Essays on Turkish Labor Market
Özet
Turkish labor market has fundamental problems; labor force participation and employment rates
are quite low especially among women and informality is prevalent. This thesis includes
analysis on three issues in Turkish labor market. First, the factors behind the rise in the female
labor force participation in recent years are analyzed. Cohort effects, which can be considered
as a proxy for change in societal norms about women’s employment, are found to be the main
determinant in the rise. Improvement in educational attainment of women and decline in fertility
rate are also found to have significant contributions. Second, the causal relation between public
employment and private employment is investigated. Results suggest that rise in public
employment generates additional employment in non-tradable private industries whereas it has
no effect on tradable sector employment. Finally, the determinants of wage over reporting and
the causal link between wage over reporting and minimum wage are investigated. The results
show that wages of female, young and low educated workers have higher probability of being
over reported to administrative bodies. In addition, the propensity of over reporting increases
after minimum wage hike.
