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This survey paper presents an extended literature review of strategic communication and persuasion. The goal is to provide a systematic categorization of the different approaches in the literature, accompanied with the discussions of the pioneer and leading papers as well as the frontier research in each of the categories.

2-s2.0-85027116335 In 2009, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey switched from a strict rule-based inflation targeting policy to a discretionary policy aiming for financial stability and growth. This paper investigates the consequences of this policy shift for monetary transmission, inflation rate and economic growth using the Synthetic Control Method. More specifically, the paper presents a counterfactual estimation of the inflation rate and the economic growth in Turkey after 2009. The estimation results suggest that the growth rate would have been similar afterwards, but the inflation rate would have been on average three percentage points lower had the CBRT stuck to the inflation targeting policy. This finding lends support to the argument that for developing countries inflation targeting works as a transparency and credibility tool and improves economic outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to offer guidelines for student placement mechanisms used in exchange programs which belong to the class of problems that deals with matching students with seats in schools. By considering the case of the mechanism applied at Bogazici University in placing outgoing students as a part of the ERASMUS program, the paper discusses a set of characteristics that a placement mechanism is intended to satisfy. The study also proposes policy recommendations, and shows how the current system can be improved by simulating actual data of the 2009-2010 exchange market for outgoing Bogazici University students. The paper ultimately aims to introduce a methodology that can be profitably used in designing mechanisms applicable to all exchange programs.

Turgut Ozal, former Prime Minister and President of Turkey, has without doubt left a lasting heritage on Turkish politics. His pragmatic and dynamic approach to administrating the country’s affairs has been embraced by several later statesmen and politicians, giving rise to the notion of an “Ozal model” that found application with respect to several issues in the political and economic realm. Focusing on foreign economic policy as one such issue area, and emphasizing the increasing participation of business actors in policy making process, this paper examines the main tenets of the Ozal model, and deals with the question of to what extent Turkey’s foreign policy under the current government can be explained with this model. To that end, the paper compares the Ozal period with the AKP period using an analytical framework that evaluates the foreign policy participation of business actors at different levels, i.e. structural level, domestic level, and the individual level. The framework proposed in the paper incorporates the factors of state capability, business power and issue salience as determinants of policy influence at the domestic level, and within this context, a typology of roles assumed by business associations is referred to in order to identify the different policy areas where business is active. As a result, the paper finds that while there are similarities between the two periods in the sense that in both cases business actors are actively taking part in foreign policy issues, there are also significant divergences.

In this paper we analyze a three-period dynamic investment model where a principal interacts with an agent who is time-inconsistent. We use βδ-preferences to capture time-inconsistency. In every period, the agent invests an amount and then the principal, observing the investment amount, makes an offer or not; finally the agent accepts the offer or not. For both the sophisticated agent (who is aware of his inconsistency) and the naive agent (who is not aware of his inconsistency), we find the optimal investment streams. The difference in their information set is causing them to finalize the game at different periods or to attain different levels of investments. We found that the naive agent ends up investing a higher (or equal) overall amount than the sophisticated agent, and thus the principal is (weakly) better off with a naive agent.

