Dept. of Economics - Master's degree

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https://hdl.handle.net/11693/13865

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Open Access
A model of delegation in bargaining
(Bilkent University, 2023-06) Doğan, Gökçe; Karagözoğlu, Emin
This thesis examines delegate selection in bargaining encounters where one side consists of a group. Employing a non-cooperative approach, we propose a three stage bargaining game to analyze the trade-off that arises between the group’s share of the surplus and the distribution within the group when a delegate holds a privileged position in the in-group bargaining stage. We show that there exist multiple equilibria and characterize them. We explore the trade-off by taking into account various delegate selection methods, individuals’ time preferences, and in-group bargaining institutions. Our findings demonstrate that differences in these factors lead to substantial changes in equilibrium strategies. Specifically, under majority rule, granting a delegate the first proposer right in in-group bargaining results in an increase in the number of equilibria in which a weaker group member is elected, whereas a unanimity requirement leads to a stronger group member being preferred as the delegate in most of the equilibria. Furthermore, we illustrate that group members’ discount factors are another important determinant of delegate selection.
Open Access
Access to credit and self-employment
(Bilkent University, 2006) Selçuk, Emel; Ökten, Çağla
This thesis analyzes the impact of access to credit on self-employment. It examines the influence of knowing a place to borrow on the likelihood of owning a business. The analyses are made on farm and non-farm businesses separately. The impacts of different borrowing sources are also discussed. In addition, all these analyses are differentiated between male and female self-employment. It is found that access to credit is a significant determinant of self-employment, but its impacts vary for different sources of borrowing, the sector of self-employment and the gender of the people.
Open Access
Agency costs, fiscal policy, and business cycle fluctuations
(Bilkent University, 2009) Kısacıkoğlu, Burçin; Gürkaynak, Refet S.
This paper studies the relationship between scal policy, nancial market frictions and business cycle uctuations. It is shown that in an economy where balance sheets play a role in the propagation of shocks, using countercyclical scal policy net worth and output uctuations can be reduced. This countercyclical scal policy requires to distribute resources to the entrepreneurs when a negative technology shock is realized and levy taxes on entrepreneurs after the technology shock is back to zero. It is shown that after the realization of a negative shock, countercyclical scal policy reduces agency costs which would make entrepreneurs increase investment and dampen the business cycle uctuations via decreasing uctuations in net worth. By this increase in investment, nancial fragility decreases, which reduces the slowdown of economic activity.
Open Access
An alternative look at balance-of-payments puzzle : structural decomposition of accounts of 16 emerging markets
(Bilkent University, 2006) Şahbaz, Ahmet Ussal; Yeldan, Erinç
The empricial evidence on pro-growth effect of capital account liberalization is inconclusive. I argue that, after liberalization, the link between structural finance needs of developing countries and debt flows lost its importance. Instead, the flight of resident capital and unproductive reserve accumulation have created new financing needs, limiting the augmentation of saving pools of developing countries and hence growth. I build four new components from balance-of-payments account that make it possible to track the new financing patterns. I investigate relationship between these components for 15 emerging market countries. I also make a case study for Turkey using vector autoregression technique to establish a causality link between dynamics of the new structural aggregates.
Open Access
Analysing the effects of cross-border electricity trade on power production from different energy sources
(Bilkent University, 2020-04) Boz, Deniz Ege; Berument, M. Hakan
This thesis provides empirical evidence to emphasize the crucial role of cross-border electricity trade for decreasing the use of fossil fuels in power industries and attaining higher electricity supply from solar and wind energy sources. We collected data for 48 countries across three continents (the Americas, Europe and Asia) from 1991 to 2018 to create a world sample that would reflect the diversity of various energy mixes in different electricity markets. We showed the existence of long-term relationships between power production from natural gas, solar, wind and the level of cross-border electricity trade through panel unit root and panel cointegration tests. Later on, we conducted panel data analyses that utilize the fixed-effect approach with interactive variables. The empirical evidence reveals that when electricity production from solar and wind energy sources interacts with cross border electricity trade, power production from natural gas decreases statistically significantly. Furthermore, we created efficiency indices for solar and wind energy sources and provide evidence for the increased utilization of solar and wind electricity production in the presence of cross-border electricity trade.
