirical Research Question?Issue: This study examines the impact of creditor rights on R&D intensity (R&D/total assets). We argue that managers in countries with strong creditor rights have more incentives to reduce cash flow risk and therefore limit expenditures on R&D more than managers located in countries with weak creditor rights. Research Findings/Insights: Using a sample of over 21,000 firms from 41 countries, our research is one of the first to document that strong creditor rights are indeed associated with reduced R&D intensity. This negative relationship is observed in market‐based countries, but not in bank‐based countries. Moreover, the results show that the negative effect of creditor rights on R&D intensity is usually stronger (more negative) for firms facing or near financial distress. We observe that the determinants for R&D intensity consist of both country and firm level variables and firm level variables appear to be more important in explaining the variance of R&D intensity. Theoretical/Academic Implications: This study documents an important link between creditor rights and R&D intensity. Our empirical procedure specifically accounts for the fact that R&D intensity and debt are likely to be jointly determined. Practitioner/Policy Implications: This research is important to policy makers interested in understanding the determinants of firms\u27 R&D intensity. In particular, our study suggests a possible harmful effect of strong creditor rights, namely the possibility that R&D intensity will be lowered