Hatice Ozer Balli

Operational efficiency of Asia–Pacific airports

Abstract Airports are important drivers of economic development and thus under tremendous pressure from emerging competitors. However, few studies have analysed the operational efficiency of Asia–Pacific airports. This study therefore evaluated the operational efficiency of 21 Asia–Pacific airports between 2002 and 2011. A two-stage method was used: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess airport efficiency, followed by the second-stage regression analysis to identify the key determinants of airport efficiency. The first-stage DEA results indicated that Adelaide, Beijing, Brisbane, Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Shenzhen are the efficient airports. The second-stage regression analysis suggested that percentage of international passengers handled by an airport, airport hinterland population size, dominant airline(s) of an airport when entering global airline strategic alliance, and an increase in GDP per capita are significant in explaining variations in airport efficiency.

Time‐Varying Spillover Effects on Sectoral Equity Returns

In this paper, we investigate the integration of the Euro- and US-wide sector equity indices by focusing on the return, volatility, and trend spillover effects of local and global shocks. We explore that unlike volatility spillovers, return spillovers are not significant enough to explain sector equity returns. Moreover, we are able to show that when the trend is incorporated into the volatility spillover analysis, a number of sector equity indices tend to react similarly to local and global shocks. Following this path, we arrive at four major sector groups: production and industry; consumer goods and services; financial; and technology, media, and telecommunication across Euro- and US-wide sector equity indices.

International income risk-sharing and the global financial crisis of 2008–2009☆

We examine the impact of the global financial crisis on the degree of international income and consumption risk-sharing among industrial economies using returns on cross-border portfolio holdings (e.g., debt, equity, FDI). We split the returns from the net foreign holdings as receipts (inflows) and payments (outflows) to investigate which of the two sides exhibited the greater resilience for income risk-sharing during the recent crisis. First, we find that debt delivered better risk-sharing than equity, mainly reflecting the deficit deterioration in EMU countries during the post-crisis period. FDI, by contrast, did not correspond to noticeable risk diversification. Second, separating output shocks into positive and negative components reveals that debt holding receipts (equity liability payments) performed better under negative (positive) realizations of the shock variable. Third, the unwinding of capital flows resulted in a sharp fall in income dis-smoothing via the debt liability channel in the new EU countries.

Inter-regional spillover effects in New Zealand international tourism demand

In this paper, we have investigated the linkages between the international tourism demands across tourism regions in New Zealand. The big portion of the international tourists is visiting the big hubs of the New Zealand (namely, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch). However, big bulks of the tourists are also visiting the other parts of New Zealand as well. However, it is not certain whether the tourists visiting other regions are spilled over from these big hubs or they visit these regions as the main destination. To investigate this question, we examined the impact of the spillovers from these hubs to other regions of New Zealand. We employed a multivariate AR-GARCH model to estimate the spillover effects for both New Zealands North Island and South Island regions. In particular, we quantified and compared the magnitudes of the main hubs on the volatility of the international tourism demand of the other regions. We found that the spillovers from the main centres are by and large important for a number of Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs), thereby suggesting that both expected guest night and volatility spillovers are important in explaining New Zealands international hotel guest nights. We also quantified that, on average, 52% of the volatility in a South region tourism demand is explained by the volatility in tourism demand of Christchurch, whereas this rate is much lower in North Island which is around 25%. However, this is quite an evidence for the integration of the international tourism demand spillovers among New Zealand regions.

On the empirics of risk-sharing across MENA countries

In this article, we compute the potential welfare gains and the realized gains from risk-sharing among Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, including the oil-rich Gulf region and the resource-scarce economies. We find that the overall potential welfare gains across MENA countries are positive for all countries under the assumption of full risk-sharing. The potential welfare gains among the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are positive even though the magnitudes are smaller compared to those of the rest of the MENA region. We also quantify the extent of risk-sharing for the MENA region and show that it is significant for the MENA region and its subgroups; however, we could not find any sign of inter-temporal smoothing across the same groups. Decomposing the aggregate output shocks shows that the extent of risk-sharing is significant when only positive output shocks exist across the resource-scarce MENA economies. However, we observe that GCC countries share output risks with each other even under negative output shocks.

