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This study empirically investigates the causal relationship between construction production and GDP for Turkey during 2005Q1-2013Q4 period. Because it is found that, there is no cointegration which means there is no long run relationship between variables, VAR Granger Causality Method is used to test the causality in short run. The findings reveal that, the causality runs from GDP to Building Production and Building Production to Non-Building Production (i.e. bidirectional relationship). Findings of this paper suggest that, because there is no long run relationship between Construction Production (Building and Non-Building) and GDP and also in short run the causality runs from GDP to Construction Production, the growth strategy based on mainly Construction Sector growth is not a good idea for Turkey.

In modern age, positive psychological capital is as important as financial capital for organizational development and sustainability. Efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience are the dimensions of positive psychological capital. Emotional labor is defined by Hochschild as control of self emotions at work by workers who have a high degree of contact with coworkers within the organization or with external clients, so as to create an expression, voice or body gesture which is acceptible to the clients. Emotional labor is analysized under three components: surface acting, deep acting and naturally felt emotions. This study is aimed to investigate the impact of positive psychological capital on emotional labor. So a research is conducted with the aim of exploring the relationship between the sub-dimensions of psychological capital and emotional labour.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between teamwork and organizational trust. In the implementation section the data from the survey of 250 workers is employed in call centers in Erzurum by using relevant statistical methods. Consequently, it is found that there is a positive and significant relationship between teamwork and organizational trust. Thus, the hypothesis of the study is supported as it was expected. Besides, it is found that there are positive and significant relationships between communication, openness to innovation, participation-trust in teamwork and organizational trust, trust in management, trust in co-workers, and trust in workplace.

Since Sub-Saharan Africa's first independence in Ghana, the region has experienced massive and costly political and bureaucratic corruption within public service and administration. The causes of the corruption, its nature and form are wide and intertwined. In Sub-Saharan Africa, efforts to curb corruption have failed to discard it. The paper focused on the period from Nkruma in Ghana to Mutharika the 2nd in Malawi. This paper reviewed existing literature on political and bureaucratic corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa while on the other hand the paper employed key informant interviews to gather the required data to investigate, analyse and profile the genesis and evolution of corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa. The key informant interviews were employed to solicit public views and opinion from nineteen key informant participants (n=19) selected from 11 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper found that corruption is legendary; has entrenched itself to becoming some sort of culture in the region, and has become the most difficult socio-economic challenge to resolve in the region despite the various anti-corruption efforts employed by stakeholders to curb it. It emerged through the study that law-enforcement efforts against corruption need some reinforcement in order to be effective and eficient in uprooting corruption in the region. If Sub-Saharan Africa fails to address its corruption challenge, its development prospects would seriously curtailed.

The Chinese economy has reached approximately average annual growth of 9% after economic reform era that began in 1978. This economic development miracle resulted from by exploiting the economic potential of internal factors in a complimentary external environment.  Main aim of this study is to investigate the determinants of the global competitiveness of Chinese economy by considering economic development process of the Chinese economy and World Economic Forum the Global Competitiveness Index. It is vital to understand the determinants of global competitiveness for the Chinese economy in order to achieve sustainable economic development path in the highly competitive world economy conditions. The result of the study shows that the Chinese economy has strong global competitiveness indicators beside some problematic indicators. The Chinese economy is becoming more competitive by improving bottlenecks and structural problems. On the other hand the Chinese economy have to transform from cheap labour-intensive competitive advantage into high-tech innovative country with high qualified human capital in order to achieve sustainable economic growth in the long term.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the reasons for differences in national migration policies. European societies are struggling with the problem of how to best include the immigrants in their social structures.  Although national migration policies in Europe have developed some common elements in recent years the contents and structure of national programmes vary widely in terms of their scope, goals, target groups and the institutional actors involved. The main question of the paper is “What explains the different migration policies of countries?” To answer the question, after mentioning the current differences within the European Union in terms of their migration policies, the paper will take Germany and France as examples which demonstrate sharply different cases of immigrant integration policies in the public course.

