FEAS RESEARCH E-BULLETIN FEAS RESEARCH E-BULLETIN DECEMBER 2017 | Page 14
Author: Öztürk, Ahmet
Title: Essays on Quasi-experimental Studies in Labor Economics
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hakan Ercan
Department: Economics
Date: September 2017
Abstract: This dissertation consists of two empirical papers that explore the causal relationship
between education and labor market outcomes in Turkey based on quasi-experimental methods.
The instrumental variable strategy has the potential to accurately estimate the true rate of return to
schooling, but good instruments are hard to find. In the first essay of the thesis, I develop a new
instrument from an unexpected decline in graduates and new admissions in post-secondary
education from the student protests in the late 1970s and the coup in 1980. Using the 2005 Turkish
Household Labor Force Survey, my instrumental variables estimates suggest that the economic
return to an additional year of schooling in Turkey ranges between 11.6-12.8 percent for men.
Moreover, I find that the decline in educational attainment due to student protests shifted the
affected population from high-income occupations toward low-income ones. In the second essay, I
examine the spillover effect of a large-scale primary school construction program (as part of the
1997 compulsory schooling law) on high school attainment and labor force participation using the
2011 Population and Housing Census. I employ a difference-in-differences strategy exploiting
provincial differences in the intensity of construction program and the variation in exposure across
birth cohorts induced by the timing of the program. The estimates suggest that the construction
program increased the high school attainment rate by 2.1-2.4 percentage points for men and by 2.3-
2.5 percentage points for women. While the program had no significant effects for the male labor
force participation, it led to a 2.2-2.6 percentage point rise for the female labor force participation.
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