Decomposing the Income Insurance Channel across OECD and Emerging Markets

This paper investigates the underlying forces driving income insurance chan- nels for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and emerging markets. We find income insurance channels across countries to be driven by different subchannels. For the OECD, income insurance is mostly governed by payments for financial liabilities; for the emerging markets, income flows from nationals working abroad constitute the main income smoother. Despite the growth in cross-border financial asset trading over the years, we could not find evidence of income smoothing via foreign assets receipts for the OECD. For the majority of emerging markets, neither receipts of foreign assets nor foreign liability payments are strong enough to insure income as well.

Windfarms and residential property values

This study examines the effect that windfarm visibility has on residential property values using a hedonic regression model. The study area is Ashhurst, New Zealand, a township of approximately 900 dwellings. Ashhurst is located within eight kilometres of two separate windfarms that were developed between 1998 and 2007 comprising 103x660kW turbines, 31x3MW turbines, and 55x1.65MW turbines. The analysis uses the 945 open market house sales that occurred in Ashhurst between 1995 and 2008. Visual impact of turbines is studied to capture the impact of windfarms and it is assessed using GIS viewshed analysis and by field inspection. The hedonic models had satisfactory explanatory performance and in each case indicated that the turbines located between 2.5 and 6 kilometres from the township of Ashhurst had no significant impact on property value.

International Income Risk-Sharing and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009

We examine the impact of the global financial crisis on the degree of international income and consumption risk-sharing among industrial economies using returns on cross-border portfolio holdings (e.g., debt, equity, FDI). We split the returns from the net foreign holdings as receipts (inflows) and payments (outflows) to investigate which of the two sides exhibited the greater resilience for income risk-sharing during the recent crisis. First, we find that debt delivered better risk-sharing than equity, mainly reflecting the deficit deterioration in EMU countries during the post-crisis period. FDI, by contrast, did not correspond to noticeable risk diversification. Second, separating output shocks into positive and negative components reveals that debt holding receipts (equity liability payments) performed better under negative (positive) realizations of the shock variable. Third, the unwinding of capital flows resulted in a sharp fall in income dis-smoothing via the debt liability channel in the new EU countries.

Towards Understanding Vegetables Consumption Behaviour in Iran: A Full Box-Cox Double-Hurdle Application

Abstract Using Iran’s 2010–2011 household survey data on income and expenditure, this paper estimates the demand for vegetable consumption. Based on the Vuong’s (1989) Likelihood Ratio Test for Model Selection and Non-Nested Hypothesis, a full Box-Cox double-hurdle model adjusted for heteroskedasticity, dependency, and normality was estimated to uncover factors underlying Iranian households’ decisions to purchase and consume vegetables. Results show that all demographic, socioeconomic, and geographical variables significantly explain vegetable consumption behaviour in Iran. A positive relationship exists between educational attainment and the decision to purchase and consume vegetables. As well, households’ size and average age exert a statistically significant positive effect on vegetable consumption.

The Impact of Tourism Revenues on Smoothing the Domestic Output Shocks

This article is primarily an empirical work anchored in the well-known theoretical underpinning that consumers maximize utility by choosing the optimal levels of consumption and leisure activities. We improve on the existing literature in differentiating between domestic and foreign leisure activities to determine to what extent domestic consumption of countries in recession is financed by tourism revenues coming from foreign countries experiencing economic growth. In fact, we provide the first empirical evidence that international tourism receipts serve as an important shock absorber to domestic output shocks above and beyond the well-known risk- sharing channels of saving, capital/credit markets, international aid, fiscal transfers, and remittance inflows documented in the literature. We quantify the extent of risk sharing and provide both cross-section and panel data estimates of its likely determinants. The results show that countries that attract tourists from a wider pool of nationalities benefit the most.