JOURNAL OF APPLIED MICROECONOMETRICS

Analyses of food supplements intake behaviour in peri-pandemic period

Hasan Giray Ankara, Merve Ebrar Yılmaz, Havvana Değerli, Hakan Değerli — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0300

The aim of this study is to analyse “food supplements intake behaviour” in Turkey. To do this, we aimed to identify the behaviours and the motivations of supplementary food intakes in the pre and the peri-pandemic periods. In addition, we revealed income effects on food supplements intake behaviour in the pre-, and the peri-pandemic periods.
The data of the study consists of 311 individuals living in Turkey who were selected by snowball sampling. Data were collected via a virtual environment between May - June 2021. Descriptive statistics, parametric tests and concentration analyses were employed to reveal the potential motivations of the increase in food supplements intake in the peri-pandemic period. Parametric tests, concentration analysis, and logistic regressions were further performed to identify income effects on (i) food supplements taking behaviour and (ii) the increase in food supplements intake in the peri-pandemic period, respectively.
We found that almost half of the respondents took food supplements. In addition, health anxiety and Covid-19 fear levels were revealed to be increasingly effective on the intake of food supplements intake in the peri-pandemic period. Furthermore, income was identified as a determinant of food supplement intake in the pre-pandemic period while no income effects were observed on the increase of food supplement intakes in the peri-pandemic period. This might imply that food supplements could be considered as compulsory food during the pandemic. To clarify this issue, further research investigating income effects on the demand of food supplements in inflationary environment in peri-pandemic period is required.

The evaluation of Turkey's foreign trade with different country groups within the framework of the gravity model

Beyda Demirci, Mustafa Sevüktekin — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0300

The gravity model is based on the law known as the gravitational law discovered by Newton and was first used by Tinbergen to explain the foreign trade flow. It assumes that the size of the countries affects the foreign trade flow positively and the distance variable affects the foreign trade flow negatively. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization was established under the leadership of Turkey to develop foreign trade with the countries that declared their autonomy. Similar to the story of the disintegrating Soviets, the Balkan Countries also declared their independence by leaving Yugoslavia. This study aims to investigate whether the gravity model is appropriate to explain Turkey’s exports and imports to the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), Balkan and selected countries during the 1996-2019 period. Export and import were used as dependent variables. Gravity model variables such as GDP, distance, population, language and common border variables were used to explain the exports and imports of the respective countries. For all these models, panel data analysis techniques were employed; pooled, random and fixed effects models were estimated and then tests for the model selection were carried out to choose the most appropriate model. After the appropriate models were determined, the assumption tests were executed. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the gravity model was suitable to explain Turkey’s imports to the Balkan countries and exports to the selected country groups. The results of the study suggested that while the gravity model was suitable for explaining the factors affecting Turkey’s trade flow for some country groups, it further suggested that it was not suitable for some countries.

The analysis of the factors affecting the stringency index during COVID-19 pandemic

Hatice Gökçen Öcal Özkaya, Nazan Şak — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0300

Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which started in China’s Wuhan providence in the late 2019s, and then affected the entire world in a short time, causing high disease and death rates, was one of the most important unexpected crises of 21st century. In order to manage the risk the pandemic posed on public health and public order, and to control spread of the disease, governments implemented restriction policies, in which precautions such as limitation and closure were taken. This study aims to examine the factors affecting the stringency index, an indicator of the political measures taken by governments against the epidemic in the selected countries (the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, Türkiye, Russia, Brazil, the United States of America, India) during COVID-19 pandemic. In the analysis, non-additive fixed effect panel quantile regression model with the instrumental variable was used. The data set covers the period between March 11, 2020 and June 29, 2021. The findings indicate that although the level of effects varied, an increase in the number of daily deaths has an increasing effect on the stringency index value in all the countries within the study. Meanwhile, it is observed that as the rate of people with age 65 and over increases, the stringency measures also increase in the countries implemented moderate and high-level restrictions.