Semih Tumen

• PhD
• Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test empirically whether there exist spillover externalities in job satisfaction, i.e., to test whether individual-level job satisfaction is affected by the aggregate job satisfaction level in a certain labor market environment. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use a linear-in-means model of socia...

Long-term environmental consequences of taxing fossil fuel usage have been extensively studied in the literature. However, these taxes may also impose several short-run macroeconomic policy challenges, the nature of which remains underexplored. This paper investigates the mechanisms through which environmental taxes on fossil fuel usage can affect...

Among better-educated employed men, the fraction of full-time full-year (FTFY) workers is quite high and stable—around 90 percent—over time in the U.S. Among those with lower education levels, however, this fraction is much lower and considerably more volatile, moving within the range of 62–82 percent for high school dropouts and 75–88 percent for...

This paper studies the economic content of the Bonferroni index. The most remarkable property of the Bonferroni index is that it overweights income transfers among the poor, and the weights are higher the lower the transfers occur on the income distribution. Hence, it is a good measure of inequality when changes in the living standards of the poor...

This paper develops a theoretical framework to consider fertility decisions within an endogenous sorting model of neighborhood effects. The models in the literature typically assume that each family is endowed with children whose expected schooling outcomes are determined by parental preferences on neighborhood quality. However, empirical studies r...

This paper estimates the causal effect of a targeted panic button program—implemented in two Turkish provinces between 2012 and 2016—on domestic violence. Difference-in-differences and synthetic control estimates suggest that the program notably increased physical violence against women both at the extensive and intensive margins. The likelihood of...

Employers use various proxies to predict the future labour productivity levels of the job applicants. Success in school, especially in high‐level coursework, is among the most widely used proxies to screen entry‐level candidates. We estimate the causal effect of graduating with honours (i.e. with a grade point average of 3.00 and above out of 4.00)...

The 1970s witnessed violent, widespread, and highly-politicized student protests in Turkey. Small protests turned into bloody street clashes, the death toll exceeded 5,000, and a military coup came in—which resulted in mass arrests. The universities were at the center of violent conflict. We study the education and labor market consequences of this...

We analyze the impact on crime of millions of refugees who entered and stayed in Turkey as a result of the civil war in Syria. Using a novel administrative data source on the flow of offense records to prosecutors’ offices in 81 provinces of the country each year, and utilizing the staggered movement of refugees across provinces over time, we estim...

This paper presents new evidence on the causal link between fertility and female labor supply by focusing on how informal employment interacts with maternal labor supply. We employ an IV strategy based on an unused data source for twin births in Turkey|a large middle-income country with extensive labor informality. We find that, following the first...

Purpose Using a regression discontinuity design in tandem with a difference-in-discontinuities analysis, the study finds that increasing the minimum wage reduces the employment probability of young males by 2.5–3.1 percentage points. Design/methodology/approach The authors exploit an age-specific minimum wage rule – which sets a lower minimum wage...

Improving the later outcomes of children through increasing their school attainment is a key policy priority in developing countries; yet, whether increasing government spending can improve school attainment is still an issue of debate. In this paper, we investigate the effect of a massive primary school construction program—which was launched as p...

Existing evidence suggests that low-skilled refugee influx may increase educational attainment among native adolescents due to reduced opportunities and returns in the lower segment of the labor market. In this paper, I test whether refugee influx can also increase the intensity of human capital accumulation among native adolescents who are enrolle...

Can high-quality local governance alleviate the environmental impact of large-scale refugee migration? The recent surge in refugee flows has brought additional challenges to local governments in Europe, the Middle East, and certain regions of Africa and Asia. In this paper, we focus on the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey and show that quality of...

We estimate the export and import pass‐through rates using product‐level data from Turkey. We find that the Turkish lira (TRY) exchange rate changes are mostly passed on to TRY prices of exports and imports—and, therefore, modestly to their prices in trading partners' currencies. The rate of average pass‐through to TRY prices is estimated at 89% fo...

Türkiye Tarım Sektörü'nde Katma Değer, İnovasyon, Dijital Tarım

We present cross-country evidence suggesting that agricultural credits have a positive impact on agricultural productivity. In particular, we find that doubling agricultural credits generates around 4-5 percent increase in agricultural productivity. We use two different agricultural production measures: (i) the agricultural component of GDP and (ii...

