An empirical investigation on the determinants and extend ofderivative usage by firms in Turkey: An example of BIST

The main purpose of this study is to understand the determinants of corporate hedging and examine the factors influencing the use of derivatives by non-financial firms in Turkey. This study examines both determinants of the decision to use derivatives and to what extend they affect derivative usage. This examination requires the use of both the Logistic regression and Tobit regression to examine decision to use derivatives and extend of derivative usage, respectively. The analysis is based on a sample of 200 firms listed on the Borsa İstanbul (BİST) in 2015. Logit analysis suggests that firm's size and foreign sales are important factors associated with the decision to use derivatives. These findings support transaction costs and economies of scale and exposure to financial price risk hypothesis. On the other hand, Tobit results show that once the decision to use derivatives has been made, a firm uses more derivatives as its size increases and as it makes foreign sales. In some models, which are constructed to avoid multicollinearity problem, both Logit and Tobit analysis suggest that return on assets (ROA) and foreign debt are negatively and positively related with decision to use derivatives and extend of derivative usage, respectively. In addition, the quick ratio is found to be negatively related to derivative usage in some models for Logit and Tobit regression.