Education and Income Inequality in Turkey: Does Schooling Matter?

The paper examines the link between educational variables and income inequality in Turkey. First, I evaluate the impact of educational level, then I move on to assess educational inequality and finally I consider educational spending by public and private sectors. I argue that due to the limited public spending on primary and secondary education and growing private spending, the spread between socio-economic groups will not be decreased significantly.inequality of income, education, public spending

Reconciliation of Work and Family Life in Hungary

Part of the Working Papers on the Reconciliation of Work and Welfare in Europe seriesThe paper analyses the ‘Europeanization’ of policies concerning the reconciliation of work and family life in Hungary between 1998 and 2005. It looks at how politicians – in government or in the opposition – framed European requirements and/or standards and how they used references to European processes in their arguments. The paper distinguished three periods of Europeanization. In the first period – in which the first comprehensive Family Support Act was adopted – basically no reference was made to the European Union. Accordingly, this Act – its goal being to protect the institution of the family to ensure demographic growth – did not prioritize reconciliation and women’ employment at all and was criticized of not being in line with European principles. The second period before 2004 was the period of legal harmonization. Therefore, reconciliation-related acts (e.g. on telework) were mainly adopted as an answer to European expectations. Finally, in the third period after the 2004 accession, the reconciliation of work and family life became an explicit goal of the government, usually with references made to European processes and European principles. In this period, MPs started using the jargon of the EU. Furthermore, the availability of European funding was an important trigger of reconciliation-related reforms

Marketisation of Academia and Authoritarian Governments: The Cases of Hungary and Turkey in Critical Perspective

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article analyses the recent political repression of academia in Hungary and Turkey within the critical scholarship on globalisation and neoliberalisation of higher education. We introduce and challenge the hegemonic definitions of academic freedom that sit comfortably with the capitalist logic as well as repressive governing forms and assess the recent attacks on university communities with emphasis on both academic labour and freedom. Adopting a case study approach, we investigate how economic and political forms of repression accompany and reinforce one another within the specificities of both country contexts. We delineate the underlying structural and historical dynamics as well as emergence and evolution of methods of struggle and resistance employed by diverse university communities in their shared and divergent characteristics. Our conclusions include critical reflections on the broader implications of higher education restructuring, authoritarian interventions, and the future of systemic-level resistance

Employee welfare and collective bargaining in exposed and protected sectors: Evidence from Poland and Serbia

Part of the Working Papers on the Reconciliation of Work and Welfare in Europe seriesCollective bargaining is closely related to social policy making to the extent that the outcomes of the former inform and influence social policy agenda. It is widely held, however, that trade unions in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) do not have a strong bargaining position and thus exert little impact on policy decisions. This paper challenges the view of CEE labour as a uniformly weak actor. It argues that CEE unions’ ability to shape the bargaining agenda and social policies depends largely on the degree of privatisation, which overlaps with sectoral divisions. We find that unions in exposed sectors are unable to oppose greater flexibility even when there are no considerable wage gains, whereas workers in protected sectors manage to maintain their status and at times even enhance their welfare, both in terms of higher wages and better working conditions

The local clinical validation of a new lithium heparin tube with a barrier: BD Vacutainer® Barricor LH Plasma tube

Introduction: Although serum-providing blood tubes with a barrier are still widely used due to their significant advantages, the use of blood tubes with a barrier to provide plasma is becoming widespread. We compared 22 analytes in a BD Vacutainer® Barricor LH Plasma tube for local clinical validation of this new lithium heparin tube with a barrier. Materials and methods: Samples from 44 volunteers were collected in different tubes (Becton Dickinson and Company): Z tube without additive (reference), clot-activator tube with gel (SST), lithium heparin tube without gel (LiH), and lithium heparin tube with barrier (Barricor). Analyte concentrations in different tubes were compared with the reference tube. All tubes were also evaluated according to additional testing (different centrifugation durations, blood-sampling techniques and individual differences). Results: Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), glucose (Glc), potassium (K), lactate dehydrogenase (LD), sodium (Na), and total protein (TP) had a significant bias in Barricor (9.19%, - 3.24%, - 4.88%, 21.60%, - 0.40%, 5.03%, respectively) relative to the reference tube. There was no statistical difference between different centrifugation durations and individual differences for AST, K and LD in LiH and/or Barricor (P > 0.05). There was a significant bias for LD between LiH and Barricor in terms of blood-sampling techniques (21.2% and 12.4%, respectively). Conclusions: Recently, the use of plasma has become prominent due to some of its advantages. In this study, plasma AST, K, LD, Glc and TP levels in Barricor were clinically different in comparison to serum. The results of additional tests showed that higher levels of LD in Barricor did not result from haemolysis, and they might be related to other factors including number of platelets, cellular fragility, or functional environment

Flux or Fixed. Tax Reforms, Informal Economy and Foreign Investment in New EU Member States.

