Business and Economics Research Journal

731-750

Authors: Ayrton J. C. Amaral, Marthinus C. Breitenbach

This paper evaluates the Marshall-Lerner condition in the fragile five economies of Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey and, in the process, offers an indication of whether the evaluation of this condition is subject to the limitations that have previously been identified in the literature. This research is novel as it studies a set of countries known as the fragile five, often overlooked in the literature. The ARDL Bounds methodology is used to estimate separate export and import demand equations. Results of the study show little evidence supporting the validity of the Marshall-Lerner condition in these five countries. All the models, except for those relating to Turkey, show signs of underlying issues such as model misspecification. The results imply that future empirical work on the Marshall-Lerner condition, particularly work centred on the fragile five, would likely need to address these underlying empirical issues in order to produce more consistent results.

767-786

Authors: Mehtap Ozenen Kavlak, Bulent Gunsoy, Muzeyyen Anil Senyel Kurkcuoglu, Saye Nihan Cabuk, Ahmet Dabanli

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a financial crisis having deeper effects than the global financial crisis that took place in 2008. Large-scale monetary and fiscal measures have been taken globally to minimize the negative outcomes of the pandemic regarding domestic demand, foreign trade, and tourism activities. The aim of this study is to determine how the changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Eurozone countries affect the macroeconomic indicators. The findings obtained within the scope of the study were mapped in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment. In this study, the economic effects of the pandemic on the Eurozone countries are evaluated in terms of the gross domestic product (GDP), one of the most important indicators for evaluating the strength of the country’s economies and development levels, inflation, unemployment, and industrial production. It was seen that the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Eurozone economies manifested themselves in the first quarter of 2020 (Q1) and these effects reached their maximum level in the second quarter (Q2) of the same year. The recovery period and the positive trends signaling a way out of this crisis are observed to start in the third quarter (Q3). The economic developments in this period emerged from the normalization attempts and the relaxation of the tight restriction measures which had been put into practice at the beginning of the pandemic process. The restrictions aiming to prevent the spread of pandemic caused contractions in tourism, industry, and other sectors while resulting in unemployment in these sectors. Switching back to normal, gave way decreases in unemployment rates in the related sectors.

871-881

Authors: Adnan Veysel Ertemel, Ahmed Ammoura

As broadband internet speed increases worldwide, video consumption habits gain momentum. YouTube is by far the most dominant video platform on the Internet. Apart from its social networking site characteristics, YouTube is also known as the second most visited search engine in the world. This paper studies YouTube from marketing perspective. By looking from the categorization theory, evaluative inconsistencies associated with the YouTube platform are investigated. YouTube platform is unique in that it has hybrid product characteristics encompassing both search engine and social networking site features. In the light of the previous literature on category knowledge, devaluation effect, integrated evaluation and bivariate evaluation space (BES) theories, the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to examine the evaluative inconsistencies between the two categories of YouTube. Findings showed a positive correlation between the two categories, so basically users tend to eliminate the inconsistencies by formulating a general attitude towards both categories. This article makes important contributions to the existing literature by testing such a hybrid model in categorization research. Moreover, the paper has significant managerial implications for the marketers who want to understand the underlying characteristics of different users using a dominant platform like YouTube.