Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance, Hedge Fund Activism, Institutional Investors, Private Equity, Mergers and Acquisitions, Alternative Investments, Capital Market Development, Labor and Finance

Journal Articles

Managerial Activism with Senay Agca , Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming 

Featured in Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog 

Nominated for Best Paper Award 2019 FMA Conference  

Nominated for George Washington School of Business Best Summer Paper Award

Reforming Public Debt Governance in Turkey To Reach Debt Sustainability  with Selcuk Caner and Subidey Togan, Journal of Policy Modeling, Vol. 44, Issue 5, pp. 1057-1076 (2022).

Voluntary Private Pension Funds and Capital Market Development in Turkey with Fatih Kayhan, Asian Academy of Management Journal of Accounting & Finance, Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp. 195-240 (2022).  

Shareholder Coordination, Investment Horizon and Hedge Fund Activism  Applied Economics, vol. 54 (21), pp. 2390-2415 (2022).

Overlapping Board Connections with Banker Directors and Corporate Loan Terms: Evidence from Syndicated Loans , Global Finance Journal, Vol. 50 (2021).

Art Investment: Hedging or Safe Haven through Financial Crises with Belma Öztürkkal, Journal of Cultural Economics  44, pp. 481–529 (2020).

Featured in EconomistsTalkArt Blog

PA Turkey

An Overview of Voluntary Private Pension Funds in Turkey  with Fatih Kayhan,  Journal of Financial Research and Studies 13(25), 586-607 (2021).

Book Chapters

Revenue Forecasting Issues in Developing Countries with Selcuk Caner (2024, Current Issues in Finance, Gazi Kitapevi)

Profitability and Liquidity of Turkish Islamic Banks and the Global Financial Crisis with Guleid Ismail (2022, Muhasebe ve Finans Alaninda Guncel Calismalar, Gazi Kitapevi)

Reports

Financial and Economic Effects of Gender Diversity on Boards with Ata Can Bertay

The Introduction of Quota Implementations for Increasing Women on Boards and their Macroeconomic and Social Outcomes

Silos with Christo Pirinsky (Revise and Resubmit)

Human capital accumulation requires substantial investment and the ability to sell acquired skills in a market stimulates this investment. Marketability, however, partitions human capital into homogeneous pools of standardized skills (silos), which inevitably reduces the variety of skills available for the production process. Consistent with the idea that silos impede innovation, we find that creation and destruction activities in the economy concentrate within industries with similar skill sets. We also show that recessions force migrations of human capital across less similar industries, allowing for disruptions in one sector of the economy to spur technological innovation in other sectors.

Colonialism in Sub Saharan Africa, Access to Finance and Firm Performance with Lawrence Maishu Ngalim (Revise and Resubmit)

Firm performance is considered to be one of the main drivers of economic growth. Whether adequate access to external finance is essential for firm performance is still a point of debate in the literature. In this paper, we study the relationship between firms’ access to finance and their performance by using colonial railroads’ distance to firm locations as well as settler locations and distance to colonial headquarters as instruments to measure the demand side as well as the supply side effects of access to finance on firm performance. Focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, we observe that access to finance is indeed an important determinant of firm performance. Our results consistently suggest firms that have access to finance are less likely to go bankrupt, liquidate or go through reorganization. Revenue growth is not significantly affected by access to finance, suggestive of inefficiency within financial intermediaries to divert funds to investments with higher returns to capital. Our results are robust to alternative specifications and highlight the importance of access to finance for firms. 

Colonial Pathways, Access to Finance and Firm Performance within CEMAC with Lawrence Maishu Ngalim (Submitted) (appeared in Top Ten SSRN Downloads for Economic Growth and Africa (Development)) 

Firm growth is considered to be one of the main drivers of economic growth. Whether adequate access to external finance is an important factor for firm growth is still a point of debate in literature. In this paper, we study the relationship between firms’ access to finance and their performance by using colonial railroads’ and ports’ distance to firm locations as an instrument. Focusing on the CEMAC region (Central African Economic and Monetary Community) which is one of the oldest and important groupings within Africa, we observe that access to finance is indeed an important determinant of firm growth.

Private Equity Industry in Africa: Firm Survival and Growth with Lawrence Maishu Ngalim

Availability of private equity markets in Africa are quite limited even though this type of financing creates an environment for entrepreneurial firms to gain access to finance. Availability of private equity financing opportunities potentially relieves firms’ financial constraints with likely benefits on employment and firm growth. The literature sustains this claim with evidence from other parts of the world, however, little is known about the effect of private equity on firms in African economies. This paper presents the landscape of this industry on this region and makes use of the Crunchbase dataset to answer two questions: (1) Does private equity help firms survive? (2) Is firm survival associated with firm growth? Overall, results reveal that recipients of external financing from the private equity industry have a higher survival probability than non-recipients, and such a survival strongly correlates with proxies of firm growth. Even after separating funding into various growth stages–– i.e., angel investors, venture capitalists, and private equity, results remain largely unchanged.

Crowdfunding, Financial Access, and Entrepreneurship with Lawrence Maishu Ngalim

In this paper, we ask whether the adoption of recent technological improvements in delivering financial services such as crowdfunding assists the financially excluded to enhance/embark on entrepreneurial ventures. To address this; we build on the premise that ceteris paribus, a borrower’s distrust in traditional financial institutions attributable to ex-ante asymmetric information, partially reflects their state of financial exclusion, which plausibly triggers the search for an alternative financing model such as crowdfunding. Empirical results highlight the marginal benefits of adopting this alternative financing model: all else equal, crowdfunding positively and strongly affects entrepreneurial access to finance. Our findings suggest that in countries with less bank account penetration, entrepreneurs are more likely to rely on crowdfunding financing. These effects remain robust to alternative specifications that capture country-level differences in crowdfunding opportunities. The study has policy implications on private sector development regarding alternative financing channels for entrepreneurs.

