Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin

Hedging with Chinese Aluminum Futures: International Evidence with Return and Volatility Spillover Indices Under Structural Breaks

This paper examines the hedging performance of the Shanghai futures market, with the London futures market acting as the channel for volatility spillover. Taking into consideration structural change, basis effects, and return and volatility spillover effects, the authors find that the estimated hedging performance is not improved. Their findings suggest that the effectiveness of the hedging performance of aluminum futures contracts in China is not affected by the magnitude or direction of return and volatility spillovers. Therefore, even when the magnitude and direction of volatility spillover from other markets can be correctly predicted, the hedging performance of a futures contract cannot be significantly improved. This paper uses precise measures of return spillovers and volatility spillovers based directly on the framework of vector autoregressive variance decompositions. The study also includes an analysis of both crisis and noncrisis episodes, with modeling on bursts in spillovers.

A Nonlinear Model of Military Expenditure Convergence: Evidence From Estar Nonlinear Unit Root Test

The paper builds a model to empirically test military expenditure convergence in a nonlinear set up. We assert that country A chooses a military strategy of catching up with the military expenditure of its rivals, subject to public spending constraints on public investments, including health and education, leading to decrease in long-term economic welfare. This implies nonlinear convergence path: only when the military expenditure gap between countries reaches the threshold level, will it provide incentives to catch up with rival’s military expenditures. We test this nonlinear catching up hypothesis for 37 countries spanning from 1988 to 2012. Results from individual nonlinear cross-sectionally augmented Dickey–Fuller (NCADF) regression indicate that 53% of countries converge to world’s average military expenditure: where 39% of countries converge to Germany; 33% of countries converge to China; 22% of countries converge to the USA, and 11% of countries converge to Russia. Interestingly, USA does not exhibit nonlinear military expenditure convergence toward world’s average level. For panel NCADF regression, the result suggests that on average, there is evidence for countries converging to USA’s military expenditure at 10% significance level. For the convergence to the world’s average, the statistical significance is at the 1% significance level.

The Impact Of World Energy Price Volatility On Aggregate Economic Activity In Developing Asian Economies

This paper analyzes the impact of volatility in the world energy price on aggregate economic activity in an unbalanced panel data framework for 10 developing Asian countries: Bangladesh, PR China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam. We use both the realized volatility and the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models to measure the volatility in the world energy price. Empirical findings from dynamic panel data estimations show that the volatility in world energy price is negatively associated with the aggregate economic activity. Using the common correlated effects panel estimation techniques, we also systematically examine uncertain transmission channel of the world energy price volatility on the aggregate economic activity in each economy and obtain the most impressive negative effects in Turkey, PR China and India, respectively.

Purchasing Power Parity Hypothesis: Mixed Evidence from Eastern Europe Emerging Markets

This paper investigates whether the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis holds in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland by considering currencies of their five largest trading partners. We employ eight panel unit root tests that can be arranged in groups by cross-section independence or dependence. Empirical findings show that the stochastic behavior of real exchange rates in the Czech Republic and Poland is not a mean reversion, and the PPP condition does not hold for them. However, we obtain mixed empirical evidence in Hungary. Limited evidence is found for validity of the PPP hypothesis among currencies of Hungarys largest trading partners.

CONDITIONAL JUMP DYNAMICS IN STOCK RETURNS: EVIDENCE FROM MIST STOCK EXCHANGES

This paper applies a conditional jump model that was proposed by Chan and Maheu (2002) to examine the stock market dynamics of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey (MIST). We find that the conditional jump intensity parameter estimates are statistically significant and change dramatically between two sample periods. We show that a high probability of jumps today predicts a high probability of jumps in the next period. The impact of a previous shock to the next periods jump intensity is found to be higher in Turkey compared to other MIST countries. Contrary to the previous literature, we discover that after a stock market crash, it is more likely to see a negative jump (drop) again in the stock exchanges of Mexico and Indonesia. Only in Turkey, it is more likely to see a positive jump after market crashes.

The Turkish handmade carpet industry: an analysis in comparison with select Asian countries

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the Turkish handmade carpet industry and to compare it with select Far East countries. In particular, the Turkish handmade carpet industry is compared with the handmade carpet industries of Iran, India, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nepal. In this context, the determinants of handmade carpets in the US market are analyzed empirically. Our results show that the Turkish handmade carpet industry has been experiencing a period of recession in the past decade. Through the relative comparative advantage (RCA) index and the Kreinin–Finger similarity (KFS) index, we observed that the RCA index for Turkey indicates that Turkey’s RCA has been declining since 1992. However, despite this decline, the RCA of Turkey was above that of other countries until 1997. But after this, the advantage disappeared eventually and was gained by Iran. During this period, the other competitors of Turkey showed small increases. Furthermore, the empirical results from the gravity model suggests that a 10% real depreciation/appreciation of the US dollar against foreign currency leads to a 0.2% decrease/increase in imports. This finding suggests relatively low exchange rate import pass‐through in carpet commodity. The results also support the Linder hypothesis that countries with similar preferences and demand structures will tend to trade more.

The effects of the military in politics on the inbound tourism: evidence from Turkey

ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyze the effects of the military in politics on the number of tourist inflows from 71 countries to Turkey for the period from 1984 to 2014. We use the fixed-effects and the random-effects as well as the dynamic generalized methods of moments estimations. We find that a lower level of the relative military in politics (the difference between the source country and Turkey) positively affects the tourism inflows to Turkey. Specifically, one standard deviation reduction in the index of the relative military intervention in politics in Turkey leads to almost 7% increase in the tourism inflows.

Technology transfer and enterprise performance: a firm-level analysis in China

This paper attempts to explore the relationship between openness and a Chinese firms productivity using 1999–2002 panel data on 26 industries covering 2400 enterprises. The current literature has focused mainly on the relationship between productivity and exports, using country-level data, leaving a gap in the relationship between imports and productivity unfilled, in particular at the firm specific level. However, our study complements the existing literature by using the latest set of data, and more importantly, by examining the effects of exports and importing machinery on the firms performance. Using the dynamic panel data econometrics technique, we find evidence that firms can improve productivity by importing more capital good and utilizing foreign technologies from technologically advanced economies. Finally the effects of importing capital goods on productivities and that of exporting activities are compared.

Export Conditions of the Chinese Textile Industry: An Analysis in Comparison with Selected ASEAN Countries

This paper provides a comprehensive and disaggregated set of elasticity estimates, to date, in the face of MFA abolishment. The estimates made here are at a detailed level of disaggregation and should provide researchers with opportunities for future analysis. We used the gravity model to estimate the trade elasticity of China’s apparel cottons in the US market for the period between 1989 and 2009. From the gravity model, two phenomena are observed. First, there exists a unique long-run equilibrium relationship among the import quantity demand, the import price and the US GDP per capita. Second, import price and income elasticity are significant with the expected signs, conditions of which are significant for performing trade—policy analyses.

The determinants of Turkey's exports to Islamic countries: The impact of political risks

ABSTRACT Using the traditional gravity model, this paper aims to analyze the determinants of Turkish exports to 43 Islamic Development Bank member countries for the period from 1996 to 2015. The paper specifically investigates the effects of 12 political risk measures (bureaucracy quality, corruption, democratic accountability, government stability, internal and external conflict, investment profile, law and order, military in politics, religious and ethnic tensions, and socioeconomic conditions) in the importing countries on the total volume of exports of Turkey. After implementing various robustness checks, the paper finds that the government instability in the importing countries is negatively associated with the Turkish exports.