Browsing by Author "Bilgel, Firat"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

Citation Count: 44
The Economic Costs of Separatist Terrorism in Turkey
(Sage Publications inc, 2017) Bilgel, Firat; Karahasan, Burhan Can
Turkey has been suffering from separatist terrorism and the political conflict it implies since the mid-1980s, both of which are believed to have a negative impact on economic welfare. This article investigates the economic costs of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorism, particularly in the Eastern and Southeastern provinces of Turkey by invoking the synthetic control method. We create a synthetic control group that mimics the socioeconomic characteristics of the provinces exposed to terrorism before the PKK terrorism emerged in the mid-1980s. We then compare the real gross domestic product (GDP) of the synthetic provinces without terrorism to the actual provinces with terrorism for the period 1975 to 2001. Causal inference is carried out by comparing the real per capita GDP gap between the synthetic and actual provinces against the intensity of PKK terrorist activity. Extended over a period of fourteen years (1988 to 2001), we find that after the emergence of terrorism, the per capita real GDP in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia declined by about 6.6 percent relative to a comparable synthetic Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia without terrorism.
Citation Count: 6
The effectiveness of transplant legislation, procedures and management: Cross-country evidence
(Elsevier Ireland Ltd, 2013) Bilgel, Firat
This article investigates the impact of legal determinants of cadaveric and living donor organ transplantation rates using panel data on legislative, procedural and managerial aspects of organ transplantation and procurement, government health expenditures, enrollment rates, religious beliefs, legal systems and civil rights and liberties for 62 countries over a 2-year period. Under living donor organ transplantation, we found that guaranteeing traceability of organs by law or performing psychiatric evaluation to living donors has a sizeable, negative impact on living transplant rates once the remaining determinants of living transplantation have been controlled for. Under cadaveric transplantation, our findings do not suggest an unequivocal and positive association between presumed consent, donor registries and cadaveric transplant rates. However, legally requiring family consent or maintaining written procurement standards for deceased donors has a sizeable, negative impact on cadaveric transplant rates. The latter finding suggests that informing families rather than asking for consent may be an effective strategy to raise procurement rates while respecting patient autonomy. Finally, we confirm that predominantly non-Christian countries have significantly higher living but lower cadaveric transplant rates. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Citation Count: 31
Financial incentives for kidney donation: A comparative case study using synthetic controls
(Elsevier, 2015) Bilgel, Firat; Galle, Brian
Although many commentators called for increased efforts to incentivize organ donations, theorists and some evidence suggest these efforts will be ineffective. Studies examining the impact of tax incentives generally report zero/negative coefficients, but these studies incorrectly define their tax variables and rely on difference-in-differences despite likely failures of the parallel trends assumption. We identify the causal effect of tax legislation to serve as an organ donor on living kidney donation rates in the U.S. states using more precise tax data and allowing for heterogeneous time-variant causal effects. Employing a synthetic control method, we find that the passage of tax incentive legislation increased living unrelated kidney donation rates by 52 percent in New York relative to a comparable synthetic New York in the absence of legislation. It is possible that New York is unique, but our methodology does not allow us to measure accurately effects in other states. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Citation Count: 0
Organ Donation and New Policies: Do We Need to Act Less Generally and More Locally?
(Amer Medical Assoc, 2015) Bilgel, Firat; Galle, Brian
[No Abstract Available]
Citation Count: 5
Self-rated health and endogenous selection into primary care
(Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, 2018) Bilgel, Firat; Karahasan, Burhan Can
This study assesses the causal effects of primary care utilization on subjective health status in Turkey using individual-level data from the 2012 Health Research Survey. Employing recursive bivariate ordered models that take into account the possibility that selection into healthcare might be correlated with the respondent's self reported health status, we find that selection into primary care is endogenously determined and that the utilization of primary care significantly improves self-rated health after controlling, for sociodemographics, socioeconomic status, health behaviors and risk factors, and access to healthcare. We show that the causal association between healthcare utilization and health status is robust to the use of objective measures of health and specific types of care, suggesting that the use of a single-item question on self-rated health and binary measures of preventive care utilization is valid.
Citation Count: 3
Spatial distribution of healthcare access and utilization: do they affect health outcomes in Turkey?
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2019) Karahasan, Burhan Can; Bilgel, Firat
This paper examines the link between healthcare access/utilization and health outcomes in Turkey within a spatial framework. Our initial set of findings highlight an overall duality in health indicators which is getting stronger once a spatial dimension is included. Specifically we find wider spatial dichotomy for health outcomes relative to access and utilization measures. Finally once we consider unobserved heterogeneity, spatial spillovers and spatial variability; our results pinpoint a non-robust link between healthcare access/utilization measures and health outcomes which works better among the already developed regions of Turkey. Overall, our combined results indicate an ongoing polarization of health-based human capital development which coincides with local variations of the relationship between healthcare access/utilization and outcomes in Turkey.
Citation Count: 3
Spatial distribution of inequalities in end-stage renal disease in the United States
(Elsevier Sci Ltd, 2019) Bilgel, Firat
This paper assesses the locally varying effects of socioeconomic, racial and morbidity-related geographic heterogeneity on end-stage renal disease prevalence in the contiguous United States. Employing an exploratory spatial data analysis and a geographically weighted Poisson regression that takes into account spatial nonstationarity, spatial auto-correlation and the nature of count data, findings indicate a striking continental divide in the United States not only in terms of ESRD burden but also in terms of all of its risk factors whose effects significantly vary over space. A deepening of socioeconomic heterogeneity has the strongest ESRD prevalence-increasing-effects in counties of the southeastern states. On the other hand, rising prevalence of comorbid conditions and behavioral risk factors such as obesity, diabetes and binge drinking prevalence has the strongest ESRD prevalence-increasing-effects in counties of the Pacific states. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Citation Count: 7
Sunsets and federal lawmaking: Evidence from the 110th Congress
(Elsevier Science inc, 2015) Fagan, Frank; Bilgel, Firat
We test the hypothesis that the choice to include a sunset provision increases the likelihood that a bill becomes law. We develop a model where the legislator's knowledge of the increase in passage probability from including a sunset provision influences the legislator's choice to do so. Because legislators may either include a sunset provision to increase passage probability, or observe low passage probability and respond with a sunset provision, the choice to include a sunset provision is endogenous. Consequently, the causal effect of temporary enactment is identified by using the legislator's number of offspring as a source of exogenous variation in the choice to include a sunset provision. Employing recursive bivariate probit, we find that the average causal effect of including a sunset provision is sixty percent. We also find that the average causal effect of including sunset provisions in bills that already include them is about twenty percent. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Citation Count: 23
Thirty Years of Conflict and Economic Growth in Turkey: A Synthetic Control Approach
(Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2019) Bilgel, Firat; Karahasan, Burhan Can
This study seeks to estimate the causal effects of PKK separatist terrorism on economic development in Turkey using the synthetic control method. By creating a synthetic control group that reproduces the Turkish Gross Domestic Product (GDP) before PKK terrorism emerged in the late 1980s, we compare the GDP of the synthetic Turkey and the actual for the period 1955-2008. Our study finds that the Turkish per capita GDP would have been higher by about $2600 had it not been exposed to terrorism. This translates into an average of 21.4% higher per capita GDP over a period of 21 years.