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 market outcomes of natives in Turkey. Using a difference-indifferences strategy, we find that immigration has considerably affected the employment outcomes of natives, while its impact on wage outcomes has been negligible. We document notable employment losses among informal workers as a consequence of refugee inflows. Formal employment increased slightly potentially due to increased social services in the region. The majority of those who lost their informal jobs have either left the labor force or remained unemployed. Formal employment and unemployment rates have increased, while labor force participation, informal employment, and job finding rates have declined among natives. Disadvantaged groups, i.e., women, younger workers, and less-educated workers, have been affected the worst. The prevalence of informal employment in the Turkish labor markets has amplified the negative impact of Syrian refugee inflows on natives' labor market outcomes. Overall, the impact of Syrian refugee inflows on the Turkish labor markets has been limited, which suggests that the potential costs on the European and other affected labor markets might also be limited.

No abstract

No abstract

Previous research on military conscription exclusively focuses on the effect of military service on subsequent labor market outcomes. I examine the effect of peacetime conscription on early labor market outcomes of potential conscripts before they are called up for service. In a simple theoretical framework with costly job search and no job security, I show that an expected interruption in civilian life reduces the incentive of teenagers to search for a job. Using microdata from Turkey, Argentina, Peru and Spain, I present evidence that the anticipation of compulsory conscription reduces the labor force participation of teenage men by 6.7 percent compared to men in their twenties, and employment by 11 percent, while raising unemployment in this group by 9 percent. Interestingly, I find mirroring effects on teenage women who are not subject to conscription. Women experience a 7.5 percent decrease in the labor force participation and a 10-13 percent decrease in employment after the abolition of conscription, suggesting a high degree of substitutability between men and women.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper estimates the causal effect of vocational high school (VHS) education on employment likeli-hood relative to general high school (GHS) education in Turkey using census data. To address non-random selection into high school types, we collect construction dates of the VHSs at the town-level and use VHS availability in the town by age 13 as an instrumental variable. The first-stage estimates suggest that the availability of VHS does not affect the overall high school graduation rates, but gener-ates a substitution from GHS to VHS. The OLS estimates yield the result that the individuals with a VHS degree are around 5 percentage points more likely to be employed compared to those with a GHS de-gree. When we use the availability of VHS as an instrumental variable, we still find positive and statisti-cally significant effect of VHS degree on employment likelihood relative to GHS degree. However, once we include town-specific socio-economic variables to control for education, employment, and business activity levels in the town, the IV estimates get much smaller and become statistically insignificant. We conclude that although the VHS construction generates a substitution from GHS to VHS education, this substitution is not transformed into increased employment rates in a statistically significant way. We also argue that location-specific controls improve the reliability of the school construction/proximity instruments. JEL Classification:C26, I21, J21, J24

Turkey's export rediscount credit programme provides credit to exporting firms that is both easy to acquire and is offered at a low interest rate. We follow the performance of firms that first received the credit in 2012 when the amount of credit provided went up dramatically in 2012. We use propensity score matching to construct a control group of firms with which we compare the credit‐receiving firms before and after 2012 in a difference‐in‐differences framework. These firms have increased their exports substantially in the following years compared to the matched firms with similar propensities to receive the rediscount credit. We find that firms that received the rediscount credit increased their exports by 65% and total sales by 19% compared to matched firms. We find no statistically significant effects on domestic sales and profits. We also find suggestive evidence that the effects are larger for smaller firms and the effects fade away after a certain amount of credits.

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 the 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 the education and labor market outcomes of the individuals in the target group. We find that the paid exemption reform reduces the years of schooling among males who are eligible to benefit from the reform relative to the ineligible ones. In particular, the probability of receiving a college degree or above falls among the eligible males. The result is robust to alternative estimation strategies. We find no reduction in education when we implement the same exercises with (i) data on females and (ii) placebo reform dates. The interpretation is that the reform has reduced the incentives to continue education for the purpose of deferring military service. We also find suggestive evidence that the paid exemption reform reduces the labor income for males in the target group. The reduction in earnings is likely due to the reduction in education.JEL codes: C21, I21, I26, J21, J31.

No abstract