The flight of the white collars

By analyzing two novel data sets from Turkey, we provide empirical evidence for yet another negative consequence of civil conflicts. We show that the long running civil cinflict in Turkey has been driving away doctors and other medical personnel from conflict areas, and the availability of medical personal is positively associated with public health. By doing so, we illuminate an important, yet never analyzed before mechanism through which civil conflicts exert their long-term negative influences on the most important "life chances" of societies, namely, the chance to lead a healthy life. We then proceed to provide some evidence that a similar dynamic is in play in education as well

On the investment implications of bankruptcy laws

Axiomatic analysis of bankruptcy problems reveals three major principles: (i) proportionality (PRO), (ii) equal awards (EA), and (iii) equal losses (EL). However, most real life bankruptcy procedures implement only the proportionality principle. We construct a noncooperative investment game to explore whether the explanation lies in the alternative implications of these principles on investment behavior. Our results are as follows (i) EL always induces higher total investment than PRO which in turn induces higher total investment than EA; (ii) PRO always induces higher egalitarian social welfare than both EA and EL in interior equilibria; (iii) PRO induces higher utilitarian social welfare than EL in interior equilibria but its relation to EA depends on the parameter values (however, a numerical analysis shows that on a large part of the parameter space, PRO induces higher utilitarian social welfare than EA)

The geo-temporal evolution of violence in civil conflicts

Existing works on diffusion fail to account for the incapacitating effects conflict events may have on the operational capability of the combatant sides and how these effects may determine the evolution of a conflict. I hypothesize that it is those events with losses on the state side that are likely to be associated with geo-temporal spillovers, whereas events with insurgency losses are less likely to be associated with future mayhem in their vicinity. To test my arguments, I first introduce a new, comprehensive and detailed event dataset on the long-running civil conflict in Turkey. The Turkish State–PKK Conflict Event Database (TPCONED) includes the exact date and county-level location for the fatal events of the armed conflict between the Turkish state and the rebel organization PKK since its very beginning in 1984 with detailed information on combatant casualties. I then employ a split population bi-probit model which allows me to comprehensively depict the geotemporal evolution of the conflict by acknowledging, estimating and accounting for the variation in the underlying conflict proneness across locations as a latent variable that shapes the diffusion of events. The results of the statistical analyses offer support for my hypotheses and reveal that how events evolve over space and time is conditioned by the damages suffered by the combatant sides. I demonstrate the robustness of these results on a matched sample I obtain by employing the Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) on the data

Protectionist demands in globalization

This paper analyzes a small, open economy whose citizens have single-peaked preferences on the tariff rate for an import good. They publicly declare this rate to the government, which has discretion in implementing it. While the government has an incentive not to deviate too much from the publicly chosen tariff rate, its final choice is determined by bargaining with a foreign lobby that has a much lower optimal rate and offers monetary transfers in return for lower tariffs. The authors show that the expectation of foreign influence causes citizens to vote for a more protectionist tariff policy. Moreover, citizens’ behavior leads to an increase in transfers by the foreign lobby.Tariff ; Trade

Veto players and political decision making

This dissertation studies political decision making through a veto players approach which entails identifying those political actors with the power to veto the decision, and understanding the political outcome as a product of the interaction of these actors. The veto players literature so far takes veto players as simple, domestic actors with given preferences that are common knowledge to everyone. This approach leaves out any strategic interaction that may take place among veto players as it treats them as commonly known preference profiles, and thus creates serious gaps in the literature. This dissertation aims to fill these gaps in the literature by treating veto players, and those third parties that the veto players are accountable to as strategic actors in the game of politics which may take place in limited-information settings. The second important factor that the literature has not explored yet is the emergence of new veto players. This dissertation acknowledges that in certain policy areas the set of relevant veto players may include foreign actors as well as domestic ones, and analyzes how the emergence and the existence of these new players influence political decision making and the resulting policies. Finally, the fact that veto players in a political system are either elected or appointed, and thus are usually accountable to those who effect or appoint them, is the third factor that the veto players literature has yet to take into account. This dissertation includes those third parties as strategic players in the game of political decision making, and thus contributes towards filling out this gap in the literature. The chapters investigate general questions on institutions and political decision making while drawing upon specific examples from Turkish politics using formal analysis, and game theoretical and statistical tools

An experimental study of the investment implications of bankruptcy laws

In bankruptcy laws, proportionality is the universal norm when allocating the liquidation value of a bankrupt firm among creditors. The theoretical literature on bankruptcy proposes two prominent alternatives to proportionality: the equal awards and the equal losses principles. We use an experiment to analyze and compare actual creditor behavior under these three principles. More specifically, we test the following hypotheses: replacing proportionality with equal losses increases total investment while replacing proportionality with equal awards decreases total investment; under all three principles individual investment choices decrease in response to an increase in the probability of bankruptcy or an increase in risk aversion; total investment difference between proportionality and either of the other two principles is independent of the probability of bankruptcy as long as both induce an interior equilibrium. The results of the nonparametric tests and random effects Tobit regression analyses we conduct on our experimental data offer support for all hypotheses

The accession games: a comparison of three limited-information negotiation designs

We analyze the European Union enlargement process from a rational institutionalist perspective and argue that the accession negotiations are designed to resolve the uncertainty that the existing EU members have in terms of the candidates preferences. We model the negotiations as a Bayesian game and demonstrate how exactly the design in place helps the Union in gathering information about the candidate country. Our model also enables us to compare alternative negotiation designs in terms of their ability to alleviate informational problems. We compare the resulting equilibrium payo¤s under di¤erent negotiation designs to see whether there is any ground for a player to prefer a particular design over others. Our analysis supports the earlier arguments in the literature about the informative role of accession negotiations, and demonstates how exactly the negotiations carry out this role

State-society relations in civil conflicts

Civil conflicts are conceptualized as asymmetric, population centric military struggles. The argument is that insurgencies, even though they are no match in military power to their state adversaries in many cases, resort to armed struggle nonetheless as a tool to impair state capacity, the quality of governance, and the ability of the state to honour the “social contract” in order to eventually destroy state authority and render the state irrelevant for the society. Note that this argument implies that state-society relations do react to the military course of the conflict. In this article, we provide empirical evidence for this implication. Introducing a new panel dataset on the long running civil conflict in Turkey we first conduct a micro-level analysis and demonstrate the significant impact rebel presence has upon state-society relations across localities and time. We then analyze the results of semi-structured interviews we had conducted with a group of experts from the conflict regions to decipher the possible mechanisms behind the association we observe in the data. The interviews support our motivating theoretical argument

On the investment implications of bankruptcy laws

Axiomatic analysis of bankruptcy problems reveals three major principles: (i) proportionality (PRO), (ii) equal awards (EA), and (iii) equal losses (EL). However, most real life bankruptcy procedures implement only the proportionality principle. We construct a noncooperative investment game to explore whether the explanation lies in the alternative implications of these principles on investment behavior. Our results are as follows (i) EL always induces higher total investment than PRO which in turn induces higher total investment than EA; (ii) PRO always induces higher egalitarian social welfare than both EA and EL in interior equilibria; (iii) PRO induces higher utilitarian social welfare than EL in interior equilibria but its relation to EA depends on the parameter values (however, a numerical analysis shows that on a large part of the parameter space, PRO induces higher utilitarian social welfare than (C)