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This paper aims to investigate the relationship between residential real estate prices and unemployment rates at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level.

This paper uses a long time-series of MSA-level quarterly data from 1990 to 2018. It uses an instrumental variable approach to estimate the effects of residential real estate prices on unemployment rates using the geography-based land constraints measure of Saiz (2010) as the instrument.

The results show that changes in residential real estate prices do not have a causal effect on unemployment rates in the same quarter. However, it takes 9-12 months for an increase (decrease) in real estate prices to decrease (increase) unemployment rates. This effect is significant during both pre- and post-financial crisis periods and robust to control for the economic characteristics of MSAs.

This paper contributes to the emerging literature that studies the real effects of real estate. Particularly, the methodology and the findings can be used to investigate causal relationships between housing prices and small business development or economic growth. The findings are also of interest to policymakers and practitioners as they illustrate how and when real estate price shocks propagate to the real economy through unemployment rates.

This study’s findings have important implications for academics, policymakers and investors as they provide evidence of a snowball effect associated with shocks to real estate prices: increasing (decreasing) unemployment rates following a decrease (increase) in real estate prices exacerbates the real estate price movements and their economic consequences.

This paper analyzes a significantly longer period, from 1990 to 2018, than the existing literature. Additionally, it uses the MSA-level land unavailability measure of Saiz (2010) as an instrument to explore the effects of residential real estate prices on unemployment rates and when those effects are observed in the real economy.

Kuwait's banking system has experienced considerable difficulties in the past two decades due to financial and political shocks. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, government financial support re‐established confidence in the financial system, allowing banks to restore their balance sheets and increase profitability starting in the mid 1990s. This paper examines the performance of banks in Kuwait during the period of financial renaissance, 1994–1997. We provide an empirical assessment of the efficiency, productivity, and technological progress of banks on the basis of the Data Evelopment Analysis and the Malmquist Index. The empirical results suggest that Kuwaiti banks fail to optimally utilize a significant proportion of their resources. The sources of bank inefficiency appear to be both allocative (regulatory) and technical (managerial) in nature. The results also indicate that smaller banks in Kuwait are more efficient than larger ones, although all banks have improved their efficiency‐levels and experienced some gains in productivity.

The paper investigates relative efficiency of the banking industry in Bahrain by employing a panel of 31 banks for the years 1998 and 2000. We employ non‐parametric (Data Envelopment Analysis) to examine five efficiency measures, namely, cost, allocative, technical, pure technical and scale efficiency scores. We also investigate the conventional accounting measures of performance, and correlate them with five measures of efficiency to investigate whether higher accounting performance impact the bank cost efficiency. Our results show that, on the average, the banking industry in Bahrain is profitable with average ROE and ROA being 10.36% 1.622% in 1998 while 13.49% and 2.097% in 2000 respectively. The average allocative efficiency (inefficiency) is about 73% (37%), whereas the average technical efficiency (inefficiency) is about 56% (78%). This indicates that the dominant source of inefficiency in Bahrain banks is due to technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency, which is mainly attributed to diseconomies in scale. Overall, average scale efficiency (inefficiency) is about 79% (26%), and average pure technical efficiency (inefficiency) is about 71% (41%), suggesting that the major source of the total technical inefficiency for Bahrain banks is pure technical inefficiency (input related) and not scale inefficiency (output related). The results also indicate that all banks have improved their efficiency levels and experienced some gains in productivity. Finally, regression analysis is used to investigate the determinants of the overall efficiency scores. We find that larger and profitable banks are more likely to operate at a higher level of efficiency. Also, another finding reveals that market power plays an important role in cost and technical efficiencies. Notably, banks with greater contribution from shareholders tend to be more technical efficient

This study aims to determine whether there is an effect of internal and public debt on income inequality in Kenya for the period 1970–2018.

The relationship is examined by using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model by Pesaran et al. (2001) and Toda Yamamoto causality by Toda and Yamamoto (1995).