The paper tries to analyze the tax reforms in new EU member states, and to understand how these developments came into existence. Despite several commonalities we argue that across country variation is very much present, especially in the areas of degree of dependence on indirect taxes as well as the share of each component in total tax revenue. Our preliminary evidence indicates that there are three identifiable groupings; Hungary, Slovenia and Czech Republic as the first, Poland and Slovakia as the second, and the rest of the countries as the third. From the clusters we claim that these differences reflect the underlying the structural characteristics of the economies, particularly the scope of the informal economy and the intensity of competition to attract foreign capital. The paper contributes to the literature in a number of ways. First, it gives a comprehensive overview of reforms and possible explanatory factors. Second, it attempts to categorize the transition countries according to the features of the tax systems adopted. Finally, it establishes a linkage between the informal sector, capital from external sources and why particular modifications were implemented. (author's abstract)Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordinatio

The More the Gloomier: development of informal employment and its effect on wages in Turkey

Various studies found wage gaps between formal and informal sector workers even after controlling for a number of individual and firm level characteristics. It has also been shown that earnings differentials across these sectors are quite stable over the years. While there is limited amount of research considering the same issues focusing on Turkish labor market, the development of wage gap between formal and informal employment has not been examined. In our paper, we carry this analysis for Turkey and estimate the wage gap between formal and informal sector workers by utilizing the Household Labor Force Survey (LFS) for the period of 2005 and 2019. There are three main findings; first, decline in informal employment is not uniform and especially after 2012 there is a slight increase in the share of informal jobs at the lower end of wage distribution. Second, we demonstrate that returns to informality vary significantly across quantiles even after a matching technique through inverse probability treatment weights are considered. While at the upper end of the distribution, the penalty is extremely small and stable over the years, at the bottom end, the informal sector considerably reduces wages, and the effect becomes larger over time. The negative and increasing penalty is observable well before the refugee inflows. The last part of our analysis looks at the occupational composition within formal and informal sectors over time and points out that the rise of white collar low skilled service (WCLS) jobs among informal employment is mainly responsible for the increasing wage gap for the workers at the bottom end

Pay Gaps and Mobility for Lower and Upper Tier Informal Sector Employees: an investigation of the Turkish labor market

Many empirical studies found wage gaps between formal and informal sector workers even after controlling for a number of individual and firm level characteristics. While there is limited amount of research considering the same question in the Turkish labor market, wage gap between formal and informal employees generally do not take unobserved characteristics into account. In our paper, we carry this analysis for Turkey and estimate the wage gap between formal and informal sector workers utilizing panel data from Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) for the period of 2014 and 2017. Mincer wage equations across quantiles are estimated considering observable and unobservable characteristics with a fixed effect model, and for sensitivity tests we regard the possibility of nonlinearity in covariate effects and estimate a variant of matching models. Our results show that informal wage penalty is persistent even after unobserved heterogeneity is taken into account, however, the penalty is not statistically significant at the upper end of the wage distribution. Moreover, we show that there are important differences between informal workers who have permanent contracts versus informal workers that have relatively more irregular work arrangements. Not only the latter is subject to earnings reductions, but they also have slightly lower probability of moving out of informal employment. We also demonstrate that the mobility of lower and upper tier informal workers is affected by different variables

Wage Losses and Inequality in Developing Countries: labor market and distributional consequences of Covid-19 lockdowns in Turkey

We develop a possibility to work index (PWI) taking the ability to work from home and workplace closures into account. By using the data from the HLFS in Turkey, we examine the individual level determinants of PWI. Our findings reveal that PWI and ability to work from home are significantly different, and essential or closed jobs are not necessarily concentrated at the bottom of the wage distribution. Therefore, from a policy perspective, PWI can be a more encompassing measure of risk and can assist the public authorities to design better targeted social policies. Our results also point out that wage inequality is likely to deteriorate as a result of the supply shocks from confinement policies. However, the overall negative distributional effects of lockdown and disparity between employees in different economic activities become more substantial with duration. These suggest that in order to avoid major increases in earning inequalities and related social problems, governments would be better off with shorter and stricter lockdowns