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2. Data and methodology
The common point of the abovementioned firm-level studies is that they look at the impact of uncertainty on a univariate balance sheet indicator or a single aspect of firm performance. Nevertheless, so far no study deals with the link between uncertainty and overall firm performance measured by a multivariate indicator. In this respect, our study introduces a novel approach by analyzing the impact of uncertainty on a multivariate composite indicator produced from firms’
balance sheets. There are several composite indicators suggested by the literature to measure the overall firm performance [32–35]. However, these indicators were mostly designed for the listed firms in developed countries and may not be appropriate for measuring the performance of Turkish firms. Hence, in this study, MFA score developed by Çolak [36] using the data of Borsa İstanbul firms is used as a more accurate indicator since it captures the distinctive characteristics of Turkish firms.
Additionally, in investigating the association between firm performance and uncertainty, another important issue is the type of uncertainty examined. In the lit- erature, numbers of uncertainty measures are created, such as political, trade, fiscal policy, monetary policy, financial, news uncertainties, and many more [5, 37–40].
In our chapter, our main concern is the overall economic uncertainty, consumer, financial, and trade uncertainties since we believe these factors are directly related to firms’ balance sheets.
The chapter is structured as follows: after introduction, we will explain the details of the data set we exploited and methodology used in our analyses. In the third section, we will explain our main results. And finally, we will provide con- cluding remarks.
Banking and Finance
financial uncertainty index mostly indicates market volatility through global financial conditions. On the other hand, economic uncertainty is a weighted index of consumers, producers, forecasters, and economic policy uncertainty indices in a dynamic factor model framework. Finally, trade uncertainty index measures uncertainty related to trade in the Economist Intelligence Unit country reports. The descriptive statistics of uncertainty indices are exhibited in Table 3.
The movement in the economic uncertainty index for Turkish economy over time is depicted in Figure 1. It is evident from the figure that there are two specific episodes, where uncertainty has risen sharply. The first one is the global financial crisis from 2008 till the last quarter of 2009 and the other one corresponds to the period after the 2018 foreign exchange market turbulence in Turkey. In this study, we will give particular attention to these episodes to investigate the causality from uncertainty to firm balance sheets.
Variable Obs. Mean Std. dev. Min Max
Acid-test ratio 13,356 1.43 1.59 0.00 28.68
ST liabilities/current assets 13,356 0.83 0.82 0.03 19.99
Total liabilities/equity 13,356 2.36 6.27 −1.52 134.45
EBITDA/assets 13,356 0.08 0.10 −0.80 0.86
Financial exp./sales 13,356 0.05 0.33 −14.84 6.46
Net profit/sales 13,356 0.02 0.93 −47.80 18.28
Retained earnings/assets 13,356 −0.01 0.43 −5.05 1.23
MFA score 13,356 0.42 1.02 −3.48 3.28
Table 2.
Descriptive statistics of MFA score variables.
MFAscore = 0.24 X 1 − 0.14 X 2 − 0.03 X 3 + 3.76 X 4 − 0.72 X5 + 0.20 X 6 + 1.14 X 7
X 1 = (CashEquivalents + Securities + ShortTermTradeRecievables) ∕ (ShortTermLiabilities) :
This indicator, also known as the acid-test ratio, shows how much the short-term debt of the firm can be met with cash and cash equivalents
X 2 = ShortTermLiabilites / CurrentAssets :
It measures the firm’s ability to pay its short-term liabilities with short-term assets
X 3 = TotalLiabilities / Equities
It shows how much sufficient the firm’s equities to pay its debt X 4 = EBITDA / TotalAssets
It is the profitability of the firm from its main activities by asset size
X 5 = FinancialExpenses / NetSales
Indicates the capacity of the company to pay the FX and interest expenses arising from its debts
X 6 = NetProfit (Loss) / NetSales
It is the net earnings (or loss) of the firm per sale at the end of the period
X 7 = Retained Earnings / Total Assets
It is the measure of cumulative profit or loss from the past periods. It also contains information about the age of the company
Table 1.
MFA score equation and variable definitions.
Our econometric analysis basically use time-varying Granger causality between an uncertainty index and MFA score based on Rossi and Wang [42] paper. This meth- odology is more powerful if the series have instabilities. In addition, classical Granger causality test does not allow to drive time-varying parameters. VAR-based reduced- form Granger causality test requires stationarity in the data, and its test statistics is not valid if the series have potential structural breaks. Because of the nonstationary nature and existence of structural breaks in Figure 1, Rossi and Wang’s [42] is the best methodology to analyze time-varying Granger causality with this data.
Following Rossi and Wang [42], Eq. (2) shows a reduced-form time-varying parameter VAR:
A t (L) y t = u t (1)
A t (L) = I − A 1,t L − A 2,t L 2 − … − A m,t L m (2)
u t ~iid (0, Σ) (3) where A j,t , j = 1, … m show time-varying coefficients, [y t , y t−1 , … , y t−m ]′ show variables in the model, and u t shows error term.
The iteration of Eq. (2) and projection of yt onto the linear space created by
( y t−1 , y t−2 , … , y t−m )′ derive the following equation:
Uncertainty indices Obs. Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
Economic 57 0.07 0.83 −0.90 2.60
Financial 57 −0.05 0.93 −1.30 3.20
Consumer 57 0.02 1.13 −1.10 5.90
Trade 57 0.33 0.20 0.00 0.89
Table 3.
Descriptive statistics of uncertainty indices.
Figure 1.
Economic uncertainty index for Turkey. Source: Cosar and Sahinoz [5].
Banking and Finance
y t = β 1,t y t−1 + β 2,t y t−2 + … + β m,t y t−m + ε t (4) where β j,t , j = 1, … m show time-varying coefficients, [y t , y t−1 , … , y t−m ]′ show vari- ables in the model, and ε t shows heteroskedastic and serially correlated error term.
Finally, based on Eq. (4), robust Granger causality test figures out the validity of the null hypothesis in Eq. (5):
H 0 : β t = 0, for all t = 1, … , T (5)