Our findings suggest that both internal and public debt harm inequality in Kenya in the long term. Furthermore, a one-way causality from internal debt to income inequality is also obtained while no causality relationship is found to exist between public debt and income inequality. Based on these findings, the study recommends that to reduce income inequality levels in Kenya, other methods of financing other than debt financing should be preferred because debt financing is not pro-poor.

This study is unique based on the fact that no previous paper has analysed the debt and inequality relationship in Kenya. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first study to analyse the applicability of redistribution effect of debt in Kenya. The study is also different in that it provides separate analysis for public debt and internal debt on their effects on income inequality.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the limited fluorescence of mica titania (MT) effect pigments by coating them with peripherally substituted zinc phthalocyanines (ZnPc).

The effects of deposition medium, temperature, time, initial organic pigment/MT ratio on deposition behaviour and efficiencies were investigated separately for ZnPc, nitro (TNZnPc) and amino (TAZnPc) substituted ZnPc’s.

TNZnPc could be deposited in the form of well-defined crystals on MT with per cent 64 ± 5 efficiency in chloroform at 50°C within 5 h and the amount deposited was linearly dependent on the initial TNZnPc concentration. TNZnPc fluorescence emissions, which appear mainly at 460 and 685 nm in pure pigments, could be observed in combination with MT (MT-TNZnPc) as well. A spectral analysis on the non-overlapping region of the spectrum with two different excitations (385 and 630 nm) revealed that, respectively, up to threefold to sixfold increase is possible to attain, depending on the excitation wavelengths.

Efficiency of deposition could not be taken above per cent 11 ± 4 with TAZnPc. Although ZnPc could be deposited with per cent 57 ± 3 efficiency, the pigment was not effective in imposing its fluorescence characteristics over MT.

Combining inorganic effect pigments with organic dye molecules is an idea that has been elaborated mainly for producing different colour effects and stabilization of dye molecules against agglomeration. Here, for the first time, it is used to enhance the fluorescence of the effect pigments.

This study aims to extensively investigate the efficiency of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in Saudi Arabia.

The study employs the data envelopment analysis on 17 Saudi REITs with an innovative profit-oriented approach in selecting REITs' inputs and outputs.

It is found that the traditional approach underestimates the efficiency of Saudi REITs in comparison with the profit-oriented approach, implying that relying on the traditional approach in assessing the efficiency of REITs will underestimate their efficiency and provide misleading results about their actual performance. However, both approaches showed that Saudi REITs are very efficient in utilizing their inputs, and the major source of their inefficiency is related to their scale inefficiency. Moreover, small Saudi REITs are more efficient than large ones. Finally, a higher level of debt is supposedly associated with lower levels of efficiency, indicating that Saudi REITs should not rely on debt funding because there is no tax advantage from using debt.

This paper has several contributions to the literature. First, it employs an innovative profit-oriented approach in selecting REITs' inputs and outputs. Second, this study focuses on analyzing the efficiency of REITs in Saudi Arabia, which is the largest country in the Middle East region, regarding size, stock market capitalization and gross domestic product. Finally, to the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the efficiency of REITs in Saudi Arabia, and it provides substantial information for REITs' investors and managers about the current efficiency of the Saudi REITs industry.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how enterprise social media (ESM) use combats turnover by impacting work perceptions, and ultimately turnover intention.

This study undertook a survey at a major information technology (IT) corporation. Data from a total of 276 working professionals were collected to test the proposed research model.

The structural equation modeling results show that ESM increase workplace integration; workplace integration decreased turnover intention, augmented job satisfaction and also reduced job tensions (perceived work stress) – job satisfaction and work stress perceptions influenced turnover intention.

Low response bias is one of the limitations in this study, although this study used a priori and post hoc measures to mitigate non-response bias. This study contributed to the theory by improving our understanding of the role of ESM in combating turnover by impacting work perceptions through the lens of social capital and emotional dissonance theories. This study also has practical implications for managers. The results suggest that incorporating ESM within organizations improves employees' perceptions and behaviors – providing an option for managers to consider it as a way to save costs associated with employee turnover.

