Ismail Saglam

Stable one-to-one matchings with externalities

We consider one-to-one matching with externalities, where the individuals are allowed to be single. We present sufficient conditions for the existence of the stable set and the core.

On the Importance of Sequencing of Markets in Monetary Economies

This paper studies money as working capital in a general equilibrium model. We argue that the way transactions are settled is the main determinant of the presence or lack of working capital in a cash-in-advance economy. In a production cycle, if the wage payments are made before sales proceeds are collected, firms have a financing need. This need alone brings, in a long run equilibrium, a deviation of real wages from marginal product of labor due to a ‘working capital premium’ in output prices. In contrast, if sales revenues can be collected before production costs are paid, then the working capital premium vanishes. These results are obtained in an economy with borrowing constraints, full equity financing, and optimal dividend policy.

An economic analysis of tobacco elimination policies in Turkey

OBJECTIVE We aim to evaluate the costs and benefits of various tobacco elimination policies, specifically, an immediate taxation option and eight tax-combined long-term cessation programs. METHODS We combine demographic projections for the period 2012-2050 with incidence and mortality rates of four major cigarette related diseases, price elasticity of cigarette demand and unit costs of nonprice measures to reduce demand in order to estimate the net present discounted values of policy alternatives. RESULTS The tax-combined cessation programs yield lower net costs to households and the society when they phase out smoking earlier. However, immediate taxation option is found to be superior, for both households and the society, to all tax-combined cessation programs irrespective of the duration of intervention. While all policies are estimated to yield significant reductions in the expected number of smoking related diseases and deaths, a class-based 20-year intervention is found to be the most effective program. CONCLUSIONS Although immediate taxation policy and tax-combined class-based 20-year intervention program emerge as the best tobacco elimination policies for the society, more research is needed on assessing the cost-effectiveness, applicability and social desirability of these alternatives and on designing additional policies to overcome their limitations.

Spectrum auction designs and revenue variations

This study examines a sample of 93 national 3G spectrum auctions for the period 2000–2011 to identify the sources of substantial revenue variations. An implied reduced-form econometric model that recognises the censored nature of the sample relates per capita winning bid (per Mhz, per million populations) values to regulator-determined auction design characteristics, auction competitiveness, mobile wireless market conditions and spectrum package attributes identified from tender documents. The analysis reveals that among other factors, all auction design characteristics independently impact on realized 3G spectrum auction revenues.

A Simple Axiomatization Of The Egalitarian Solution

In this paper, we present a simple axiomatization of the n-person egalitarian solution. The single condition sufficient for characterization is a new axiom, called symmetric decomposability that combines the axioms of step-by-step negotiations, symmetry, and weak Pareto optimality used in an early characterization by Kalai [(1977) Proportional solutions to bargaining situations: Interpersonal utility comparisons, Econometrica 45, 1623–1630].

Patience Extracts Sugar from a Lemon: Buy and Hold with a Classifier System in the Istanbul Stock Exchange

Recent studies in behavioral finance establish that active traders may underperform those who trade less. Such a result is partly due to the persistently high annual net returns earned by well-diversified portfolios in stock markets. This paper shows that the buy-and-hold strategy as a nonactive trading rule may yield huge net returns under the prescriptions of a classifier system, even in an extremely volatile and horizontal market, namely, the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

Simulating the Mutual Sequential Mate Search Model Under Non-Homogenous Preferences

This paper extends the Todd and Millers (1999) mutual sequential mate search model with homogenous preferences to the case of non-homogenous preferences. Our simulations show that the size of heterogeneity in the preferences affects the performance rankings -as well as the absolute success levels- of the mate search heuristics in the model with respect to both mating likelihood and mating stability.

A Note on the Desirability of the Supply Function Competition with Demand Uncertainty

In this paper, we formalize a prediction of Klemperer and Meyer (1989) arguing that the expected profits of oligopolistic firms may be higher under the supply function competition than under the stochastic Cournot competition in the presence of demand uncertainty, and investigate how this prediction is affected by certain attributes of a oligopolistic industry, such as the number of firms, the cost of producing a unit output, and the slope of the demand curve.