Open Access
An analysis of foreign investment in Turkey
(Bilkent University, 1993) Dilek, Ali Nihat; İrbeç, Yusuf Ziya
This study attempts to clarify two important subjects on foreign capital in Turkey. First one is a comparison of the performance of firms with foreign capital and firms with domestic capital. And second one is trend and distribution of foreign capital entry. Four different point of view are considered, namely historical development of foreign capital in Turkey, distribution of foreign capital between sectors and countries, comparison of performance of foreign and domestic owned firms, finally determination of labor productivity differences between foreign and Turkish owned firms. An increasing trend in the annual entries of foreign capital is reported in this study. Moreover it is found out that tourism, basic chemicals, petroleum, rubber, iron and steel, mining and metal goods are highly preferred sectors. In addition, it is seen that foreign owned firms have higher performance than their domestic rivals. Six economic parameters namely labor productivity, capital-labor ratio, wage level, wage share of value added, profitability and value added-capital ratio are used in this comparison. Most of the selected samples are indicating a higher performance by the foreign owned firms than their domestic rivals.
Open Access
Analysis of real business cycle models with capital-skill complementarity
(Bilkent University, 2009) Kılıç, Sinem; Gürkaynak, Refet S.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of a production function with capital-skill complementarity, as opposed to the standard Cobb-Douglas production function, on Real Business Cycle [RBC] models. Capital-skill complementarity is mostly used in open economy models to study the wage inequality but this production function has not been employed in closed economy real business cycle models. This paper shows that the production function with capital-skill complementarity causes even lower endogenous propagation of the impulse response functions than those of standard closed economy RBC models, which already have problems with regards to the persistence of output.
Open Access
An analysis of technical barriers to trade within the European Union perspective
(Bilkent University, 2011) Tok, Ertan; Togan, Subidey
After setting up the necessary framework for the subject on technical barriers to trade (TBT), this study tries to enlighten the removal efforts of the TBT within the European Union (EU) and Turkey. In this respect, this study covers the removal approaches of TBT in the EU together with Turkey's alignment with the EU on the subject, as required by the Customs Union Agreement. This study also tries to evaluate the importance of different approaches on the removal of TBT on the Turkish trade with the EU. This evaluation is prepared by allocating external trade values for product groups into the regulatory approaches of the EU and analyzing the coverage of these approaches in the total external trade of the EU-15 countries. Accordingly, it is found that most of the Turkish trade with the EU-15 countries may be subject to technical regulations. Moreover, it is observed that the shares of the Turkish trade regarding the different EU approaches on TBT evolve over time. This study discovers that the importance of harmonizing the EU legislation on the iv removal of TBT on Turkish exports to the EU-15 has been increasing over the timeline. Additionally, it is observed that the number of product groups, which Turkey reveals as comparative advantage in harmonized area, is increasing over time. Thus, Turkey is becoming more competitive in the EU-15 market.
Open Access
The analysis of the behaviour of governments and producers in the presence of environmental regulations and international trade
(Bilkent University, 2000) Karaman, S. Cem; Alpay, Savaş
In my thesis I analyse the interactions between environmental regulations and international trade. I use a two-country, one-good, two-producer model. The governments may behave strategically in choosing their environmental policy and producers may behave strategically in choosing their R&D investment. Using a game theoretical approach, I try to identify the Nash equilibrium of the game. For identical countries, I consider two cases; simultaneous-move game and sequential-move game. I observe that the producers prefer not to act strategically for any action of governments. If one of the governments move in advance, it will prefer to act strategically. In a simultaneous-move game there is multiple equilibria and no conclusion can be made for the outcome of the game. For non-symmetric country case, I observe that the governments prefer to act strategically and the producers prefer not to act strategically where the game is a simultaneous-move game.
