Maternity tourism has become an increasingly important area of study in tourism and population economics in recent years. As Canada is one of the few developed economies that practices Jus Soli, this study investigates the determinants of maternity tourism in the country. To this end, the study applies the conventional tourism demand model to identify the factors that influence maternity tourism, including average income in priority markets, the real effective exchange rate, the number of obstetricians and gynecologists, the number of hospital beds, and the infant mortality rate. The study employs a recently introduced Fourier VAR model to examine relationships among these variables. The empirical results, based on impulse-response functions, show that higher-quality healthcare, indicated by more hospital beds and obstetricians, attracts more maternity tourists. Additionally, higher income levels in priority markets increase demand, while an appreciation of the Canadian dollar reduces maternity tourism. Variance decomposition analysis also shows that infant mortality is a critical explanatory factor, highlighting the importance of healthcare outcomes in shaping maternity tourism flows. These findings could help the government implement effective policies to promote maternity tourism.

Maternity tourism has become an increasingly important area of study in tourism and population economicsin recent years. As Canada is one of the few developed economies that practices Jus Soli, this study investigatesthe determinants of maternity tourism in the country. To this end, the study applies the conventionaltourism demand model to identify the factors that influence maternity tourism, including average incomein priority markets, the real effective exchange rate, the number of obstetricians and gynecologists, thenumber of hospital beds, and the infant mortality rate. The study employs a recently introduced FourierVAR model to examine relationships among these variables. The empirical results, based on impulse-responsefunctions, show that higher-quality healthcare, indicated by more hospital beds and obstetricians, attractsmore maternity tourists. Additionally, higher income levels in priority markets increase demand, while anappreciation of the Canadian dollar reduces maternity tourism. Variance decomposition analysis also showsthat infant mortality is a critical explanatory factor, highlighting the importance of healthcare outcomes inshaping maternity tourism flows. These findings could help the government implement effective policiesto promote maternity tourism.

Türkiye has experienced rapid growth in electricity demand while remaining dependent on imported energy sources. Although the country has substantial domestic lignite reserves, the technical limitations of lignite and the need for reliable baseload electricity have increased the role of imported coal in electricity generation. This has created an important policy debate, since imported coal raises concerns about external dependence and environmental sustainability, yet it may also support economic activity by strengthening electricity supply, facilitating industrial production, and channeling private investment in the electricity production. Thus, this study aims to examine the economic effects of electricity generation from imported coal in Türkiye and compares them with those of electricity generation from domestic coal. Using annual data for 2000–2023, the study investigates the relationship among electricity production from imported coal, electricity production from domestic coal, real gross domestic product, and employment through unit root, causality, cointegration, and long-run estimation methods with Fourier extension. The results show that electricity production from both imported and domestic coal have a causal effect on economic growth. The findings also indicate a long-run cointegration relationship among electricity generation from imported and domestic coal, economic growth, and employment. Long-run estimates reveal that electricity production from imported coal has a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth, whereas electricity production from domestic coal has a positive but statistically insignificant effect. The study concludes that electricity generation from imported coal has played a stronger growth-supporting role than electricity generation from domestic coal in Türkiye. However, given the environmental costs of coal, this result should be interpreted as evidence for a careful energy transition rather than continued coal dependence.

Bu çalışma, Türkiye’nin en yüksek ihracat hacmine sahip olan yirmi ülke ile gerçekleştirdiği ihracata yönelik şokların kalıcı olup olmadığını ampirik olarak incelemektedir. İhracatın şoklara verdiği tepkiler, yatay kesit bağımlılığını ve yapısal kırılmaları dikkate alan panel durağanlık testleri aracılığıyla analiz edilmektedir. Bu bağlamda, birinci ve ikinci nesil panel durağanlık testlerine ek olarak Fourier yaklaşımına dayalı yapısal kırılmalı panel durağanlık testlerinden yararlanılarak, şokların uzun dönemli etkileri kapsamlı biçimde değerlendirilmektedir. Analizde Ocak 2013–Mart 2025 dönemini kapsayan aylık veriler kullanılmakta ve Türkiye’nin en büyük yirmi ihracat ortağına ait reel ihracat serileri incelenmektedir. Ampirik bulgular, panel genelinde ihracat serisinin durağan olmadığını ve dışsal şokların kalıcı etkiler yarattığını ortaya koymaktadır. Yatay kesit bağımlılığı ve yapısal kırılmalar dikkate alındığında da bu sonucun değişmediği gözlenmektedir. Ülke bazında elde edilen sonuçlar ise ihracat şoklarının etkilerinin homojen olmadığını göstermektedir. Özellikle Almanya, Belçika, Irak, İspanya, İtalya, Rusya ve Ukrayna ile yapılan ihracatta durağanlık boş hipotezinin reddedilmesi, bu pazarlara yönelik ihracatın şoklara karşı daha kırılgan bir yapı sergilediğine işaret etmektedir. Buna karşılık bazı ülkelerde ihracat serilerinin şoklara verdiği tepkilerin geçici olduğu görülmektedir. Elde edilen bulgular, Türkiye’nin ihracata dayalı büyüme modelinde şoklara karşı yapısal kırılganlıkların varlığına işaret etmekte ve pazar çeşitlendirmesinin, ihracat kompozisyonunun iyileştirilmesini ve esnek dış ticaret politikalarının önemini vurgulamaktadır.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of educational tourism receipts in Australia, using an augmented tourism demand model. Understanding the determinants of diversification of the tourism market and its purpose is important and relevant for operators in the tourism industry. This study employs the Fourier Engle-Granger cointegration test and the Fourier Granger causality test to consider gradual structural changes in the models. Using time-series techniques, the results show that rising income of educational tourists, political risk, and technological innovations in the host countries boost educational tourism receipts while the rising relative price level in Australia lessens educational tourism receipts. Government spending on education seems to have an insignificant impact on educational tourism receipts. Policy implications emanating from the empirical findings are explained in the manuscript. This study considers the gradual structural shifts in both cointegration and causality analyses to determine factors affecting educational tourism receipts per capita in Australia.

