Informal-Formal Worker Wage Gap in Turkey: Evidence From A Semi-Parametric Approach

Using individual level data from Turkstat Household Labor Force Survey for 2005-2009 period and a variety of parametric and semi-parametric techniques, we test two hypothesis regarding formal and informal labor markets: whether there is a wage gap between formal and informal workers and whether this gap is sensitive to variations in unemployment rates across regions and over time, where the formality of employment is defined with respect to registry status of the individuals to compulsory Social Security System. In line with most studies, the formal workers earn more than informal workers, as suggested by standard wage regressions, conditional on workers' observed individual characteristics. On the other hand, considering the limitations of parametric methods and possibility of misleading results due to the different distributional characteristics of formal and informal workers, we alternatively implement propensity score matching. In contrast with the recent studies for other developing countries showing that the wage gap estimates with propensity score matching is insignificant, we do find large and sizable wage gaps between formal and informal workers in Turkey. While parametric methods give similar estimates for formal-informal wage gap within gender groups, the semi-parametric estimates suggest that the observed formal-informal wage gap is larger among females compared to males. Finally, we show that although the parametric methods, such as wage curve regressions, suggest that wages of informal workers decreases and wages of formal workers do not change with higher unemployment rates, the semi-parametric methods show that these gaps are insensitive to unemployment rate variations across regions or over time. Keywords: Formal/Informal Employment, Wage Gap, Propensity Score Matching, Regional Labor Markets. JEL classification: C14; J30; J42; J60; O17

Technological Change and ICTs in OECD Countries

The motivation of the study is to form a ground for further research on the issue of the effect of electronic commerce on economic variables that has been supported by empirical models. In this respect, a considerable part of the study is devoted to the discussion of the building significant relationship between technology, electronic commerce and the fundamentals of the real economy. As a result of both the conceptual part and the analytical part, two important conclusions were drawn. The first one is that technological change is increasingly gaining special emphasis especially with the rising arguments on the issue of "New Economy". The second important point is that technological change and electronic commerce are in relation with the most important variables of the real economy like gross domestic product, investment, trade balance and also R&D expenditures.Technological Change, ICTs, E-commerce, employment, macroeconomics, OECD

The Turkish Wage Curve: Evidence from the Household Labor Force Survey

This paper examines the Turkish wage curve using individual data from the Household Labor Force Survey (HLFS) including 26 NUTS-2 regions over the period 2005-2008. When the local unemployment rate is treated as predetermined, there is evidence in favor of the wage curve only for younger and female workers. However, if the lagged unemployment rate is used as an instrument for current unemployment rate, we find an unemployment elasticity of -0.099. We also find a higher elasticity for younger, less educated, low experienced workers than for older, more educated and more experienced workers. Another important finding is that the wages of females in Turkey are significantly more responsive to local unemployment rates than their male counterparts.wage curve, fixed effects, instrumental variables, two-stage least squares

Searching and Stopping: An Analysis of Stopping Rules and Strategies

Searching naturally involves stopping points, both at a query level (how far down the ranked list should I go?) and at a session level (how many queries should I issue?). Understanding when searchers stop has been of much interest to the community because it is fundamental to how we evaluate search behaviour and performance. Research has shown that searchers find it difficult to formalise stopping criteria, and typically resort to their intuition of what is "good enough". While various heuristics and stopping criteria have been proposed, little work has investigated how well they perform, and whether searchers actually conform to any of these rules. In this paper, we undertake the first large scale study of stopping rules, investigating how they influence overall session performance, and which rules best match actual stopping behaviour. Our work is focused on stopping at the query level in the context of ad-hoc topic retrieval, where searchers undertake search tasks within a fixed time period. We show that stopping strategies based upon the disgust or frustration point rules - both of which capture a searcher's tolerance to non-relevance - typically result in (i) the best overall performance, and (ii) provide the closest approximation to actual searcher behaviour, although a fixed depth approach also performs remarkably well. Findings from this study have implications regarding how we build measures, and how we conduct simulations of search behaviours

Revealing Landscape Planning Strategies for Disaster-Prone Coastal Urban Environments: The Case of Istanbul Megacity

Regarding the challenges of the twenty-first century, this study aims to explore the role of landscape architecture within the multidisciplinary setting of the studies on coastal disasters. Thus, it focuses on Istanbul, which deserves being one of the most well-known coastal megacities of the world, not only due to its long history dating back to 6700 BC but also due its unique coastal configuration. This ever-expanding but disaster-prone megacity stands on two peninsulas belonging to different continents, holds the only strait connecting the Black Sea to the other seas, and accommodates 12 lakes with more than 100 streams. These coastal features promote the vulnerability of the megacity to a wide range of natural and man-made disasters, such as earthquake, tsunami, flood, sea level rise, and salinization. The evaluation process of this study benefits from the GIS and comprises five major phases: examining the urban-landscape change, defining the major coastal disasters, identifying the disaster-prone environments, and defining multilayered landscape planning strategies. This study develops landscape planning strategies for disaster-prone coastal urban environments by deriving from the complex dynamics of the Istanbul megacity. This study is an attempt to further disaster-sensitive landscape studies in the belief that not only Istanbul but also the other coastal megacities will benefit from them