This paper attempts to empirically examine the Reverse Causality hypothesis within the Nigerian context during the period 1980 – 2011. Employing Vector Error Correction Methodology (VECM), causality was found between inflation and government stocks, with causality running from government stocks to inflation, thus providing evidence in support of the reverse causality hypothesis. The results from the forecast error variance decomposition (FEVD) and impulse response functions tend to further lend credence to this finding. Accordingly, this study suggests, in part, the need for a tight monetary policy which would help to reduce inflation and stock prices, as such measures would leave the individuals with less money to buy stocks. Such efforts should be complemented by augmenting domestic production and encouraging investment through inexpensive bank finance. 

The paper aims to identify the similarities and differences in the emphases and patterns that military and civilian managers attribute to strategy. Two different analysis methods were employed in order to achieve abovementioned research objective. In the first method, the aim was to reveal and compare strategy understanding of the sample groups. Towards that end, ten different strategy definitions and nine different necessity statements compiled from various definitions/statements in the existing strategic management literature were provided to the samples. Then, the samples were requested to consider how strategy and necessity of strategy is formed in their minds, and then to choose top three definitions out of 9/10, and finally rank them in preference order, from one to three.  Lastly, we counted the ranks/perceived importance of the various strategy definitions and necessity statements that which statement is ranked to which place. Using mean rank assessment by nonparametric comparison method the study shows differences between military and civilian managers in following aspect: the comparison of the emphases that are attributed to approach to strategy identified significant differences among business and military managers. Concisely, the paper reveals the varying perceptions of business and military managers on strategy based on their personal perceptions.

Financial crises have regularly afflicted economies throughout history and the United States has been no exception.  This paper examines the Panic of 1907, the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression and the Great Recession of 2007-08 and discusses the responses of the government and regulators.  The short version of the story is that the while the government response has varied in terms of monetary and fiscal policy, the regulatory response has remained essentially the same.  The typical reactive regulation sounds good and gives the appearance of accomplishing something but, in fact, only serves to sow the seeds of future crises. The ineffective implementation of existing regulation has had a similar result. Indeed, several authors note that most financial innovation in recent years has its origins in circumventing new regulations. Likewise, government monetary and fiscal responses may or may not help the economy and often give the appearance of great arbitrariness.  Our conclusion is that there will be unforeseen financial crises in the future, sweeping regulation and promises of recent politicians notwithstanding.  Serious study of the unanticipated consequences of this regulation and the development of more robust risk management systems will help us mitigate the effects of future crises but will be of little assistance when it comes to avoiding them. Developing the analyses and risk management systems requires a detailed study of financial history keep both successes and failures fresh in our collective memory.

The majority of income earners of small-scale informal economic sectors in most developing regions abstain from mainstream formal banking systems. These income earners rather “bank” informally. Mainstream formal banking institutions also argue that low income earners are “unbankable” and posed business risk. However, emerging literature posits that low income earners would instead provide a profitable formal niche market. Trends with regard adoption and non-adoption of mainstream formal banking systems amongst small income groups were mixed. This paper investigates such patterns in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The results of this paper revealed that the informal cross-border traders who trade between Zambia and South Africa were good adopters of mainstream formal banking. The results however found a sharp contrast in Zambia. In Nyanga, Zimbabwe, the results of this paper revealed that there were a few respondents who had adopted mainstream formal banking while 47.2% of communal cattle farmers in South Africa had adopted mainstream formal banking systems through savings against 52.8% who were left out. Adoption or non-adoption of mainstream formal banking systems patterns vary from region to region, and sector to sector even where income earners were almost equals in terms of household income earnings. Mobile banking and low transaction costs might provide motivation for small-scale income earners to adopt mainstream formal banking.  

