Difficulties and Trade-offs in Performance Evaluation in Social Sciences: A Turkish Perspective

The main objective of this study is to briefly examine the process of performance evaluation in social sciences in Turkey from an international perspective and pinpoint the main difficulties and trade-offs involved in this process and suggest new ways of thinking to overcome them. Our discussion will be confined to social science research and publications by universities which in any event account for the bulk of these activities. Evaluation in social sciences can generally be conducted at the institutional, project and personal levels. While also touching upon the others, our emphasis will be on evaluation at the level of the individual researcher. We shall lean heavily on cases drawn from the field of economics and the Middle East Technical University with which we are more familiar.Performance evaluation, social sciences

Global Dynamics, Domestic Coalitions and a Reactive State: Major Policy Shifts in Post-War Turkish Economic Development

The main objective of this study is to propose an analytical framework to explain the major policy shifts that has characterized post-war Turkish economic development; divided into four phases, starting respectively in 1950, 1960, 1980, and 2001. Its main contribution is to incorporate external and internal factors into this framework within a broadly political economy perspective, attaching particular significance to the role of economic crises in moving from one phase to the other. While the role of external agents is identified as the main factor behind policy shifts, the role of domestic coalitions in support of policy regime in each phase is also recognized. Drawing attention to the role of state in the impressive recent growth of countries such as China, India, and Ireland, the paper argues that there is still room for the state taking on a developmental role. The paper recommends that Turkey follows a similar path by improving state capacity not only with respect to its regulatory role but also in more developmental spheres, encompassing its redistributive and transformative role on the basis of a domestically-determined industrialization strategy.State capacity, policy transformations, crises, multilateral institutions, distributional conflicts, regulation

Rethinking the Emerging Post-Washington Consensus: A Critical Appraisal

The objective of the paper is to provide a critical assessment of the emerging post-Washington Consensus (PWC), as a new paradigm in the development debate. The paper begins by tracing the main record of the Washington Consensus, the set of neoliberal economic policies propogated foremost by key Bretton Woods Institutions like the World Bank and the IMF that penetrated into the economic policy agendas of many developing countries since the late 1970s. The paper then outlines the main tenets of the PWC, emerging from the shortcomings of that record and the reaction it created in the political realm. The paper, while accepting that the PWC provides a significant improvement over the Washington Consensus, draws attention to its failure to provide a sufficiently broad framework for dealing with key and pressing development issues such as income distribution, poverty and self-sustained growth.Post-Washington Consensus, growth

International trade and economic insecurity

Whether or not international trade exposes workers to economic insecurity depends on the nature of the trade exposure of the firm, or industry, in which the worker is employed. Import-competing industries experience higher levels of risk to workers’ incomes and employment, while firms that import intermediate production stages (“offshoring”) display bigger employment responses to small changes in workers’ wages, and are more likely to shut down home factories. But offshoring also helps firms weather economic shocks. Offshoring firms are more likely to survive and provide greater employment stability to their workers

Trade liberalization, firm heterogeneity, and wages : new evidence from matched employer-employee data

In this paper, the authors use a linked employer-employee database from Brazil to examine the impact of trade reform on the wages of workers employed at heterogeneous firms. The analysis of the data at the firm-level confirms earlier findings of a differential positive effect of trade liberalization on the average wages at exporting firms relative to non-exporting firms. However, this analysis of average firm-level wages is incomplete along several dimensions. First, it cannot fully account for the impact of a change in trade barriers on workforce composition especially in terms of unobservable (time-invariant) characteristics of workers (innate ability) and any additional productivity that obtains in the context of employment in the specific firm (match specific ability). Furthermore, the firm-level analysis is undertaken under the assumption that the assignment of workers to firms is random. This ignores the sorting of worker into firms and leads to a bias in estimates of the differential impact of trade on workers at exporting firms relative to non-exporting firms. Using detailed information on worker and firm characteristics to control for compositional effects and using firm-worker match specific effects to account for the endogenous mobility of workers, the authors find the differential effect of trade openness on wages in exporting firms relative to domestic firms to be insignificant. Consistent with the models of Helpman, Itskhoki, and Redding (2010) and Davidson, Matusz and Schevchenko (2008), they also find that the workforce composition improves systematically in exporting firms in terms of innate (time invariant) worker ability and in terms the quality of the worker-firm matches.Labor Markets,Microfinance,Free Trade,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research

Wage Effects of Trade Reform with Endogenous Worker Mobility

In this paper, we use a linked employer–employee database from Brazil to evaluate the wage effects of trade reform. With an aggregate (firm-level) analysis of this question, we find that a decline in trade protection is associated with an increase in average wages in exporting firms relative to domestic firms, consistent with earlier studies. However, using disaggregated, employer-employee level data, and allowing for the endogenous assignment of workers to firms due to match-specific productivity, we find that the premium paid to workers at exporting firms is economically and statistically insignificant, as is the differential impact of trade openness on the wages of workers at exporting firms relative to otherwise identical workers at domestic firms. We also find that workforce composition improves systematically in exporting firms, in terms of the combination of worker ability and the quality of worker-firm matches, post-liberalization. These results stand in stark contrast to the findings reported in many earlier studies and underscore the importance of endogenous matching and, more generally, non-random labor market allocation mechanisms, in determining the effects of trade policy changes on wages.