Simulating Interactive Information Retrieval: SimIIR: A Framework for the Simulation of Interaction

Simulation provides a powerful and cost-effective approach to explore and evaluate how interactions between a searcher and system influence search behaviour and performance. With a growing interest in simulation and an increasing number of papers using such an approach, there is a need for a flexible framework for simulation. Thus, we present SimIIR, an open-source toolkit for building and conducting Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR) experiments. The framework consists of a number of high level components, including the simulation, the searcher and the system, all of which must be configured. The SimIIR framework provides a series of interchangeable components. Examples of these components include the querying strategies (how simulated queries are formulated) and stopping strategies (the depth to which a searcher will examine snippets and documents) that a simulated searcher will employ. We have implemented various existing strategies so that they can be used by other researchers to not only replicate and reproduce past experiments, but also create new experiments. This paper describes the SimIIR framework and the different components that can be configured and extended as required

Kuresel Isinma, Kuresellesme ve Gida Krizi - Turkiye'de Islenmis Gida Fiyatlari Uzerine Ampirik Bir Calisma

For central banks, whose primary objective is to maintain low and sustainable inflation, understanding the determinants of food prices and their sensitivity to monetary policy is crucial for measuring the effectiveness of policy actions. This study empirically analyzes the determinants of the processed food inflation in Turkey. The findings point out that the recent acceleration in the processed food inflation mostly stems from supply side shocks triggered by domestic drought and the upsurge in the international food prices. The emergence of a steep difference between the level of temperature and the seasonal averages gives rise to an increase in the processed food inflation, whereas moderate rise in the temperatures above the seasonal averages slows down the food inflation. The study indicates that the import prices mostly affect the domestic processed food prices through the processed intermediate food products rather than consumption goods. Exchange rate pass-through to processed food prices is faster than the import price pass-through and its effect is mostly felt within the first three months of a change in the exchange rate. The effect of total demand conditions is found to be relatively weak in the sample period considered in this study.Food prices, Inflation dynamics

Three-dimensional effects of crack closure in laminated composite plates subjected to bending loads

Fracture is one of the dominant failure modes in structures subjected to external loads. Stress and deformation fields around the crack tip are important to understand the crack propagation and arrest. For a plate with a through-the-thickness crack and subjected to a bending load, there is crack closure on the compression side of the crack face. The present study investigates effects of crack closure on the stress and deformation fields on the tension side of the crack face. A three-dimensional finite element analysis is performed for laminated composite plates using both the line and surface crack closure models. For a composite whose longitudinal elastic modulus is much greater than the transverse modulus, line and surface closure models result in higher stresses near the crack tip in comparison to the no-closure solution. Hence, no-closure solutions are nonconservative for the composite. Transverse shear is the major cause for the nonconservative solutionhttp://archive.org/details/threedimensional00baskLieutenant Junior Grade, Turkish NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

The Turkish Wage Curve; Evidence from the Household Labor Force Survey

This paper examines the Turkish wage curve using individual data from the Household Labor Force Survey (HLFS) including 26 NUTS-2 regions over the period 2005 - 2008. When the local unemployment rate is treated as predetermined, there is evidence in favor of the wage curve only for younger and female workers. However, if the lagged unemployment rate is used as an instrument for current unemployment rate, we find an unemployment elasticity of -0.099. We also find a higher elasticity for younger, less educated, low experienced workers than for older, more educated and more experienced workers. Another important finding is that the wages of females in Turkey are significantly more responsive to local unemployment rates than their male counterparts

Unsteady bubbly cavitating nozzle flows

Unsteady quasi-one-dimensional and two-dimensional cavitating nozzle flows are considered using a homogeneous bubbly flow model. For quasi-one-dimensional nozzle flows, the system of model equations is reduced to two evolution equations for the flow speed and bubble radius and the initial and boundary value problems for the evolution equations are formulated. Results obtained for quasi-onedimensional nozzle flows capture the measured pressure losses due to cavitation, but they turn out to be insufficient in describing the twodimensional structures. For this reason, model equations for unsteady two-dimensional bubbly cavitating nozzle flows are considered and, by suitable decoupling, they are reduced to evolution equations for the bubble radius and for the velocity field, the latter being determined by an integro-partial differential system for the unsteady acceleration. This integropartial differential system constitutes the fundamental equations for the evolution of the dilation and vorticity in twodimensional cavitating nozzle flows. The initial and boundary value problem of the evolution equations are then discussed and a method to integrate the equations is introduced. Due to a lack of an algorithm to compute two-dimensional bubbly cavitating flows presently, the numerical simulation of 2D cavitating nozzle flows is obtained by the CFD-Tool CATUM, which is based on an equilibrium phase transition model. Results obtained for a typical cavitation cycle show instantaneous high pressure pulses at instances of cloud collapses.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84228/1/CAV2009-final18.pd