There has been growing concern about the relationship between trade and populationhealth in recent years. This study investigates the causal relationship between tradeopenness and child mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa. For this purpose, the study utilizesthe panel causality test proposed by Nazlioglu and Karul (2024), which removes commonfactors causing cross-sectional dependence from the dataset using the PANIC approach.While prior research has reported associations between trade openness and healthoutcomes at the global or regional level, little attention has been given to the causalitywithin Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the context of cross-sectional dependence. Theempirical results show statistically significant panel-level causality running from tradeopenness to both infant and under-five child mortality. However, country-specific estimatesindicate substantial heterogeneity across the region. In Sub-Saharan Africa, historicalimprovements in political stability and institutional quality have played a significant rolein shaping the trade–health nexus. The findings reveal a causal relationship betweentrade openness and child mortality across Sub-Saharan African countries, highlighting theimportance of trade dynamics in shaping health outcomes.

Purpose This investigation aims to determine the effect of trade uncertainty on domestic investment (DI) and foreign direct investment (FDI) for the Turkish economy from the first quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2020. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopt the vector autoregression (VAR) model augmented with Fourier terms. Using this methodology, the authors obtain the empirical results of the impulse-response functions and the variance decomposition analysis. Findings The empirical results demonstrate that a shock to trade uncertainty has a slight negative impact on DI for up to approximately 1.5 years, whereas its impact on FDI is negative but long-lasting. Moreover, the contribution of trade uncertainty to FDI is relatively higher than to DI in the error variance decomposition for the investigated period. These empirical results can be beneficial for shaping the Turkish authorities' trade policies in the following periods. Research limitations/implications These findings have implications within the macroeconomic setting. Government authorities can provide tax exemptions for specified sectors and debureaucratize investment processes for both domestic and foreign entrepreneurs. Additionally, institutional quality and property rights should be protected strictly and developed gradually. Originality/value This study is the first to examine the impact of world trade uncertainty on Türkiye’s DI and FDI. Because trade uncertainty might act as fixed costs, this creates the option value of waiting and seeing the market, and firms hesitate to incur investment.

During the spread of the COVID-19 virus, governments in many countries took temporary measures to mitigate and/or remove the cost of its negative effects on both society and the economy. In Türkiye, as in many countries, the deposit banks cut mortgage interest rates. Thus, Türkiye has experienced large increases in house prices, as have many countries. Türkiye has also become the country with the highest average annual rate of house price increase among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during the pandemic period. However, despite an increase in the number of studies on house prices or mortgage loans during the pandemic period, there is a research gap in terms of a comparison of the relationship between house prices and mortgage loans in the pre-pandemic and the pandemic periods compared with that on other assets or in other sectors,. This study aims to rectify this gap. To achieve this, both the Fourier Granger and the Fourier Toda-Yamamoto causality tests are used. The results indicate that there are differences in both periods of time with respect to the relationship between mortgage loans and house prices in Türkiye, and that there is a causal relationship between both factors in the prepandemic period, but not during the pandemic period.