The Data for Refugees (D4R) Challenge resulted in many insights related to the movement patterns of the Syrian refugees within Turkey. In this chapter, we summarize some of the important findings, and suggest policy recommendations for the main areas of the challenge. These recommendations are sometimes broad suggestions, as the policy intervention...

The integration of Syrian refugees in the Turkish society is crucial for the long-term well-being of both populations. Education is one of the most important element to integrate Syrians’ children and prevent a “lost generation”. In this project, we investigate two main aspects related to refugees’ education: “How to improve Syrians’ access to scho...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate the causal effect of vocational high school (VHS) education on employment likelihood relative to general high school (GHS) education in Turkey using Census data. Design/methodology/approach To address non-random selection into high school types, the authors collect construction dates of the VHSs at...

Native children switch from public to private primary schools in response to increased refugee concentration in the Turkish public education system. 10 percentage-point increase in refugee-to-population ratio generates, on average, 0.12 percentage-point increase in private primary school enrollment. This roughly corresponds to 1 native child switch...

1970s witnessed violent, widespread, and highly-politicized student protests in Turkey. Small protests turned into bloody street clashes, the death toll exceeded 5,000, and a military coup came in-which resulted in mass arrests. Universities were at the center of the conflict and violence. We present a comprehensive empirical analysis of the educat...

Although the season of birth variable is often used as an instrumental variable to estimate the rate of returns to schooling in the labor economics literature, there is an emerging consensus that the season of birth is systematically associated with later outcomes in life such as the educational and labor market success; thus, it is highly likely n...

This paper argues that the structure (i.e., size and composition) of the informal search network is a crucial determinant of the career decisions of young workers. Building on the search-theoretic career choice and job mobility model proposed by Neal (1999), I compare the consequences of career advice by one's weak ties versus that by strong ties....

Civil conflict in Syria, started in March 2011, led to a massive wave of forced immigration from Northern Syria to the Southeastern regions of Turkey, which later had serious economic/political repercussions on the MENA region and most of Europe. This paper exploits this natural experiment to estimate the impact of Syrian refugees on the labor mark...

I develop a dynamic model of forward-looking entrepreneurs, who decide whether to operate in the formal economy or informal economy and choose how much to invest in their businesses, taking government policy as given. The government has access to two policy tools: taxes on formal business activity and enforcement (or policing) discouraging informal...

This paper develops a model of sequential job search to understand the factors determining the effect of tax and enforcement policies on the size (i.e., employment share) of informal sector. The focus is on the role of informal sector as a stepping stone to formal jobs. I argue that the stepping-stone role of informal jobs is an important concept d...

We exploit the regional variation in the unexpected (or forced) inflow of Syrian refugees as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of immigration on consumer prices in Turkey. Using a difference-in-differences strategy and a comprehensive data set on the regional prices of CPI items, we find that general level of consumer prices has declined...

Based on a law enacted in November 1999, males born on or before December 31st 1972 are given the option to benefit from a paid exemption from compulsory military service in Turkey. Exploiting this natural experiment, we devise an empirical strategy to estimate the intention-to-treat effect of this paid exemption on education and labor market outco...

The Syrian Conflict generated forced immigration from northern Syria to southeastern Turkey. Arrival of refugees resembles a natural experiment, which offers good opportunities to study the economic impact of immigration. I study three main outcomes: labor markets, consumer prices, and housing rents. I document moderate employment losses among nati...

Informal jobs offer skill acquisition opportunities that may facilitate a future switch to formal employment for young workers. In this sense, informal training on the job may be a viable alternative to formal schooling in an economy with a large and diverse informal sector. In this paper, I investigate if these considerations are relevant for the...

I develop an intra-firm theory of group design and teamwork in the presence of peer effects. The purpose is to understand the interlinkages between intra-firm group formation and the extent of wage dispersion within the firm. Given a set of heterogeneous workers, the manager faces the challenge of allocating workers into endogenous groups (or teams...

Estimates on the effect of job contact method (i.e., informal versus formal search) on wage offers vary considerably across studies, with some finding a positive correlation between getting help from informal connections and obtaining highly paid jobs, while others finding a negative one. In this paper, I investigate theoretically the sources of di...

The impact of immigration on the labor market outcomes of native-born workers has been a central issue of public debate. The main concern is that immigration can reduce the employment opportunities of native workers and generate downward pressure on their wages. A large body of literature has tried to test the validity of this conjecture. Although...