This paper proposes an empirical analysis of the role of memory in determining the size of credits granted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) during 1991–2003. We first build an original database from information associated with the number and contract types granted by clients, after which we develop an empirical strategy for capturing the role of memory, namely by defining three different indicators to approximate each client’s reputation. These indicators rely on the client’s identity and, when available, information associated with previous EBRD-financed investment projects. With the fixed-effects estimation technique, our results unambiguously show that the value of the first investment project financed by the EBRD, as a proxy for reputation, is the most effective indicator for established clients to determine the size of the credits they receive to finance further investments.

The study attempts to ascertain the determinants of nonperforming loans in National Bank of Commerce. Data was collected from 152 respondents. Tables, percentages, mean and standard deviation were used to analyze data. Data collection methods adopted for the study were interview, questionnaire and documentary evidence. Interest rate, GDP, concentration of lending activities, bank’s loan supervision capacity and economic condition were investigated, and the results suggest that interest rate, GDP, bank’s loan supervision capacity and economic condition influence the level of NPLs. However, the results did not suggest that concentration of lending activities increase the level of NPLs.   The study suggests that banks should put in place a vibrant credit process that ensures proper customer selection and risk identification, robust credit analysis, proactive monitoring and clear recovery strategies for bad loans, formulate clear policy framework that addresses issues of ethical standards and check and balance credit process, organizational capacity enhancement of banks, deliberate effort to develop credit culture for managing loans ,and ensure prudent policies that govern bank loans. Since the results for this study were encouraging, the researcher encourages replicating the study for other lending institutions. In order to extend the literature on non-performing loans, the researcher suggested incorporating models of Golem effect, Social loafing, Inverted pyramid effect, Pollyanna effect and High default culture effect.  Also, basing on the merits of the study, the researcher suggests determining relationship between non-performing loans and loan size, collateral, credit culture, and credit management information system.

The positive of impact of market orientation toward business performance of a company is a common wisdom in the marketing literatures. Hence the prior studies recommend that the connection will depend on other strategic actions. In this regards, this study tries to assess the construct of business ethics as the precedent of market orientation in the context of Indonesia Islamic banks. Upon assessing data using SmartPLS, this study finds that market orientation is the determinant of business performance and Islamic business ethics is the precedent of market orientation. However, market orientation is not effective as the mediator in the relationship between Islamic business ethics and business performance. The discussion of this finding is provided as well as the managerial implication at the end of this paper.

The present study seeks to examine the role of microfinance and its impact on economic and social empowerment of women. The study used multi-stage stratified proportionate random sampling technique in the selection of the representative district, mandal/taluka, villages and households. Empirically acclaimed logistic regression model has been employed for analyzing significant impact of plausible socio-economic factors on women empowerment. The study found that the socio-economic indicators have undergone significant changes. It also emerged that there has been an increase in women participation in the household decision making process. The study suggests that the government should prepare suitable plans and programmes for the social and economic empowerment of women. The study also suggests that policy measures such as increase in frequency of SHG meeting, SHG training programme, increase in loan amount and ensuring effective utilization of the loan, may be the useful initiatives to enhance women empowerment, income and employment opportunities.

The study concentrates on the benefits of passive commodity investments in the context of the phenomenon of financialization. The research investigates the implications of increase in the correlation coefficients between equity and commodity investments for investors in financial markets. The paper is composed of several parts. First, the attributes of commodity investments and their benefits in the portfolio optimization are explored. Second, the phenomenon of the financialization is described and the research hypothesis is developed. Next, an empirical analysis is performed. I simulate the mean-variance spanning tests to examine the benefits of commodity investments before and after accounting for the impact of financialization. I proceed separate analysis for pre- and post-financialization period. The empirical research is based on asset classes’ returns and other related variables from years 1991-2012. The performed investigations indicate that the market financialization may have significant implications for commodity investors. Due to increase in correlation coefficients, the inclusion of the commodity futures in the traditional stock-bond portfolio appears to be no longer reasonable.