Although several studies have been conducted on ESM, our understanding of the impact of ESM on work perceptions and turnover is still far from complete. This paper helps to close the gap in literature by improving our understanding of how ESM combats turnover by influencing work perceptions in an organization, which provides an essential contribution to research and practice in the field.

The purpose of this paper is to examine urban households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for milk safety and to analyze the factors affecting WTP premiums using data obtained from surveys conducted in Samsun and Trabzon provinces, Turkey.

Contingent valuation and censoring methods including the error-dependent bivariate Heckman SS model were used for estimating WTP for milk safety and its effective factors, respectively.

The study indicates that 68 percent of the households were willing to pay 0.35 per liter for improving the safety of milk. The model results show that satisfaction with food safety standards, being married and full-time employment have statistically significant positive effects on the WTP for ISO-certified milk. However, purchasing milk from farmers or open-air markets, age, having a child six-year old or younger, and high school or higher education have statistically significant negative effects on the WTP for ISO-certified milk.

The main limitation of the current study is that only urban consumers’ WTP and effective factors for milk safety were examined in two provinces of Turkey.

More rigorous implementations of food safety standards, traceability systems and effective educational campaigns could promote households’ food safety awareness and increase their demand for milk safety.

Knowing what factors are involved in consumer WTP is extremely important for decision makers to create new social policies in the region or country.

A similar study has not been conducted in Turkey. The novelty of this study is the specification and robust estimation of three different but competing models to reveal the wide range of WTP amounts for safe milk.

The purpose of this study is to present a detailed picture of the poverty conditions of women in Turkey in the context of the capability approach. In other words, it is to analyze their perception of how much women in Turkey can benefit from economic opportunities, political freedoms and social opportunities and to what degree they can have protective security services and transparency assurance.

The field study was conducted in seven cities across Turkey with 741 women. Data from the field study were gathered by using the survey method. A 5-point Likert scale that was developed by the researchers and comprised of 39 statements.

According to the scale means of the instrumental freedoms obtained from the survey study, it cannot be claimed that women in Turkey have a completely negative perception of all of the instrumental freedoms. However, if the instrumental freedoms are compared to each other, it is seen that the participants have different perceptions of these instrumental freedoms.

This study basically discusses the issues of women's poverty and freedom in Turkey. In this context, the capability approach by Amartya Sen and capability deprivation; in other words, “being deprived of capabilities”, that is prominent in this approach form the basis of the study. The issue of women's poverty in Turkey is dealt with through deprivations in this study in contrast to the poverty conceptualizations through the individuals' income or expenditure levels.

The present study aims to investigate the non-linear relationship between trade and income inequality to address goal 10 of sustainable development goals (SDGs) using the Kuznets Curve (KC) framework for major emerging countries during 1991–2020.

For this purpose, recent econometric techniques, such as Common Correlated Effect (CCE) and Dynamic Common Correlated Effect (DCCE) estimators have been employed to deal with the cross-section dependence (CD) that arises in panel data, while the robustness of the study is checked through Driscoll–Kraay standard errors method.

The empirical results of the study confirm the existence of inverted “U-shaped” relationship between trade and income inequality suggesting evidence for the trade-led KC in the panel of emerging countries. Along with the non-linear model, the threshold value is estimated to be between 3.5 and 4% of gross domestic product (GDP).

The authors' findings support that trade contributes significantly toward reducing income inequality and helps in achieving goal 10 of SDGs. Hence, trade policies appear to be more egalitarian. The results widen the scope for further research and provide insights for regulators and policymakers in modeling trade policies and changing the status quo trade policy framework accordingly.

The present study is a pioneering attempt to examine the non-linear relationship between trade and income inequality under the KC framework in light of the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development. The study also considers other explanatory factors that have an impact on income inequality. Furthermore, the study considers other explanatory factors that have an impact on income inequality, and the attempt to estimate the threshold value for the trade-led KC is novel and interesting.