No abstract

This article examines wage gap between the public and private sectors in Turkey. Relying on microdata from Turkey's Household Budget Survey (HBS) for the year 2009, we estimate separate earnings functions for public and private sectors by gender with appropriate correction for selectivity bias. The results suggest that while the observed pay advantage of public male employees can be explained entirely by differences in their observed characteristics, for female employees these differences only partly explain the observed public-private pay differential. Decomposition of male-female wage differentials by sector of work suggests that women are facing discrimination in both sectors.

The goal of this study is to examine if higher bank capital resulted in higher profitability of Turkish banks before and during the recent (2008-2009) financial crisis. Using the ordinary least squares, fixed effects and generalized method of moment estimator techniques, we find that higher bank capital had positive effects on bank profitability at all times, and the effect was more pronounced during the financial crisis.

Öz Yoksulluk, sosyal ve ekonomik olarak olumsuz etkileri olan önemli bir sorundur. Geleceği planlarken ülkelerin iktisadi kalkınmalarında dikkate almaları gereken çok çeşitli parametrelerden biri yoksulluk diğeri de gelir dağılımındaki eşitliktir. Avrupa Birliği'nin 2004 ve 2007 yıllarındaki genişlemesinden sonra bölgesel ayrışmaları azaltmak temel bir hedef haline gelmiştir. Genel kabul gören bir görüş, AB 15 ülkesi için gelir ıraksamasının daraldığı yönündedir. Kişi başı GSYİH'sı yüksek olan bir bölge yüksek oranda yoksulluk çekiyor olmakla birlikte düşük GSYİH'sı olan bir ülkenin bazı alanlarında yüksek zenginlik görülebilmektedir. Ortalama gelir düzeyi düşük olan bir bölgeye ayrılan kaynaklar azınlıkta kalan üst orta gelir grubu için iyi ödenekli yeni işler getirirken bir yandan da daha yüksek gelir eşitsizliği ile sonuçlanmaktadır. İktisat yazınında yoksulluk ve gelir dağılımı eşitsizliği değişkenleri genellikle ekonomik büyüme değişkeni ile birlikte analiz edilmektedir.

The role of innovation in economic development has long been a topic of discussion among economists. Despite that, the economic pay-off mechanisms which support or hinder innovative entrepreneurial acts, particularly in the emerging economy context are significantly underexplored in academic studies. In this study, we aim to fill this important gap in the literature by taking Baumol’s contestable markets theory and the typology of productive and unproductive entrepreneurship. As Baumol has advocated, the economies that offer higher pay-offs to productive entrepreneurial acts are more likely to thrive mainly due to the increased capacity of economic growth, while developing and poor economies struggle. In this study, we posit that in the developing and emerging market contexts, formal policies are claimed to prioritize the production of more innovative and productive start-ups and a climate that supports and fosters productive entrepreneurial acts. Despite that, there are still major administrative, social and cultural barriers towards creation of innovative start-ups and a productive entrepreneurship ecosystem. Here, continuing political, economic and social support towards unproductive entrepreneurship acts, in particular real-estate entrepreneurship emerges as one of the main factors that hinder the flow of funds towards innovation and technology. We thus argue that, being unable to balance the role of these unproductive entrepreneurial acts with productive ones in economy significantly deteriorates the sustainable economic growth and a high standard of living in emerging and developing economy contexts. In the implications section, several precautions and support mechanisms for overcoming the barriers towards productive entrepreneurship are presented and discussed.