Business and Economics Research Journal

1029-1038

Authors: Bozena Leven

The middle-income trap (MIT) describes systemic growth obstacles shared by various countries that occur typically at the middle-income level of their development. The following analysis relies on Rostow’s classification of the stages of economic development. We focus on Rostow stages three and four, where moving from labor intensive, import and foreign direct investment (FDI) driven growth to reliance on high value-added output and exports with embedded high content of capital and technology can render sustainable long-term growth problematic. To examine MIT we study Poland, which has relied on relatively low labor costs, imported technologies, funding from the European Union and FDI to attain middle-income status. A recent slowing in Poland’s growth may signal that it has exhausted some of these growth factors and is more vulnerable to MIT. To assess this vulnerability, we analyze changes in Poland’s factor productivity, investment patterns, FDI, labor force educational attainments, new technology/product development, imports, export diversification, product complexity, and other factors. We conclude that certain conditions consistent with MIT are gaining importance in Poland and represent a challenge to its future economic growth.

1051-1070

Authors: S. Cagri Esener

By focusing on the investigation of long-term, this study aims to examine the relationship between public revenue, government expenditure and economic growth while bearing Wagner’s Law, Peacock-Wiseman’s Displacement Effect, Classical and Keynesian View on fiscal policy in mind. We employed the bootstrap panel Granger causality methodology to analyze the variables and found different linkages between both revenue and spending versus gross domestic product ratios but also some relations within and vice versa. We took a sample of 22 developing and developed countries which are noticeable with their economic activities in the recent era of globalization for the period of 1985-2017. According to the empirical results, for the growth front; public revenue independent variable is much more related or integrated with the dependent GDP variables for some countries while expenditure is also important as a deterministic factor for some others. On the other hand, for the revenue and expenditure case, the results indicate an evidence of a unilateral relationship for four countries which are supporting spend-tax and one other has bidirectional interaction that associated with fiscal synchronization hypotheses. Conspicuously, triggering affection through government expenditure to revenue and a both-way interaction between public revenue to gross domestic product can be expressed.

1085-1093

Authors: Omer Iskenderoglu, Saffet Akdag

The detection of price bubbles, which are expressed as increases in asset prices due to speculative movements, can provide information regarding potential financial imbalances that may arise in the future. Upon considering that the Mortgage crisis, which is the last international financial crisis and affected the whole world, was caused by the price bubbles in the housing prices, it is of economic importance to determine whether or not such bubbles occur in the housing prices on the national scale. This study aims to determine whether or not price bubbles occur in housing prices in Turkey. In this context, it is tried to be examined whether or not price bubbles occurred in Turkey via the Sup-Augmented Dickey-Fuller and the Generalized Sup-Augmented Dickey-Fuller tests utilizing the monthly data of the real hedonic housing price index obtained from the cities of Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir over the period from January 2010 to December 2018. According to the study results in both test results, the existence of housing price bubbles in the cities of Istanbul and Izmir is detected. The Sup-Augmented Dickey-Fuller test results indicate that housing price bubbles occur in Ankara, whereas no housing price bubbles are detected in the city according to results obtained from the Generalized Sup-Augmented Dickey-Fuller test.

1109-1125

Authors: Erkan Ozdemir, Gamze Akcay

Biological sex is a demographic variable whose effect has been examined in consumer researches for many years. However, the effect of gender identity, defined as the existential femininity or masculinity of individuals, has started to be examined in consumer researches since the 1960s. In the literature, there are studies investigating the effect of biological sex on consumers’ impulse buying behavior. However, studies investigating the effect of gender identity on consumers’ impulse buying behavior and whether this effect differs in terms of biological sex are quite limited. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of gender identity on the consumers’ impulse buying behavior and whether the effect of gender identity on the consumers’ impulse buying behavior differs in terms of biological sex as a moderator variable. Research data were collected from consumers in Bursa via face to face survey method. The data obtained were evaluated by structural equation modeling to determine the effect of gender identity on impulse buying behavior. As a result of the analysis, it was found that feminine gender identity positively affected impulse buying behavior, whereas masculine gender identity did not affect impulse buying behavior. In the research, biological sex was also analyzed. As a result of the analysis, it was found that according to females, the feminine and masculine gender identity were not effective on impulse buying behavior. In addition, it was found that according to males, feminine gender identity was effective on the impulse buying behavior and masculine gender identity was not effective on impulse buying behavior.