This paper examines whether there has been convergence of total factor productivity levels across twenty-two EU member and three candidate countries following the process of legislative harmonization. The results indicate evidence of β-convergence and σ-convergence in productivity across sampled countries. The results further indicate that all sampled banking sectors seem to have experienced a significant productivity growth over the sample period. The productivity growth levels range from 3.1% to 15.6% and 6.8% to 19.5% in the old member and new member states, respectively. The geometric means considering all banking firms in the new member and candidate countries together reveal that banking sectors in these countries were more productive than those of in the old EU member countries. Overall, the evidence indicates that promoting merger and acquisition activities in the banking system (and hence supporting market driven consolidation of smaller banks) and enhancing the presence of foreign banks could increase competition and productivity in these banking systems.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kasman, A.; Kasman, S.; Ayhan, D.; Torun, E. 2013. Total factor productivity and convergence: evidence from old and new EU member countries' banking sectors, Journal of Business Economics and Management 14(Supplement 1): S13-S35.
The lack of well-documented information in the historical literature on the relationship between war-related expectations and their effects on the bond market in the Ottoman Empire motivates this paper's three contributions. First, this paper is the first empirical study to investigate the break points in the volatility of Ottoman bond prices from a historical point of view. Second, we use the econometric technique developed by Inclan and Tiao (1994) to identify the structural breaks. Last, we use a manually collected dataset from the daily newspapers of the time on daily Ottoman bond prices from 1910 to 1914. Subsequently, we identify five structural break dates, each of them corresponding to important warrelated events. When we investigate the commentaries in the Ottoman newspapers, we see that the outbreak of several wars might not have been a surprise for investors in the Ottoman Empire, as reflected by government bond prices.
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