Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is an important theory of exchange rate determination. The documents probing into the PPP theory are voluminous nowadays; however, there hasn¡¦t been an agreed conclusion yet. In this paper, we apply the Panel Lagrange Multiplier unit root test, a newly developed panel unit root test that allows for heterogeneous breaks, under both the null and the alternative, in both the level and trend of the series under investigation, addressed by Im, Lee and Tieslau (2010). The validity of PPP theory can be examined by testing the stationary of real exchange rates. We use the data chosen from the countries of Asia, including Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Tailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore to proceed the positive analysis. The result shows that no matter we use CPI or WPI as the price index, both considering more about the structure breaks and using the panel unit root test strongly support the PPP theory. And it also shows that when using the WPI as the price index, there would be much more countries support the PPP theory.

Recent studies have reported that open-end fund has its performance persistence. However, those studies didn¡¦t mention the factors of performance persistence. Therefore, investors knows the character of the types of fund, but unable to determine which individual fund have the character given the type of fund. The main purpose of this study is to provide investors a new way to select funds. First, investors can select high performance funds in the past period and aim to pick the individual funds which fit the character of high performance persistence. This study is divided into two parts. In first part, the researcher use Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient Test to examine the existence of performance persistence. In second part, the study aims to use Panel Data Analysis to examine the impact of 10 factors on the performance persistence in different type of funds, and periods. Samples in the study are chosen from 160 Taiwan open-end equity funds during 2004-2011. The return rate data is rolling data. In order to remove the difference of the risks of the funds, simple return rates were transferred into Jensen¡¦s Alpha. The conclusions are shown as below¡G 1. In short term, Time of Establishment often has a positive effect on fund performance persistence. 2. In short term, Net Asset Value often has a negative effect on fund performance persistence. In long term, net asset value often has a positive effect on fund performance persistence. 3. In short and middle term, Average Investment Amount always has a positive effect on fund performance persistence. 4. Almost in all type of funds and all periods, Stock Holding Rate has a negative effect on fund performance persistence. 5. Almost in all type of funds and all periods, The Score of Monitoring indicator has a negative effect on fund performance persistence.

Business cycle is an important issue for economist. Because the fluctuations of product and employment have deep influences on people¡¦s life and social stability, almost every government tries to reduce the volatility of national business cycles. If we want to make it, we must realize it first. Since countries communicate with each other more frequently in recent decades, the volatility of national product cycles is not only influenced by domestic economic variables but also foreign ones. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of transmission mechanism on international business cycles synchronization (BCCs). The major purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of international vertical specialization on BCCs among industrial countries. There are two kinds of effect. One is indirect effect. Vertical specialization happens between industrial countries and developing countries, so it can reduce bilateral trade intensity among industrial countries. Through this way, BCCs among industrial countries will reduce. The other one is direct effect. Vertical specialization changes the economic structure of industrial countries. Industrial countries can focus on product development and market research. This kind of economic structure is less capital intensive, which lessens the effect of common shocks to industrial country¡¦s business cycles. BCCs among industrial countries will reduce. We measured the effect using the data from G6 (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, UK and US). The result is consistent with our inferance. Vertical specialization can reduce BCCs by reducing bilateral trade intensive among industrial countries. There is a negative relation between Vertical specialization and BCCs among industrial countries.

Fertility levels are investigated in the thesis because significant changes have occurred recently in the fertility levels in Turkey. It is necessary to understand the factors related to fertility level declines to determine how people behave with regard to their fertility in Turkey. It is only after understanding people&rsquo / s behavior then it is possible to develop appropriate social and governmental policies. It is possible to evaluate the fertility level declines from different points of view. There are two opposite approaches when evaluating fertility level declines. One of the approaches explaining fertility level declines is the demographic transition theory which uses &ldquo / modernization&rdquo / as the cause of fertility level declines. The &ldquo / other&rdquo / approach is the opposite approach to the modernization theory. Both of these approaches are acceptable approaches from different views. However / this thesis is not written to prove either one of these approaches. The demographic transition or the modernization perspective is used as a tool to determine the variables which cause fertility levels to decline in Turkey. The aim is to provide an understanding of the determinants of fertility levels in Turkey by constituting an econometric model of fertility across the provinces of Turkey by using the panel data estimation. Data for the variables can be found in years from 1980 to 2000. One of the purposes of this thesis in investigating the fertility level declines is to identify which changes occurred in Turkey related to fertility levels between the years 1980-1985, 1985-1990 and 1990-2000. It is found that urbanization gained importance in effecting fertility level declines in the 1985-1990 period as compared to the 1980-1985 period. The other purpose of this thesis is to investigate how different are the fertility levels in the Provinces Prioritized in Development from the &ldquo / other&rdquo / provinces. Although contraception usage is important in effecting fertility levels in the &ldquo / other&rdquo / provinces, this factor is not important in effecting fertility levels in the Provinces Prioritized in Development.

The causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth has been a controversial subject of the empirical literature. However, there is no common consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth using a consistent data set. Recently developed Granger causality tests in panel data models are used to uncover the existence and direction of causality between energy consumption economic growth in 21 low-income, 35 middle-income, and 26 high-income countries over the period 1990&ndash / 2004. The empirical results explicitly support that the Granger causality from energy consumption to economic growth is more common in high-income countries than low-income and middle-income countries. Furthermore, the Granger causality from economic growth to energy consumption is more common in low-income and middle-income countries than high-income countries.

To the best of my knowledge, there has not been any academic study about capital structure of Turkish REITs so far. This study attempts to fulfill this gap in the literature by analyzing the capital structure choices of Turkish REITs which are listed in Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) over the period of 1998 - 2007. The key contribution of this study is to understand whether the firm specific, institutional and country specific factors that affect the capital structures of all institutional firms including REITs in developed and developing countries are also applicable to the Turkish REITs sector. The data analysis demonstrates that Turkish REITs employ little long term debt in their capital structure and there exists strong short term debt dominance in the sector. Employing Tobit regression and panel data models, it is concluded that capital structure determinants that are significant in developed and developing countries are also significant in Turkish REITs&amp / #8217 / debt financing choices. However, we observe inconsistency in the sign and significance of some factors which give a way to understand the different institutional and country specific factors of Turkish real estate market and Turkish REITs.

In this study, I aimed to examine the impact of different levels of education on real GDP (and real GDP per workforce) in Turkey, and hence the relationship between different levels of education and the standard of living is estimated by panel data techniques. The panel data set in the study is constructed by pooling 67 provinces of Turkey over the period of 1975-2000. Furthermore, in the empirical work, two models are employed: the model introduced by Knowles (1997) and the augmented Solow model with different levels of education. The panel data estimation of the Knowles&rsquo / s model implies that the secondary level of schooling has the greatest contribution to real GDP, while the augmented Solow model implies that the higher level of schooling has the largest impact on real GDP per workforce.

The primary aim of this study is to explore the connection between rural - urban migration and unemployment in Turkey and examine whether this internal migration has an effect on increasing the unemployment rates. By using Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) panel data techniques and fully identifying these very concepts: migration from rural areas to urban areas, unemployment and internal migrations effects on the unemployment, an attention will be taken to the (negative) impact of internal migration on unemployment in Turkey.

In this study, we aim to investigate the impact of inflation targeting (IT) and the recent global disinflation on exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) using quarterly data from 1980:1 to 2009:1 for 51 industrial and emerging market (EM) countries. To this end, we employ not only the conventional panel data estimation methods but also the recent Common Correlated Effects Pooled estimation procedure by Pesaran (2006) which allows estimating the impact of common global shocks such as global inflation. We also explore some other determinants of ERPT during the recent global disinflation period. Furthermore, we consider asymmetric effects of positive and negative output gaps as proxies for domestic demand conditions on ERPT for IT industrial and EM countries. Our results strongly suggest that, for the non-IT samples, ERPT is significantly higher in EM countries than industrial countries. For every country groups excluding Euro area countries, we find that ERPT declined substantially during the recent global disinflation period. The decline in the ERPT is, however, much higher in IT countries especially in EM ones. One striking result is the convergence of ERPT coefficients of EM countries to industrial IT countries with the adoption of IT. This supports the endogenous response of ERPT to monetary policy credibility and price stability. Consequently, a high ERPT, per se, may be interpreted as not a binding constraint for the adoption of IT as it tends to decline with the success of monetary policy regime. We also find that ERPT appears to be more sensitive to positive output gaps in IT industrial countries whilst it does not have such a response to positive or negative output gaps in IT emerging market countries.

Panel data, also known as longitudinal data, are composed of repeated measurements taken from the same subject over different time points. Although it is generally used in time series applications, forecasting can also be used in panel data due to its time dimension. However, there is limited number of studies in this area in the literature. In this thesis, forecasting is studied for panel data with binary response because of its increasing importance and increasing fundamental roles. A simulation study is held to compare the efficiency of different methods and to find the one that gives the optimal forecast values. In this simulation, 21 different methods, including na&iuml / ve and complex ones, are used by the help of R software. It is concluded that transition models and random effects models with no lag of response can be chosen for getting the most accurate forecasts, especially for the first two years of forecasting.