Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 19
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    The Language of Uncertainty: Reading Türkiye's Economic Pulse Through Geopolitical Fog
    (John Wiley and Sons Limited, 2025-09-10) Kilic I; Balli F
    Geopolitical uncertainty is an increasing concern for investors, entrepreneurs, and researchers. Traditional methods of measuring uncertainty often fall short, whereas Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven Natural Language Processing (NLP) offers more accurate and competitive options. In this study, we develop a Geopolitical Country-Specific Uncertainty (GCSU) index for Türkiye by applying the economic policy uncertainty index methodology. Since geopolitical uncertainty involves Knightian uncertainty—which cannot be quantified with probabilities in advance—our approach measures it by analysing the frequency of economy-, policy-, and uncertainty-related terms in Turkish-language newspapers. Unlike existing indexes for Türkiye, such as the Geopolitical Risk (GPR) and the Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), which rely on English-language sources, our localised method provides a more precise measure of country-specific uncertainty. Our findings show that an unexpected increase in geopolitical uncertainty leads to declines in employment, industrial production, trade, consumer confidence, and stock prices, while oil prices and inflation rise in response. However, these results may not be observed when uncertainty is measured using English sources (e.g., through the index from the GPR-Türkiye). These insights highlight the importance for policymakers to consider geopolitical uncertainty in their economic planning and suggest directions for further research into measuring uncertainty with local language sources.
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    Payouts smoothing and income growth
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2025-09-01) Balli F; Nguyen H; Chowdhury MIH; Balli HO
    We quantify the extent and drivers of payout smoothing by employing 34,966 US firms’ data from 1975 to 2022. We report that payout growth is almost insensitive to year-by-year net income growth, in line with preceding literature suggesting payout smoothing. Novel to the literature, we incorporate the dynamics of payout smoothing, permanent, and aggregate net income growth into the depiction. Though payout growth is mostly immune to annual income growth shocks, it is significantly affected by net income growth of 5- or 10-year periods. Firms also consider the aggregate-sectoral and/or country-level-income growth in payout decisions. Since both permanent and aggregate income growths take over the role of year-by-year income growth, we further investigate if firms’ financial positions impact the magnitude of the smoothing. Annual payout growth depends more on permanent income growth for firms with higher profits and lower leverage positions. Notably, more financially vulnerable firms with higher leverage adjust payouts more in line with aggregate economic conditions.
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    Demographic-governance factors shaping cryptocurrency holding behavior
    (Elsevier B.V., 2025-11) Dang THN; Balli F; Balli HO; Kilic I
    Employing cross-sectional data of 142 countries worldwide, this paper examines the macroeconomic factors in shaping cryptocurrency adoption. We find that the aggregate impact of inflation volatility on crypto adoption is dependent on the level of corruption control in higher-income countries. The control of corruption appears to discourage cryptocurrency adoption, emphasizing the role of institutional trust in financial choices. We also find that higher emigrant ratios in non-high-income and lower-income countries are associated with increased cryptocurrency usage, which suggests that migrants tend to use cryptocurrencies for faster, cheaper remittances compared to traditional services. Last, we find that internet penetration plays a key role in crypto adoption, particularly in higher-income countries with advanced digital infrastructure.
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    Examining the determinants of Indian airlines’ revenues
    (Elsevier Inc on behalf of the Air Transport Research Society, 2024-12-01) Jayathilakan A; Ngo T; Tsui WHK; Redmayne NB; Balli F; Fu X
    The Indian aviation sector has undergone remarkable growth, driven by the emergence of low-cost carriers and diverse business models. This has resulted in a surge in passenger numbers and aircraft orders, establishing India as a vibrant global aviation market. However, this rapid expansion is accompanied by significant financial challenges, leading to distress and insolvency among numerous airlines. Despite optimistic growth forecasts, high operating costs and relatively low revenue returns pose substantial hurdles. Motivated by these challenges, this study aims to uncover the key factors influencing revenue generation in the Indian aviation industry by analysing expenditure components and their impacts on costs. The objective of this study is to address the research gap stemming from the lack of previous studies on Indian airlines that address endogeneity issues related to airline expenditures. By utilising data from 2007 to 2022 sourced from the audited annual reports of each airline, we aim to provide essential insights into the revenue dynamics of Indian airlines through the application of various econometric models including instrumental variables (IV) regression and generalised method of moments (GMM) models for improving causality and addressing endogeneity. Our findings reveal a positive correlation between unit revenue and factors such as unit expenditure, staff numbers, and passenger volume, while also highlighting the positive impacts of airline alliances and regional connectivity schemes. This research not only sheds light on industry intricacies but also underscores the imperative to address key variables to enhance the sector's sustainability and resilience in the face of ongoing challenges, offering valuable contributions to both academia and industry stakeholders for informed decision-making and strategic planning.