Tarihin çeşitli dönemlerinde olduğu gibi uluslararası ticarette engellerin kaldırılmasının ülkelerin kalkınmasında önemli bir faktör olduğu bilinmektedir. Artan ticaret hacmiyle birlikte Ekonomik Bütünleşme daha etkin kaynak dağılımı yaratan ve işlem maliyetlerini azaltan önemli bir araç olarak öne çıkmıştır. Ekonomik Bütünleşme aşamaları, piyasada oluşan yüksek işlem maliyetlerini en aza indirebilmek amacıyla ortaya çıkan kurumlardır. Bu çerçevede ekonomik bütünleşme aşamalarını “Yeni Kurumsal İktisat” okulunun paradigmaları ile açıklamak önem arz etmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı bir kurum olarak tanımlanan ekonomik bütünleşmelerin ve organizasyon olarak tanımlanan Avrupa Birliği’nin işlem maliyetleri üzerindeki etkisinin araştırılmasıdır. Yeni Kurumsal İktisat yaklaşımına göre işlem maliyetleri kurumlar ve organizasyonlar ile minimize edilebilmektedir. Bu nedenle kurumsal kaliteyi ölçebilmek için kamu etkinliği, regülasyon kalitesi ve hukuk devleti endeksleri bu çalışmada kullanılmıştır. Ekonomik bütünleşme aşamaları üzerinde, kurumların ve organizasyonların pozitif etkisinin olduğu ve işlem maliyetlerini minimize etmekte etkili oldukları vurgulanmıştır.

Suicide has been a serious international public mental health problem and is one of the top twenty leading causes of death worldwide. This study aims to investigate the impact of social expenditure on suicide deaths in Turkiye as a developing country from 1982 to 2019. The Bounds Testing Approach to Cointegration and Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) methods were used. The results indicated that social expenditure has a statistically significant and negative effect on total suicide and female suicide deaths, but it has a statistically insignificant and negative impact on male suicide death. The contribution of this study is to examine for the first time whether social expenditure has an impact on total, female, and male suicide mortality in Turkiye. Policymakers should regard increasing social spending in the government budget to prevent suicide deaths in Turkiye.

The relatively small panel cointegration literature on the dynamics between FDI and income inequality predominantly finds that FDI will reduce income inequality in the long-run in developed countries. However, we point out an important technical oversight in the literature. Not accounting for cross-section dependence in panel data methodologies may yield unreliable results. Expanding on the work of @herzer/nunnenkamp:13, who pioneered the use of panel cointegration in the European context, we obtain different results when we account for cross-section dependence and employ economic procedures robust to it. Using a panel containing 16 OECD countries (1979-2017), 2 income inequality measures, and 4 FDI measures, we begin by showing strong evidence for the existence of cross-section dependence. Then, using second-generation econometric procedures, we do not find any evidence for a cointegrating relationship between inward FDI and income inequality. We do find evidence that outward FDI is cointegrated with income inequality; however, contrary to the main results of the literature, we find that it widens the income gap in the long-run. Additionally, our results support the view that fiscal policy is an important tool to reduce income inequality.

International trade can be affected by various economic events, including domestic and global developments, such as economic crises, exchange rate volatilities, natural resource explorations, and globalization. In addition, trade uncertainty is an important factor that affects the trade volume of an economy. Recently, trade uncertainty has increased episodically in the world with trade wars between the US and China, and this uncertainty has spilled over to other countries, thereby affecting trade volumes. This study attempts to understand and explain the role of World Trade Uncertainty (WTU) on both export and import in the Turkish economy for the period from 1998:Q1 to 2021:Q4. Therefore, this study utilizes the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test. The research findings presented here reveal that there is a long-run nexus between the variables in both models. The results also show that an increase in WTU negatively affects export, while it has no statistically significant effect on Turkish import for the period examined.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine whether there is a causal relationship between mortgage credit and house prices in Turkey. Design/methodology/approach Granger causality test, Toda–Yamamoto causality test, Fourier Granger causality test and Fourier Toda–Yamamoto causality tests are applied. Findings The findings show that there is a strong one-way causality between mortgage credit and house prices and that the developments in credit markets are more decisive in the relationship between mortgage credit and house prices than the developments in the housing markets. Practical implications Considering a causal relationship between mortgage credit and house prices may contribute to more efficient use of the tools of both macroeconomic and microeconomic policies for the mortgage credit and housing markets in Turkey. Furthermore, by understanding the importance of the direction of causality between both dynamics, it may be possible to prevent and/or mitigate the negative effects of large house price movements on both Turkish housing and mortgage markets as well as on Turkish economy. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the contribution of this study is to examine for the first time whether the causal relationship between mortgage credit and house prices in Turkey is mutual as well as to apply four different causality tests and to compare their results for the first time.