Genel olarak gelişmekte olan piyasalarda faaliyet gösteren şirketlerin kurumsallaşma düzeyi ve kurumsal yönetim yapısının az gelişmiş olması nedeni ile gelişmiş piyasalardaki şirketlere kıyasla finansal sıkıntılara daha duyarlı olduğu kabul edilmektedir. Holding şirketlerinin gelişmekte olan bir piyasada faaliyet göstermenin dezavantajlarını göz önüne alarak bağlı şirketler üzerinde etkin bir yönetim yapısı kurması gerekmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı gelişmekte olan bir piyasa olan Türkiye'de faaliyet gösteren holdinglerin sermaye yapısı ile bağlı şirketlerin kurumsal performansı arasındaki ilişkiyi 2008-2013 dönemi için incelemektir. Çalışma inceleme dönemini 2008-2010 kriz dönemi ve 2011-2013 dönemi olmak üzere ele almaktadır. Uygulanan ANOVA testi bir holdinge bağlı olarak faaliyet gösteren şirketlerin finansal performansının, şirket değerinin ve innovasyon yeteneğinin bir holdinge bağlı olmayanlara göre daha iyi olduğunu göstermiştir. Regresyon testi ise holdingin bağlı şirket üzerindeki kontrol düzeyi ile bağlı şirket değeri arasında hem kriz hem de kriz sonrası toparlanma döneminde pozitif bir ilişki olduğunu göstermiştir. Aynı analiz yönetimlerin profesyonelleşme düzeyi ile bağlı şirketin değeri arasında toparlanma döneminde doğru yönlü bir ilişki olduğunu kanıtlamıştır. Şirket değerine katkı sağlayan bir diğer değişken de yaratıcılık yeteneğidir. It is generally assumed that the corporations in emerging markets are more sensitive to financial distress arising from global crisis than their counterparts in developed countries because of a lower level of institutionalization and governance structure. Parent companies need to build effective corporate governance to overcome the effects of a global economic crisis, considering the drawbacks of an emerging market. The study aims to understand the relation between the capital structure of ultimate parent companies with corporate performance of the affiliates in an emerging market, Turkey, for the period between 2008-2013. The paper divides this period into a pre-economic crisis period of 2008-2010 and a post-economic crisis period of 2011-2013. The ANOVA results revealed that business group affiliates had a higher financial performance and firm value and were more innovative compared to the non-affiliates. The regression analysis showed that the degree of control of the group by the affiliated firm was positively associated with firm value for both the years of crisis and those of recovery periods. The analysis also posits that professionalism in management was positively associated with the affiliates' value in recovery periods. Innovativeness was another variable which contributed positively to value.

This paper investigates bilateral trade flows and the level of openness across ECOWAS-15 nations for the period of 1981-2013 using Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML), fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR). Comparing the results, the ECOWAS dummy variable was negative and significant in all of the estimation techniques. Financial openness under FMOLS and CCR was negatively significant. Trade openness was found to be negatively significant only under PPML. The empirical results indicate that a common border and distance have had a strong effect on ECOWAS trade; also there is a negative effect of trade flow among ECOWAS members. Moreover, the level of financial and trade openness among members impedes the level of trade flows on integration. The estimated results highlight the underlying significance of accurately accounting for endogeneity when estimating trade policy impacts.

People are heterogeneous in the skills by which they turn effort into output. A central question in normative public economics is how to redistribute resources from more- to less-skilled individuals efficiently. In addition to income taxation, this paper considers another policy tool of redistribution by allowing planner to choose the dispersion of skill distribution given the average skill level of the economy. We find that, depending on the parameters of the model, either perfectly equal skill distribution in which all agents have the same skill level, or perfectly unequal skill distribution in which one group has a very high skill level and the rest are completely unskilled, is socially optimal, but an interior level of skill inequality is never optimal. We then provide conditions on the parameters under which perfectly equal and perfectly unequal skill distributions are optimal.

This paper evaluates alternative forecasting methods based on operational performance in a global specialty chemicals supply chain. The forecasting methods evaluated in this study are simple exponential smoothing, exponential smoothing with additive trend, and exponential smoothing with damped additive trend. These methods are evaluated at various target customer service levels based on the operational performance of the supply chain. The operational performance measures used in this study are total supply chain costs, broken down into inventory, production and shipment costs, and also four different measures of customer service level. The company’s supply chain operations are simulated and the results are analyzed using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) procedure followed by the Tukey’s means test. The effects of using the competing forecasting methods on each of the performance measures are evaluated and discussed individually. Our results underscore the importance of incorporating all relevant costs and customer service measures into the forecasting method selection process, which is only possible with a thorough understanding of the supply chain dynamics. In the environment we modeled, exponential smoothing with damped additive trend was by far the best in terms of both resulting supply chain costs and customer service levels, followed by simple exponential smoothing and exponential smoothing with additive trend.