Reforming External Debt Governance in Turkey to Reach External Debt Sustainability, with Selcuk Caner and Subidey Togan

During the last decade Turkey has promoted economic growth by de-emphasizing the risks of external constraints. But external constraints are important. The paper argues that the attainment and maintenance of external debt sustainability is challenging, and that it is not a choice. A country whose government fails to respect external debt sustainability would eventually default on its external debt. Since the penalty in the case of default is the inability to borrow in international markets, the cost of defaulting on external debt could be extremely high on the country. Sustainability of external debt requires in the case of deterministic approach the fulfillment of the solvency condition, derived from intertemporal budget constraint, as well as of the liquidity condition, and in the stochastic case debt is sustainable if the probability that debt is on an exploding trajectory in years out is small.  Deterministic and stochastic versions of sustainability of external debt analysis reveals that Turkey's current level of external debt is not sustainable. Various simulations indicate the magnitude of adjustments required in order to achieve sustainability of external debt over time. Since solvency is a rather complex concept, and its governance is difficult and delicate, the paper argues that the fulfillment of the sustainability of external debt condition should be left to an autonomous public institution, the External Debt Council, to be established with sufficient financial and technical resources in order to manage external debt.

Market Transparency and Investor Activism, with Murat Tinic

Investor activism remains one of the important corporate governance mechanisms today. Through activism, investors can seek control by accumulating a number of voting shares or by winning boards seats. However, this is costly. As a result, the activist would need to have an incentive to take on their investment in order to achieve trading profits. Using microstructure trading data from the Securities and Exchange Commission, we first analyze whether trading patters in hidden orders can shed light on the activists' intentions on target firms. The literature also argues that coordination among institutional owners matter for an activist to be successful in their demands. As a result, we next analyze hidden orders to see whether informed institutional investors trade target firm stock when an investor activist arrives. Our findings indicate that there is increased hidden order activity starting two periods before the quarter of activism announcement and that these results significant for targets with more concentrated ownership among blockholders compared to sample of matched firms that did not receive activism. The results provide more insights into the actions of investor activists such as hedge funds as well as their coordination ability with other institutional blockholders within the target firm. 

Predicting Hedge Fund Activism using Machine Learning, with Murat Tinic and Tolunay Kup

Firm Financing Decisions, Fintech and the Paycheck Protection Program with Murat Tinic

Does Gender of CEO Matter for Firm Risk Taking and Performance Under Uncertainty? with  Oguz Ersan and Cigdem Vural Yavas

Impact of Social Media Usage on Firm Value: A Cross-Cultural Study of Hospitality Industry , with Belma Öztürkkal 

TUBITAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) - 1001 Role of Risk Factor Knowledge of Individual Investors in Preference of Unregulated Financial Products: Unregulated Financial Product Mapping for Turkey, Evaluation of Effects of Regulation and a Regulation Proposal (Researcher)

TUBITAK - 1005 Artificial intelligence-based decision support system for dynamic financial scoring and lending in company loan applications (Researcher)

2023

Financial Management Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL (October, presented by co-author)

Financial Management Association European Conference, Aalborg, Denmark (June, Presenter, Discussant)

9th Finance Workshop, Middle East Technical University, Ankara (presented by co-author) 

Global Finance Conference, Treviso, Italy (June, presented by co-author)

2nd EBRD and TOBB Workshop on the Status of Women on Boards, Istanbul  (January, Presenter)

2022

Global Development Finance Conference (Africa Growth Institue) (November,  presented by co-author)

8th Finance Workshop, Ozyegin University, Istanbul (Presenter) 

EBRD and TOBB Workshop on the Status of Women on Boards, Ankara (Presenter)

Academy of Finance Conference, Chicago, IL and virtual (Presenter)

2021

World Finance Conference (Presenter, Discussant, Session Chair) 

Global Development Finance Conference (Africa Growth Institue) (presented by co-author)

Kadir Has University Economics Departmental Seminar (Presenter) 

Kadir Has University Departmental Seminar (Presenter)

2020 

World Finance Congress (Presenter, Discussant, Session Chair)

Southern Finance Association Annual Meeting (Presenter, Discussant)

Financial Management Association (Discussant)

Kadir Has University Departmental Seminar (Presenter)

2019

Financial Management Association, New Orleans, USA (presented by co-author)

Kadir Has University Departmental Seminar (Presenter)

2018

Financial Management Association European Conference, Kristiansand, Norway (Presenter)

Virtus Global Center for Corporate Governance Conference , Izmir, Turkey (Presenter)

Kadir Has University Departmental Seminar (Presenter)

Istanbul Finance Congress (presented by co-author)

2017

Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey (Presenter)

Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey (Presenter)

Özyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey (Presenter)

2016

Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey (Presenter)

Ankara University, Faculty of Law, Ankara, Turkey (Presenter)

The World Bank, DECFP, Extended Term Consultant

Cornerstone Research (Manager, started as an Associate))

Bengur Bryan & Co., Inc. (Associate)

Etki Girisimciligi Programi Mentor

Arya Women Investment Platform Challenge Club Member

Member of ECGI, AFA, EFA, AEA, FMA

Ad hoc Reviewer (Applied Economics, Review of International Economics, International Journal of Emerging Markets, Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance, Turkish Studies, Finans Politik ve Ekonomik Yorumlar Dergisi)

Istanbul Finance Seminar Series Organization Committee (2021-2022 Academic Year)

National Science Foundation Grant Reviewer (2019-2021)

Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) External Grant Reviewer (2019, 2020)

Northern Finance Association 2021 Conference Session Chair (Labor and Finance)