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We examine the causal effects of the drastic expansion in Turkish higher education on the attainment disadvantage of women by using the variation in exposure intensity across cohorts and regions. The expansion increased the attainment rates of both genders but did not significantly reduce the gender gap after controlling for time trend. Studying the mechanisms, we observe that the expansion in social sciences, more than half of additional slots, benefited men and women evenly, but the expansion in engineering, about 25% of additional slots, benefited men more. The results are robust to a wide range of checks for alternative specifications, samples, and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the college major choice decision in a risk and return framework using university entrance exam data from Turkey. Specifically we focus on the choice between majors with low income risk such as education and health and others with riskier income streams. We use a unique dataset that allows us to control for the choice set of students and parental attitudes towards risk. Our results show that father's income, self-employment status and social security status are important factors influencing an individual in choosing a riskier career such as business over a less risky one such as education or health. (Contains 6 tables.)

This paper investigates the impact of increased education, due to an exogenous education reform, on time spent in religious activities by utilizing the Turkish Time Use Survey data. The education reform significantly rises individuals' years of schooling. We also document that for women, increased education has a negative causal impact on the allocation of time to religious activities. However, there are no significant effects of education on men's time spent in religious activities. As a result, we suggest that education plays an important role in altering individuals' religious behaviour through its effects on preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the impact of household head's involuntary job loss on young person's (15–24 years old) likelihood to transition from non‐employment to employment. We construct twelve two‐year pseudo‐panels based on previous year's labour market outcomes using Turkish Household Labor Force Surveys (THLFS) from 2005 to 2016 and then pool the twelve pseudo‐panels for analysis. We examine youth's labour market responses according to education levels and gender. We show that a female with at least a high school degree is about 8.7 percentage points more likely to transition to from non‐employment to employment in the group where the head experienced an unexpected job loss than a female in the group where the head remained employed. Furthermore, for females, the probability of transitioning to employment increases by education level. For males, although we find positive and statistically significant effect of head's job loss on the transition probability, we do not find any differences according to education level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2006.01.004 Byline: Cagla Okten Keywords: SOEs; privatization; efficiency; Middle East; Turkey Abstract: Uncovering the effects of privatization is difficult, because privatization of a particular firm usually is not an accident. This paper tests the effects of privatization on productive and allocative (market) efficiency using a rich panel data set of 22 privatized cement plants from Turkey in the 1983-99 period. Since all public cement firms were privatized and we have pre- and post-privatization data for all, we are able to avoid the problem of endogeneity associated with sample selection. Our analysis goes beyond just examining the privatization effects and explores how privatization really works. Changes in objectives of the firm (ownership effect) and changes in market structure (environment effect) may both be responsible for privatization outcomes. We find that ownership effects are sufficient to achieve improvements in labor productivity. Our results on allocative efficiency, however, are dependent on changes in the competitive environment. While all plants seem to improve labor productivity through work force reductions, plants privatized to foreign buyers also increase their capital and investment significantly. Author Affiliation: Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey Article History: Accepted 10 January 2006

In this paper, we investigate how family and community networks affect an individual's access to credit institutions using new data from the Indonesia Family Life Surveys. Our theoretical framework emphasizes the family and community's role in providing information, thus lowering the search costs of the borrower and monitoring and enforcement costs for the lender. From our empirical results, community and family networks are important in knowing a place to borrow, as well as for loan approval. Consistent with an information-based explanation of networks, family and community networks have a larger impact on credit awareness of new credit institutions with a lower impact on awareness of established credit sources. Interestingly, we find that women benefit from participating in community networks more than men. There is no evidence that the rich benefit from community networks more than the poor. Our results on the benefits from participation in the community network are robust to the inclusion of community fixed effects. Key words--credit access, social networks, Indonesia

Using data from the high-stakes 2013 Dubai professional tennis tournament, we find that, compared with a tied score, (i) male players have a higher serve speed and thus exhibit more effort when behind in score, and their serve speeds get less sensitive to losses or gains when score difference gets too large, and (ii) female players do not change their serve speed when behind, while serving slower when ahead. Thus, male players comply more with Prospect Theory exhibiting more loss aversion and reflection effect. Our results are robust to controlling for player fixed effects and characteristics with player random effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the determinants of privatization prices in a multi-industry study using a sample of 68 recently privatized firms from Turkey. Results show that revenue and market characteristics are significant determinants of privatization prices while current cost and profit indicators are not. It is argued that potential buyers regard these state firms as inefficient, therefore do not take into consideration their current costs and profits in determining their value. When the dependent variable is altered by dividing the firm's privatization price by the firm's sales (revenues), it is found that sales-adjusted privatization prices are responsive to firms' profit margins. However, this result does not hold when the sample is restricted to a single industry. Profit margins along with other profitability and firm efficiency measures are no longer significant determinants of sales-adjusted privatization prices in the cement industry analysis. Unexploited production opportunities measured by capacity utilization ratios, and complete private ownership resume a more important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]