The aim of this study was to investigate the employees’ and managements’ perceptions of the multidimensional structure of marketing culture and its effects on perceived longterm customer satisfaction. The public schools were selected for the study as non-profit service organizations; from them 474 teachers and school principals from 17 schools participated in the field study. Service quality, interpersonal relationships, organization, and innovativeness -- the dimensions of marketing culture -- have significant effects on long-term customer satisfaction. Contributions of the paper may be listed as (1) expanding the marketing culture scale of Webster (1993) by adding several new items to dimensions based on current literature and/or adapting items to the Turkish culture, (2) adapting a services marketing culture scale to non-profit organizations, more specifically to the school context, and (3) developing a single dimensional perceived customer satisfaction scale specifically for school-settings which measure to what extent school personnel consider they satisfy their customers.

The paper investigates the possible cointegration and the direction of causality between various components of capital inflows and economic growth in India. A cointegration test is performed in a vector autoregression (VAR) framework followed by an application of a Vector-Error Correction Model (VECM), Granger Causality test and Impulse response analysis. Bi-directional causality is observed between foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth, external assistance and economic growth, external assistance and other capital. Unidirectional causality is observed from foreign portfolio investment (FPI) and other capital to economic growth, and from economic growth to NRI (Non- Resident Indians) deposit.

In this paper, the welfare implications of a market environment where a new technology which reduces the cost of production that can be exploited by a preempting monopolist which obtains a patent or allows a potential entrant to share the market are investigated from a public policy point of view. The well known efficiency effect indicates that the private incentives of the monopolist are greater than those of a new entrant. However, since the consumers’ benefits are higher under the two-firm market structure compared to those under the pure monopolist situation, it was interesting to examine the overall welfare results further. In neither of these two market structures was the welfare of the society found to be uniformly superior to the other. Therefore, the implications for government regulation are to allow the monopolist to reign if it introduces a significant technological cost reduction, and to promote the competition if the new cost-saving technology is small. An example from Turkey is given where in 2007 Royal Dutch Shell won a tender and acquired a portion of piped gas distribution from a giant Turkish formerly monopolist state company.

This paper examines globalization’s effects on the change in Turkish foreign policy towards Syria in a comparative perspective. Through the 1990s Turkish foreign policy towards Syria was shaped by realist parameters as Turkey relied on an alliance with Israel, and hard power seeking deterrence and coercion. However after Syria submitted to Turkey’s demands and signed a counter-terrorism accord in 1998, the two states engaged in a certain rapprochement process. Most notably, following the Iraq war that promoted common threat perceptions, Turkey put a new face into practice in its foreign policy. In the 2000s, besides its growing military capabilities, Ankara also drew on soft power in its new approach to Syria and introduced many new opportunities for its neighbor through the bilateral cooperation. That carried Turkey’s relationship with Syria to unprecedented levels of collaboration in the political, economic and social realms. As elaborated in the study, the changes in Turkey’s newapproach towards Syria resonate with some significant theoretical perspectives in the literature on globalization and foreign policy change. In this respect, Turkey’s new foreign policy approach is suggested as a late response to globalization’s challenge to traditional foreign policy formation as the regional security dynamics in the 1990s impeded a rapprochement. Along with the changes in Turkish foreign policy towards Syria in the first decade of the 2000s, the regional implications of Ankara’s new approach are also discussed. Lastly, the limits of Turkey’s new foreign policy approach are examined touching upon the developments in Syria since the “Arab Spring.” Bu çalışmada, küreselleşme sürecinin Türkiye’nin Suriye’ye yönelik dış politikasında görülen değişim üzerindeki etkileri, karşılaştırmalı bir perspektifte incelenmektedir. 1990’lar boyunca Suriye’ye yönelik Türk dış politikası realist parametreler tarafından biçimlendirilmiş, Türkiye İsrail ile kurduğu ittifakla beraber caydırma ve zorlamayı amaçlayan sert güce dayalı bir politika izlemiştir. Ancak 1998 yılında Suriye’nin Türk tarafının taleplerini kabul ederek terörle mücadelede işbirliği anlaşması imzalamasının ardından iki ülke belirgin bir yakınlaşma süreci içine girmiştir. Ortak tehdit algılamalarına yön veren Irak savaşının ardından ise, Türkiye daha açık bir şekilde yeni bir tür dış politika izlemeye başlamıştır. 2000’lerde Ankara, Suriye’ye yönelik yaklaşımında askeri gücünün yanı sıra yumuşak güç unsurlarına da dayanmış ve karşılıklı işbirliği vasıtasıyla komşusuna birçok yeni fırsat sunmuştur. Türkiye’nin bu tutumu Suriye ile olan ilişkilerini siyasi, ekonomik ve sosyal alanlarda daha önce benzeri görülmemiş bir işbirliği düzeyine taşımıştır. Çalışmada incelendiği üzere, Türkiye’nin yeni Suriye yaklaşımında görülen değişiklikler, küreselleşme ve dış politika değişimi konusunda literatürde yer alan bazı önemli teorik perspektiflerle uyum göstermektedir. Bu bağlamda Türkiye’nin yeni dış politika yaklaşımı, küreselleşme sürecinin geleneksel dış politika yapım süreci üzerinde ortaya koyduğu dönüştürücü etkilere geç kalmış bir cevap olarak nitelendirilmektedir. Bu geç kalmanın başlıca sebebi ise 1990’lardaki bölgesel güvenlik dinamiklerinin böyle bir yakınlaşmayı engellemesi olmuştur. 2000’lerin ilk on yılında Türkiye’nin Suriye politikasında görülen değişikliklerle beraber, Ankara’nın yeni yaklaşımının bölge politikaları üzerinde ortaya koyduğu anlamlar da çalışma içinde tartışılmaktadır. Son olarak, Türkiye’nin yeni dış politika yaklaşımının sınırları, “Arap Baharı’ndan” bu yana Suriye’de yaşanan gelişmelere değinerek incelenmektedir.

