Essays on informality in the Turkish labor market

Download
index.pdf
2012
Kan, Elif Öznur
Show full item record
197
views
91
downloads
This thesis investigates the nature, extent and dynamics of informal employment in the Turkish labor market using 2006-2009 Turkish Income and Living Conditions Survey. It is mainly a collection of three essays. In the first essay, an attempt is made to analyze the relevance and implications of three alternative characterizations of informality which include an enterprise-based definition associating informality with small firms, an extended enterprise-based definition incorporating social security protection, and a definition based exclusively on social security coverage. Using probit analysis, we show that social security criterion is the best measure given its ability to capture key relationships between individual characteristics and informality. In the second essay, we compute Markov transition probabilities of individuals moving across six labor market states, then estimate multinomial logit regressions to identify underlying dynamics of variant mobility patterns. Confirming traditional theory which sees formal employment as the ultimate desirable state, we find that formal-salaried individuals are the most reluctant to move and that the probability of transition from informal-salaried state to formal-salaried state is five times that of reverse transition. In the third essay, we examine formal/informal employment earnings differentials. OLS estimation of standard Mincerian equations reveals an informal penalty, half of which can be explained by observable characteristics. Moreover, applying fixed effects regressions, we show that unobserved individual fixed effects when combined with controls for observable individual and employment characteristics explain the pay differentials entirely
Labor mobility, Labor movement, Labor market
http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614491/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/21643
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

Youth in the labor market and the transition from school to work in Turkey
İlhan, Bengi; Dayıoğlu Tayfur, Meltem; Tunalı, İnsan Tunalı; Department of Economics (2012)
In this thesis, we examine labor market outcomes for the youth (ages 15-29) using microdata from several rounds of the Turkish Household Labor Force Survey (HLFS). We begin by examining demographic trends. We then rely on synthetic cohorts. The fact that the HLFS sample frame targets the civilian non-institutional population brings about difficulties in interpreting labor market indicators. We show that a more reasonable picture of schooling and work choices emerges when a simple correction for ‘missing mal...
Persistence of informal employment in Turkey
Başak, Zeynep; Taymaz, Erol; Department of Economics (2013)
The primary aim of this study is to examine the persistence of informal employment in Turkey and to test two hypotheses proposed by labor market segmentation theory (LMS) which suggest that there are persistent wage, security, working conditions, and control mechanisms differentials between the various segments of the labor market and the labor mobility between the segments is limited. In doing so, two data sets have been utilized: the Household Labor Force Survey (2006-2011) and the retrospective labor mar...
An Analysis of Turkish migration and asylum policies in the framework of world systems theory: labour market integration of the Syrians under “temporary protection”
Çam, Faruk; Göksel, Asuman; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2019)
This thesis analyses Turkish migration and refugee policies within the framework of World Systems Theory, with a special focus on Syrian refugee crisis which was started in 2011. Republic of Turkey has experienced a massive influx of Syrian refugees in a short period of time. Republic of Turkey, having still been holding the geographical limitation to the 1951 Geneva Convention, does not recognize Syrian asylum seekers as refugees in the legal sense. Regardless of their legal status, Syrian refugees had to ...
Essays on quasi-experimental studies in labor economics
Öztürk, Ahmet; Ercan, Hakan; Tümen, Semih; Department of Economics (2017)
This dissertation consists of two empirical papers that explore the causal relationship between education and labor market outcomes in Turkey based on quasi-experimental methods. The instrumental variable strategy has the potential to accurately estimate the true rate of return to schooling, but good instruments are hard to find. In the first essay of the thesis, I develop a new instrument from an unexpected decline in graduates and new admissions in post-secondary education from the student protests in the...
Poverty and Turkish labor markets
Erdil, Erkan (Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Ankara, Turkey), 2007-12-1)
This study aims to determine the relations between poverty and the dynamics of Turkish labor market. In this context, two secondary aims are also targeted. First is to demonstrate the situation of the poor in Turkey with international comparisons by employing various socio-economic measures. Second, is to clarify the poverty problem in Turkey in the framework of Turkish labor markets and to offer some policy recommendations directed towards Turkish labor markets. The study finds out endogenous relations bet...
Citation Formats
E. Ö. Kan, “Essays on informality in the Turkish labor market,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2012.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr