The evolution of the monetary transmission channels in Turkey: evidence from a TVP-VAR model

This article investigates the evolution of the monetary transmission mechanisms in Turkey for the period from January 1986 to December 2016. To this aim, the impacts of monetary variables on the prices and economic activity are investigated with a time-varying vector autoregressive model based on. The evidences from the time-varying responses indicate that the adoption of inflation targeting policy has markedly affected the functioning of transmission channels. The results also suggest that local and global financial crises may magnify the impact of monetary policy shocks on the overall economy.     

Urban sprawl factors in the surface water resource basins of Istanbul

This paper presents the reasons for uncontrolled land-use changes in the water resource basins of Istanbul. These changes are evaluated with a Geographical Information System (GIS), using four Landsat (1990, 1995, 2000, 2005) satellite images. Additional spatial information about capital improvement projects (highways and the Bosporus bridges), industrial land-use decisions, land ownership, and jurisdictional boundaries is also utilized. We observe that the most critical land-use changes have occurred in places with higher accessibility, mostly in close proximity to the metropolitan city center. The literature describes large public capital improvement projects (primarily the Trans European Motorway – TEM) as the primary reason for a trend of illegal occupation of public lands; however, the TEM should not be considered as the sole reason. This study explores other possible causes for these illegal developments in the water resource basins, grouped into three broad dimensions physical, socio–economic–political, and legal. Finally, we put forward possible policy suggestions for the preservation of the limited surface water resource basins in Istanbul.     

Explaining the deteriorating entry earnings of Canada's immigrant cohorts, 1966 – 2000

Abstract.  Using the 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, and 2001 Canadian Censuses, we explore causes of the deterioration in entry earnings of successive cohorts of immigrant men and women. Roughly one‐third of the deterioration is explained by compositional shifts in language ability and region of birth. We find no evidence of a decline in the returns to foreign education for either immigrant men or immigrant women but a definite deterioration in the returns to foreign labour market experience, most strongly among men from non‐traditional source countries. We can explain roughly two‐thirds of the male and one‐half of the female deterioration without any reference to entry labour market conditions. When we also account for entry conditions, our results suggest Canada's immigrants of the late 1990s would otherwise have enjoyed entry earnings equal to or higher than their counterparts of the 1960s.     

Global labour markets,return, and onward migration

Abstract. There is increasing evidence that international migration is characterized by frequent return and onward migration. This has important consequences for the contribution of immigrants to the economy of the host country. Lack of longitudinal data has prevented much analysis of how frequently international migration involves a sequence of location decisions or how long the typical migrant stays in a host country. A newly available longitudinal data set covering all immigrants to Canada since 1980 provides the opportunity to address these issues. The results show that a large fraction of male immigrants who are of working age, especially among skilled workers and entrepreneurs, are highly internationally mobile.     

An alternative consideration for the testing procedure of the S-curve hypothesis

Backus et al. (Am Econ Rev 84:84–103, 1994) introduced a new theoretical interpretation of the short-run relationship between the terms of trade and the trade balance: movements in net exports and the tendency for the trade balance to be negatively correlated with current and future movements in the terms of trade, but positively correlated with past movements. There have been several papers aimed at testing the S-curve hypothesis in the related literature. The most common empirical approach used in those papers is the cross-correlation analysis. This paper highlights several deficiencies of the cross-correlation analysis when being used directly to test for the validity of the mentioned hypothesis. The purpose of this paper is to offer an alternative approach so as to combine the causality theory in econometrics with the testing procedure of the S-curve hypothesis via the cross-correlations. The paper’s empirical results reveal that disaggregated bilateral trade data between the United States and China almost never support the S-curve hypothesis, contrarily to a previous paper employing the same data, but utilizing the conventional cross-correlation analysis. Why this difference may have appeared is also discussed.     

Low Wage Returns to Schooling in a Developing Country: Evidence from a Major Policy Reform in Turkey

In this paper, we estimate returns to schooling for young men and women in Turkey using the exogenous and substantial variation in schooling across birth cohorts brought about by the 1997 reform of compulsory schooling within a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We estimate that the return from an extra year of schooling is about 7–8% for women and an imprecisely estimated 2–2.5% for men. The low level of the estimates for men contrasts starkly with those estimated for other developing countries. We identify several reasons why returns to schooling are low for men and why they are higher for women in our context. In particular, the policy alters the schooling distributions of men and women differently, thus the average causal effect puts a higher weight on the causal effect of schooling at higher grade levels for women than for men.