Open Access
An analysis of the sources of import growth in Turkey: 1985-90
(Bilkent University, 1995) Celasun, Oya; Togan, Subidey
The sources of import growth in Turkey during the 1985-90 period are decomposed into four casual factors domestic demand expansion, export expansion, import substitution and technological change, using the inputoutput framework. Domestic price indices for imports and gross output were constructed, and the 1990 input-output table was double deflated into constant 1985 prices. The decomposition results are analyzed within the context of the economic conditions in Turkey during the period. It is observed that the structure of the causal factors have changed compared to the previous period of 1979-85. The contribution of export expansion is observed to be negligible, and domestic demand expansion and import substitution are the most prominent sources of import growth between 1985 and 1990.
Open Access
An Analysis on compositional effect during the great trade collapse
(Bilkent University, 2014) Bağırgan, Onursal; Taşkın, Fatma
This thesis focuses on one of the famous hypotheses on The Great Trade Collapse which is compositional effect hypothesis. It includes three different parts. The first part examines the method of Levchenko, Lewis, Tesar (2010) for testing compositional effect, attempts to reproduce the results and conducts some robustness analysis of their results. The second part suggests some modifications on the existing model and applies the newly modified model to the US data. The findings suggest that compositional effect is an important factor of the US trade collapse during the The Great Recession. In the last part, the new model is applied to Turkey and the findings show that the compositional effect is not a significant factor of the trade reduction in Turkey. This result could be an indicator which shows that trade of the emerging countries are not governed by the same factors that drive developed country trade falls during the recent economic crisis.
Open Access
An analytical assessment about post-great moderation central banking policies
(Bilkent University, 2012) Kızıltan, Rabia Zeynep; Böke, Selin Sayek
In this thesis, by focusing on the unconventional monetary policy measures, I have analytically assessed post-great moderation central banking policies and documented the heterogeneity in calibration and design of these policies by exposing the experiences of Japan, United States, United Kingdom and Brazil. Moreover, by estimating a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model, I have empirically investigated the macroeconomic effects of unconventional monetary policies. Empirical findings of this study suggest that, unconventional monetary policies have lead a temporary increase in GDP and CPI for United States and United Kingdom while its effects are slightly significant for Japan and diametrically insignificant for Brazil.
Open Access
Analyzing inflation target misses
(Bilkent University, 2010) Kırımhan, Destan; Yeldan, Erinç
This thesis identifies the roles of both domestic and global factors in missing the inflation targets with the help of Arellano-Bond fixed effects estimation. Central bank credibility has the largest absolute effect on target misses; exchange rate and fiscal surplus ratio to GDP have the medium absolute effect on target misses. Oil prices seem to have significant but limited effect. This thesis also examines whether there is any difference in the formation of inflation expectations when countries miss their inflation targets with the help of linear ordinary least squares estimation. The results may suggest that when CB does not achieve its target, the total weight put on the lagged inflation will be higher than that of the inflation target. Thus, in this analysis, inflation target misses are causing inflation inertia which leads to a more costly disinflationary monetary policy in the short run. Furthermore, there is some evidence of the asymmetry between inflation target misses in the sense that the weights put on overshooting and undershooting are not the same.
Open Access
Another characterization of expected Scott-Suppes Utility Representation
(Bilkent University, 2021-01) Yıldız, Furkan; Dalkıran, Nuh Aygün
This thesis provides a new characterization of Expected Scott-Suppes Utility Representation (ESSUR). ESSUR combines the Expected Utility Repre-sentation with the Scott-Suppes Utility Representation. The latter represents semiorders that formalize preferences with intransitive indi˙erences. Dalkıran, Dokumacı, and Kara (2018) were the first to provide an axiomatic character-ization of ESSUR. In this study, we provide another characterization start-ing with the axioms of Candeal and Indurain (2010). Candeal and Indurain (2010) provide an axiomatic characterization of Scott-Suppes representations for semiorders on uncountably infinite sets. Therefore, we identify the axioms required on top of those of Candeal and Indurain (2010) so that we obtain a linear Scott-Suppes representation, i.e., another characterization of ESSUR.