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    Firm productivity in the Energy-electricity sector over the last two decades with crisis: The role of cross-listing
    (Elsevier B V, 2024-02) Dang TH-N; Balli F; Balli HO; Nguyen H
    Novel to the literature, this study examines how cross-listing impacts firms’ productivity in Energy sector. Annual data of firm cross-listing over the last two decades with crisis (2002-2022) is employed for our analyses. We find evidence of significant drop in productivity after Energy firms (including electricity firms) cross-list in the US market. Meanwhile, we do not find strong evidence of significant decreases in firm productivity from other sectors in our sample. We note one possible explanation for this finding is that after cross-listing, Energy firms appear to utilize their increased capital to heavily invest in infrastructure, equipment, and plants for expansion, which might eventually damage their productivity. To seek for more thorough explanations for such decreases in Energy firms' productivity after cross-listing, we identify the determinants of firm productivity in Energy sector. Our results provide strong evidence that the increases in capital expenditures after Energy firms cross-list appear to be associated with the decreases in firm productivity. Notably, we note that negative impacts of capital expenditures (after cross-listing) and state ownership on firm productivity become much stronger and more statistically significant in developed countries than in emerging countries. Last, corporate governance and firm liquidity are found to be two determinants that help improve firm productivity in both electricity firms and other energy firms.
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    Tail risk spillovers between Islamic sectoral equities and bond markets: a time-frequency domain approach
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-06-28) Billah M; Alam MR; Balli F
    This study examines the tail risk spillover between Islamic sectoral stock indices and country specific investable Islamic bonds in time and frequency domain and provides useful implications for portfolio management. For the analyses, Conditional Autoregressive ValueatRisk (CAViaR), Quantile Connectedness, and DCCGARCH t-Copula models are estimated utilizing daily data from 15 countries. The findings show that the connectedness and spillover of risks are much stronger at tails than at median, and in the short-term than in long-term. Whereas median risk connectedness surges during COVID-19 pandemic, the connectedness between tail risks is usually elevated even before the COVID-19 pandemic with industrial sector being consistently a significant net transmitter of shocks. Moreover, all the sectoral stock market indices are significant and consistent transmitter of left tail shocks indicating a much stronger role of sectoral stock markets in transmitting large negative shocks. A heightened connectedness is also observed during Russia-Ukraine war mainly in the short-term frequency. The portfolio analysis shows that long positions in sectoral stocks can usually be hedged by taking short positions in Islamic bonds. Hedging effectiveness and optimal portfolio weights are also calculated to provide market participants with further information.
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    Measuring economic country-specific uncertainty in Türkiye
    (Springer Nature, 2024-06-12) Kilic I; Balli F
    In this paper, a new measure for uncertainty that affects the economy is proposed, constructed, and applied to an emerging economy, Türkiye. We have constructed an index of economic country-specific uncertainty (ECSU) that is in line with the methodology used in constructing economic policy uncertainty indexes. As the economic uncertainty is of the Knightian type, the essence of measuring it lies in counting the frequency of joint appearances of words related to economics and uncertainty in Turkish-language newspapers. The uncertainty index constructed using local language sources- Turkish performs significantly better in measuring country-specific uncertainty in Türkiye. However, some indexes use English language sources to measure uncertainty in Türkiye- did not make them country-specific. The ECSU was tested by evaluating the dynamic real effects of the uncertainty. This evaluation was performed by the analysis of impulse responses from uncertainty to some economic variables in a vector autoregressive model describing the economy of Türkiye. We find that an unexpected increase in uncertainty in the Turkish-language press is related to decreases in industrial production, employment, and trade. If the uncertainty measure is based on the articles from the English-language press only, no such relationship can be confirmed. We also find that an increase in uncertainty leads to increase in inflation and stock and oil prices.