In this paper, the return performance of insiders of companies listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) from their open market transactions and that of uninformed investors (outsiders) following insider transactions announced to the public are examined by using a portfolio approach. It is found that, depending on the affiliation of the insider with the company, abnormal returns from their sale transactions last over longer periods than their purchase transactions. Furthermore, outsiders can also earn abnormal returns by mimicking sales of affiliated shareholders of a company. Findings of this study imply that the ISE is neither Semi Strong nor Strong Form Efficient.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the cyber ethnography- also called netnography- as a research tool in understanding and developing insights about virtual consumer communities. First of all, the “community,” “virtual community,” and the “virtual consumer communities” concepts are described. Following them, cyber ethnographic research is examined and the process of a cyber ethnographic research is discussed in details. In this section several research articles using cyber ethnographic method are presented in order to illustrate the research process and to develop a common point of view. In the conclusion, the pros and cons of cyber ethnographic research are discussed.

In this paper, a money demand model constructed on currency in circulation is used to determine the appropriate alternative cost to hold monetary balances in the Turkish economy. Our estimation results, using contemporaneous multivariate co-integration methodology, indicate that the most significant alternative cost to demand for money is the depreciation rate of the nominal exchange rate. This brings out the importance of having a currency substitution phenomenon settled in the economy when economic agents make their decisions as to their monetary transactions. Moreover, we find that domestic inflationary framework has been subject to a weakly exogenous characteristic and conclude that the main factors leading to domestic inflation are determined out of the money demand variable space.

This paper proposes an alternative way of conceptualizing the relation between religion and politics, a topic of significant debate in Turkey. It puts forward an alternative justification for the requirement to leave religious convictions out of political discussions. In order to do so, it has recourse to the approach recently developed by John Rawls. The merits of this approach as well as the possibility of implementing it in practice are discussed, while also analyzing the question of sincerity in political deliberations.

This paper analyzes the effects of the full deposit insurance system introduced in 1994 on the financial performance of Turkish commercial banks using the experimental design approach. The research findings support the moral hazard hypothesis. The findings indicate that banks subject to moral hazard behavior show significant increases in foreign exchange position risk and deterioration in capital adequacy relative to their benchmark after the introduction of the full deposit insurance system. This excessive risk-taking is related to the moral hazard behavior by commercial banks. The research results indicate that the complete deposit insurance system distorts the incentive structure of commercial banks and thus prevents the proper functioning of the market discipline mechanism and leads to excessive risk-taking.