Kisa Dönem Krizlerin Sosyoekonomik Etkileri: Türkiye, Endonezya ve Arjantin Deneyimleri

Bu çalismanin amaci kisa dönem ekonomik krizlerin sosyoekonomik etkilerini bunlardan son dönemde önemli ölçüde etkilenmis üç ülke olan Endonezya, Arjantin ve Türkiye baglaminda, bu krizlerin yayginlasmaya basladigi 1990’li yillarin baslarindan bu yana geçen süredeki gelismeler çerçevesinde incelemektir. Ayni dönemde krizle karsilasan diger ülkeleri degerlendirme disinda birakmis olsa da bu çalisma, üç ülkeyi temel alan kiyaslamali bakis açisiyla krizlerle karsilasan ülkelerin deneyimlerindeki çesitliligi ana hatlariyla ortaya koymayi amaçlamaktadir. Krizlerin nihaî etkisi, krizlerden kaynaklanan “dogrudan” etkilerin ötesinde, kriz sirasinda uygulamaya konan istikrar ve yapisal uyum programlari, krizden etkilenen kesimlerin tepkileri, uluslararasi kuruluslarin ve ülke hükümetlerinin tutumlari ve diger birçok unsurun karmasik bir bileseni olarak ortaya çikmakta ve krizlerin etkileriyle kriz sonrasi uygulanan programlarin etkilerini birbirinden ayristirabilmek güçlesmektedir. Üstelik sosyoekonomik etkilerin bir kismi kolaylikla nicellestirilemeyecek alanlari kapsamakta, nicellestirilebilecek göstergeler ise özellikle az gelismis ülkeler baglaminda mevcut istatistiksel veri bazinin en zayif oldugu alanlari kapsamaktadir. Sosyoekonomik etkilerin bütün boyutlariyla ve net bir biçimde ortaya konabilmesini güçlestiren bir diger etken, etkilerin bir ülkeden diger bir ülkeye, hatta ayni ülke içinde bir krizden bir diger krize farklililar göstermesi ve sosyoekonomik göstergelerin her zaman ayni yönde hareket etmemesidir. Bu güçlükler karsisinda, çalismada krizlerin sosyoekonomik etkilerinin belirlenmesine yönelik bir analitik çerçeve önerisi de gelistirilmektedir.Economic crises, poverty, Turkey, Indonesia, Argentina

Unutulan bir toplumsal amaç: Sanayilesme ne oluyor? Ne olmali?

Bu çalisma her biri çalismanin ana bolumlerini olusturacak üç temel amaca yöneliktir. Birinci amaç, diger iki amacimiza yönelik altyapiyi olusturabilmek için son elli yilda sanayilesmeye iliskin temel yaklasim ve bakislarindaki degisiklikleri ana hatlariyla betimlemek ve konumuz açisindan özel anlam tasiyan kimi somut sanayilesme politikalarini daha ince bir ayrinti düzeyinde incelemektir. Çalismanin ikinci amaci, Türkiye’nin sanayilesme deneyimini son yirmi yil üzerinde yogunlasarak ana hatlariyla degerlendirmek, gerçeklestirilen üretim artisinin ve yapisal degisimin boyutlarini ve baslica kirilma noktalarini belirlemek ve kisa dönem krizlerin bu süreç üzerindeki etkisini izlemektir1. Yine bu baglamda bir diger amaç, Türkiye’nin sanayilesme performansini büyüme, yatirim, istihdam, dis ticaret, teknolojik gelisme ve verimlilik gibi temel göstergeler isiginda ve yer yer benzer konumdaki ülke deneyimleriyle de iliskili olarak degerlendirmektir. Çalismanin üçüncü temel amaci, sanayilesmenin kimi olumsuz özelliklerine ve önündeki temel engellere dikkat çekmek ve bugünün kisa dönem agirlikli kisir gündeminden kurtulup vakit geçirmeksizin basta sanayilesme olmak üzere orta ve uzun dönemli amaçlara yönelme geregini vurgulamak ve sanayilesme hedefine yönelik olarak atilmasi gereken adimlar ekseninde öneriler gelistirmektir.Turkey, industrialization, economic development

Trade Shocks and the Provision of Local Public Goods

We analyze the impact of trade-induced income shocks on the size of local government, and the provision of public services. Areas in the US with declining labor demand and incomes due to increasing import competition from China experience relative declines in housing prices and business activity. Since local governments are disproportionately funded through property and sales taxation, declining property values and a decrease in economic activity translate into less revenue, which constrains the ability of local governments to provide public services. State and federal governments have limited ability to smooth local shocks, and the impact on the provision of public services is compounded when local income shocks are highly correlated with shocks in the rest of the state. The outcome is greater inequality not only in incomes but also in the quality of public services and amenities across US jurisdictions