Essays on unemployment in Turkey


Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, İktisat Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2005

Öğrenci: MEHMET TAŞÇI

Danışman: AYSIT TANSEL

Özet:

In this study we examine the Turkish labor market by using the Household Labor Force Survey data for the years 2000 and 2001. There are three main essays in this study. In the first essay, the determinants of transitions between the labor market states of employment, unemployment, and out-of-labor force are examined by using multinomial-logit models. We observe from the transitions out of employment that workers with low education and those working in the non-public sector have a higher risk of losing their job than those with higher education and those working in the public sector. In the second essay, grouped duration approach is used to find the determinants of unemployment duration and test whether there is an evidence of duration dependence in unemployment. In the third essay, we distinguish the first-time job-seekers from the other job-seekers, and analyze the determinants of unemployment duration for these groups, separately. The last two parts of this study shows the main characteristics of the short-term and long-term unemployed people in Turkey. We find that individual and demographic characteristics as well as local labor market conditions are important factors in explaining the duration of unemployment for working-age groups. We observe that individuals with higher education (i.e. graduated from a university) have shorter unemployment duration than those with lower education (i.e. primary, middle and high school graduates). Our overall findings (both from transition and duration applications) suggest that women are in the disadvantaged position in the Turkish labor market. Further, regardless of gender difference, we observe that labor market conditions are significant determinant of transitions in the labor market. The same is also observed in the unemployment duration part for all data as well as for both first-time and other job-seekers.