Purpose This study aims to examine the effects of industrial production (IP), inflation and investment on suicide mortality in Turkey as a developing country over the 1988–2018 period. Design/methodology/approach Fourier cointegration test and dynamic ordinary least square regression were used in this study. Findings IP and investment have a statistically significant and negative impact on suicide mortality, whereas inflation has a statistically significant and positive effect on suicide mortality. Research limitations/implications The results of this study have important implications for policymakers and potentially the creation and implementation of suicide prevention policies. Not only do investment promotion, IP and disinflation policies in developing countries have a significant effect on economic growth but they also have a substantial impact on mental health. Originality/value Although previous studies have investigated the impact of economic growth and unemployment on suicide deaths in Turkey, no research has probed the effect of economic factors, except for unemployment and gross domestic product, on suicide. Thus, given the hidden unemployment and informal sector in developing economies, it is vital to examine the impact of IP, inflation and investment on mental health.

Since housing is one of the most expensive commodities in Turkey as in many countries, credit and housing markets are closely linked. However, based on the literature review in this study there is no research on the relationship of credit with house price for Turkey. Thus, the study aims at examining whether there is a causal relationship between mortgage credit and house price in Turkey. For achieving this aim, we apply four causality tests for the period between 2010 and 2020 at monthly frequency: Granger causality tests, Toda-Yamamoto causality tests, Granger causality tests with Fourier approach, and Toda-Yamamoto causality tests with Fourier approach. The findings of the empirical analysis show that there is a strong one-way causality between house prices and mortgage credit and that the direction of the causality is from credit to house prices. The results of all the different causality tests reach to the identical results.

Aim: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have included negative consequences both in health management and economic life at national and international level. The aim of this research is to examine the causal relationship between COVID-19 pandemic and agricultural commodity prices for the world. Material and Methods: To this end, we employ Toda-Yamamoto and Fourier Toda-Yamamoto causality tests for the period of January 24, 2020 to January 22, 2021. Before testing the causal relationship between variables, we apply augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Fourier ADF unit root tests to each series to determine maximum order of integration. Results: The findings show that all variables are stationary in their first difference and the maximum order of integration is determined as 1. The results obtained from causality tests show that COVID-19 new cases Granger cause to coffee, sugar, cotton, corn, and soybean prices while COVID-19 new cases do not cause wheat and oats prices. It was also concluded that new deaths based on COVID-19 Granger cause to coffee, sugar, and cotton whereas COVID-19 new deaths do not cause to corn, soybean, wheat and oat prices. Conclusion: In this study, time series analysis based on Toda-Yamamoto and Fourier Toda-Yamamoto causality tests highlight that the COVID-19 total new cases and total new deaths in the world has predictive power to predict further prices of agricultural commodities. Therefore, in terms of health management, policy makers should give substantial significance to the implementation of COVID-19 related health policies and agricultural policies together during the COVID-19 pandemic period.

BackgroundSuicide has become a public mental health problem in Turkey, with the number of deaths increasing: in 1974, the suicide rate was 1.92% for males and 1.31% for females; in 2013 this had risen to 6.22% for males and 2.26% for females.AimsThis study attempts to empirically investigate the behaviour of suicide in Turkey by focusing on sex and cause. We pay special attention to the role of structural shifts in suicide ratios, which may have arisen from the structural changes in Turkish economy during last 2 decades.MethodsWe used time series analysis and employed unit root and stationarity tests for the period 1974-2013.ResultsThe results show that disruption to female suicide and suicidal affairs stemmed from economic problems and business failures have a random walk process. This finding implies that shocks driven by economic issues and shocks toward the female sex have a permanent, long-term impact on suicide.ConclusionsThe implication is that the social administration needs to implement relevant, necessary suicide prevention policies for suicides occurring in the female and economic problems groups.

PurposeThe aim of this research is to investigate the causal relationship between trade openness (TO) and life expectancy (LE) at birth in Latin American countries over the period of 1980–2014.Design/methodology/approachThe bootstrap panel Granger causality test proposed by Emirmahmutoglu and Kose (2011) was used to determine the direction of causality in the presence of cross-sectional dependency and heterogeneity among Latin American countries. Also, four different tests were employed in order to determine the cross-sectional dependency and slope homogeneity. The stationarity properties of variables were inspected by employing a unit root test.FindingsThe findings indicated that Granger causality existed between TO and LE, at birth which was running from the former to the latter for panel. On a country basis, TO Granger caused LE at birth for countries with low level of economic development and higher taxes on income and profits.Practical implicationsThis study provides new insights for policymaking regarding the role of TO in achieving comprehensive economic reforms to increase LE at birth during a period of intense trade rivalry across nations.Originality/valueAlthough research in the literature has mainly focused on the impact of TO on LE at birth with panel data, most studies ignored the regional effects. It is the authors’ concern that the direction of causality can be country-specific and have regional characteristics. In this regard, instead of dividing countries for a specific region into two parts such as developing and developed, the authors investigated the pattern of trade–health link for a specific region, Latin America.