Regional Economic Effects of Refugees: Turkish Case

Abstract

The conflicts in Syria started at year 2011 and series of events resulted with a massive amount of people to migrate some other countries. Turkey hosts the highest number of Syrian refugees in the World, about 3.6 million people. This high number of refugee inflow has affected Turkey in many ways and this study aims to focus on the economic aspect of this incident. At the first phase of the movement, refugees were preferring to stay within regions that are close to Syria. Since the amount of people that has been intake was massive compared to the regions and cities they had settled, the inflow had some economic consequences particularly on employment rates, preferences, price levels and foreign trade. In the economic theory price level, employment and foreign trade are prominent factors for economic growth. Therefore, this study is concerning the changes in these parameters to have an opinion about the effects of refugees on the regional economy of Turkey at the regions where refugees are concentratedly settled. In the empirical analysis Difference-in-Differences estimation methodology has been used. According to the estimation results, inflationary effects of refugees have been found to be statistically significant for rental prices but not for other concerned fundamental consumption goods. Employment results of the estimation suggest that the refugees’ effect is negative on the natives’ employment. The foreign trade aspect of the results has been found to be positive only on export.