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    Asymmetric connectedness and investment strategies between commodities and Islamic banks: Evidence from gulf cooperative council (GCC) markets
    (Elsevier B V, 2024-09) Billah M; Hadhri S; Shaik M; Balli F
    The study uses the data of thirteen Islamic Banks (IB) in the GCC region and sixteen commodities that include soft agriculture, energy, industry, and precious metal commodities. Murabaha transactions makes up most of the revenues of the Islamic banks, whereas commodities set up the biggest portion of the assets among Murabaha transactions, therefore commodities and IB revenues are expected to comove. Interestingly, empirical findings suggest that most of the Islamic banks and commodities are not significantly affected by the shocks from other markets. We further observe that negative shocks have a higher impact on market connectedness among used assets compared to the positive returns and find a significant role of risk variables in explaining the magnitude of spillover between used assets. We perform robustness of our results in sub-samples periods during Shale Oil Revolution, Global Financial Crisis, and the COVID-19. Additionally, the multivariate portfolio analysis shows some risk reduction properties of the majority of the used assets. The performance evaluation measures demonstrate that weights selected based on dynamic connectedness network presents diversification opportunities. These findings help investors and portfolio managers to remain alert to the movements of the risk factors and calibrate there hedging and portfolio management strategies by taking long and short positions as incorporation of Islamic banks and commodities in the GCC region in a portfolio could yield risk reduction benefits and profitability.
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    Exploring the dynamic links, implications for hedging and investment strategies between Sukuk and commodity market volatility: Evidence from country level analysis
    (Elsevier Inc, 2024-06) Billah M; Hadhri S; Balli F; Sahabuddin M
    This research paper examines the influence of spillovers between volatility of commodities (including soft commodities, precious metals, industrial metals, along with energy) and returns of sukuk. Using a notable sample of fifteen sukuk country indices and sixteen products, we examine the time-varying criterion vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) based extended joint connectedness method and contribute to the correlation analysis literature by supplying a comprehensive as well as policy-oriented analysis of the connection between sukuks and also commodities. Our results disclose that the system-wide dynamic connectedness is slowly heterogeneous and driven by financial occasions. Next, we look at the potential determinants of connectivity between sukuk and commodity markets, we find that global risk factors significantly impact the degree of spillovers between markets. In particular, the negative impacts of risk factors on spillovers suggest that some risk-mitigating properties may be related to market leverage in the composite portfolio in bear market conditions. In addition, our results, using hedging efficiency and the Sharpe ratio, confirm the hypothesis of diversification opportunities between markets that leverage dynamic connectivity networks.
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    Dynamic connectedness between crude oil and equity markets: What about the effects of firm's solvency and profitability positions?
    (Elsevier B V, 2023-09) Balli F; O Balli H; Nguyen TTH
    The paper aims to explore the presence of connectedness between oil price changes and stock returns of oil & gas sector. The analysis, adopting the connectedness approach developed by and the frequency connectedness developed by demonstrates a high level of connectedness, especially during the extreme economic meltdown. The short-term (1–5 days) level of total connectedness is substantially higher than the medium-term (5–30 days) and long-term levels (30–262 days). In addition, when examining the impact of the sectors' financial characteristics on the extent of the connectedness, we found that sectors with greater solvency position (lower debt to asset ratio and higher interest coverage) are less connected with the oil price changes. The impact of sector's solvency position on connectedness (between stock return and oil prices) is even more obvious for financially more open markets. Also, change in oil prices have a less impact on the returns of sectors with higher profitability ratios. The paper, therefore, brings several implications to both policy makers and investors.