Open Access
An application of an entropy approach to the Turkish manufacturing industry
(Bilkent University, 1993) Altaban, Şule; Güvenen, Orhan
This study concerns an application of concentration measurement for the Turkish Manufacturing Industry using information theory. Theil's (1971) disaggregation of entropy is converted to handle the whole manufacturing industry in order to see the competitive and monopolistic trends. The between-group variation and within-group variation values are computed for three yearly period between 1989 and 1991 using sales figures. These values give the intersectoral and inter-firm differentiations for the manufacturing industry. The study concludes that the distribution for sales figures within the sector displays a less equal pattern than the intersectoral analysis, although the general relative entropy values shows only a tendency to equal shares for the Turkish Manufacturing Industry.
Open Access
Application of cointegration analysis to the demand for labor by the Turkish private manufacturing sector
(Bilkent University, 1995) Kale, Pelin; Zaim, Osman
In this study, the demand for labor by the Turkish private manufacturing sector is analyzed for three time periods; 1988 quailer 1-1993 quarter 4, 1988 quarter 1 - 1994 quarter 1, 1988 quarter 1-1994 quarter 2 to be able to capture the effects of the economic crisis of 1994 based on an approach treating employment as a function of output and real wage within an Enor Correction Modeling Approach. In the seaich for possible long run relationships between the vaiiables of interest, Johansen’s Maximum Likelihood procedure is applied to the first difference of variables since all the data series are integrated of order 1. A unique cointegrating relationship is found for each time period. Upon testing and rejecting the exogeneity of the real wage and output series for the demand for labor, short run models are built for each period which are consistent with theoiy but may be subject to biases due to simultaneity between the variables of interest.
Open Access
Application of Markowitz Portfolio Selection Model to Istanbul Stock Exchange, 1990-1992
(Bilkent University, 1995) Alkazan, Hande; Erol, Ümit
In this study, Markowitz Efficient Frontier is constructed by using stock prices in Istanbul stock exchange for the period of 1990-92. This set of efficient portfolios is compared with mutual funds which are randomly chosen for the same period. Comparison is done on the basis of mean-variance criteria. According to the empirical results, chosen mutual funds for the period of 1990-92 are found to be inefficient.
Open Access
An application of seasonal cointegration and error correction models on monthly data
(Bilkent University, 1995) Erçoşkun, Güliz; Metin, Kıvılcım
In this study, I try to analyze and show the monthly changes and their effects on each other of Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE), TL / $ Exchange Rate (E), M l, M2, price level (P), Interest rate on securities (R) and Advances o f the central bank to the treasury (A) by developed techniques in time series econometrics, namely unit roots, seasonal cointegration and error correction. The long run relationship between stock prices and exchange rate, price level. M l, M2 investigated by using these techniques of time series. Conclusions are made for future use o f models for monthly time series. To our knowledge, this is among the pioneering studies conducted in an emerging market that uses an updated econometric methodology to allow for an analysis o f monthly data for long run steady state properties together with short run dynamics.
Open Access
Application of spectral and cross-spectral analysis to İstanbul Stock Exchange Market
(Bilkent University, 1995) Erigüç, Cüneyt Altan; Selçuk, Faruk
In this study, stock exchange index and selected four securities Ege Gübre, Bağfaş, Adana Gübre and Tüpraş from Istanbul Stock Exchange Market were analyzed with spectral and cross-spectral methods. Consumer price index was used to find the real values of securities. First o f aU, spectral analysis was apphed to be able to find periodicity of securities and significant periodicities were foimd for these four o f them. Cross-spectral analysis was then apphed between stock exchange index and four o f these securities, each pair displayed statistically significant coherencies, the lead and lag relationships o f certain frequencies were found from phase difference values o f significant coherencies.
Open Access
Application of the twin-deficits hypothesis to the Turkish case
(Bilkent University, 1993) Yılmaz, Alper; Güvenen, Orhan
This study detects the twin-deficits hypothesis, the mutual effects of government budget deficits and merchandise trade deficits on each other through real interest rates and real effective exchange rates, in the Turkish economy. One-sided Granger causality analysis and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions for multivariate analysis for each are used for 1987-92 monthly data. The government budget deficits are found to affect trade deficits not directly, but through the mechanism over real interest rates and real effective exchange rates. Nevertheless, the merchandise trade deficits seem to affect budget deficits directly.