This paper investigates the mechanisms through which environmental taxes on fossil fuel usage can affect the main macroeconomic variables in the short-run. We concentrate on a particular mechanism: speculative storage. The existence of forward-looking speculators in the model improves the effectiveness of tax policies in reducing fossil fuel usage....

This paper investigates the mechanisms through which environmental taxes on fossil fuel usage can affect the main macroeconomic variables in the short-run. We concentrate on a particular mechanism: speculative storage. The existence of forward-looking speculators in the model improves the effectiveness of tax policies in reducing fossil fuel usage....

Using a national panel of housing units, this paper documents that the rate of nominal rigidity in housing rents is high in Turkey between 2008 and 2011. We find that, on average, 31.5% of the rents did not change from year to year in nominal terms. We then ask if the incidence of nominal rigidity depends on the turnover status of the housing unit....

Observationally equivalent workers are paid higher wages in larger firms. This fact is often called the “firm-size wage gap” and is regarded as a key empirical puzzle. Using microlevel data from Turkey, we document a new stylized fact: The firm-size wage gap is more pronounced for informal (unregistered) jobs than for formal (registered) jobs. To e...

We investigate whether individuals feel happier when others around them are happier in broadly defined worker groups. This will be a formal test of spillovers in happiness. Answering this question requires a careful handling of the reflection problem, as it may not be possible to separate the endogenous spillover effects from contextual effects unl...

This paper investigates the link between job satisfaction and home ownership. We explicitly focus on the effect of a transition from non-ownership to ownership on the self-reported job satisfaction scores. In other words, we concentrate on the change in job satisfaction response for individuals observed right before and after the transition. Utiliz...

Individuals tend to self-report higher well-being levels on certain days of the week than they do on the remaining days, controlling for observables. Using the 2008 release of the British Household Panel Survey, we test whether this empirical observation suffers from selection bias. In other words, we examine if subjective well-being is correlated...

This paper documents two new findings linking firm-size and gender pay gaps to informal employment using micro-level data from Turkey. First, we show that the firm-size wage gap, defined as larger firms paying higher wages to observationally equivalent workers, is greater for informal employment than formal employment. And, second, we find that the...

This paper presents a nonparametric analysis of the impact of the 2008 crisis on earnings distribution in Turkey. Using micro-level data from the Household Labor Force Survey (2004-2011). I show that the crisis has operated most visibly above the upper quartile of the earnings distribution. I present three main findings: (1) the share of the top de...

Most of the developed countries have been experiencing sub-replacement fertility. This leads to worries over the sustainability of economic growth in these countries. Given this concern, we ask the following questions: Is there a force that would allow economic growth and declining population to coexist? Is there a mechanism that could reverse the...

This paper analyzes the market for checks using the monopoly problem as an approximation. The need for such an analysis arises due to the following policy proposal: the Turkish government considers increasing the lump-sum amount that drawee banks are legally responsible to pay per bad check. We show that banks will tend to restrict the quantity of...

This paper develops a simple model of the market for checks in Turkey. The Central Bank controls the lump-sum amount that the drawee banks are legally responsible to pay per bad check. An increase in this amount is believed to support real economy. I show that banks will tend to restrict the quantity of checks when this responsibility is increased....

This paper bridges the job search literature and the literature on social interactions in labor markets. I investigate the connections between informal hiring channels, employment, wages, and labor market insti-tutions within the context of preference interactions. Heterogeneous unemployed workers choose whether to use their contacts to find jobs o...

Many developed countries have been experiencing sub-replacement fertility. This leads to worries over the sustainability of economic growth in these countries. Given this concern, we ask the following questions: Is there a force out there that would allow economic growth and declining population to coexist? Is there a mechanism that could push fert...

This paper analyzes the market for checks using the monopoly problem as an approximation. The need for such an analysis arises due to the following policy proposal : the Turkish government considers increasing the lump-sum amount that drawee banks are legally responsible to pay per bad check. We show that banks will tend to restrict the quantity of...

Bu calisma, sorumluluk tutarinin cek arzi uzerindeki muhtemel etkilerini basit bir iktisadi model cercevesinde incelemektedir. Model sorumluluk tutarindaki %1’lik bir artisin cek arzi uzerinde %1,7’ye kadar azalmaya yol acabilecegini ve bu duzenlemeden en fazla etkileneceklerin kucuk ve orta olcekli isletmeler olacagini tahmin etmektedir.