Abstract:
The strong influx of Syrians into neighboring countries that started in 2011 and accelerated over time, has triggered a new line of research into how refugees affect host communities. Most of this research has focused on labor market outcomes, firm performance and informality. Quantitative studies on how communities interact or how key demographic outcomes are affected are hard to come by. In this paper, we make a unique contribution to the literature by investigating the effect of the refugees on the provincial marriage markets and on the birth rates. Even though migration from Syria is forced, and the location choice of the refugees is limited, the share of Syrians in a given province remains endogenous. Using a common distance-based instrument, we focus on the effect of the Syrian influx on provincial marriage rates and birth rates. Our findings show that the first marriage rates of young Turkish women have fallen drastically whereas that of young men remain unaltered, implying that young Turkish men in areas with a higher share of Syrians started marrying Syrian women. Furthermore, the divorce rates increased for both Turkish men and women. More surprisingly, the remarriage rates of Turkish women rose. We conclude that better job market prospects may have helped increase the pool of ”marriageable men”.

Abstract:
Even though informality in labor markets have been studied widely, envelope wages, a hybrid form of informal employment, remains underexplored. In this form of infor- mality, some employees receive their wages from their employers in two forms, an official wage that is reported to the tax authorities and an envelope wage that is undeclared. Given difficulties in data collection, research in this area remains very limited. How- ever, the institutional set-up in Turkey provides a unique setting to study envelope wages. In Turkey, the wages are taxed at the source, and the tax payments are made by the firms. Therefore the firms have an incentive to underreport whereas the house- holds do not. We use data from two different sources, one collected at the firm level and the other at the household level, in an attempt to identify individuals who may be receiving envelope wages. We use various econometric techniques to construct wage estimates for individuals whose wages are likely to be underreported. Our paper is the first in the relevant literature to provide estimates of the prevalence and the size of underreporting and the associated tax losses when data on underreporting is not directly available.

Abstract:
Measuring the gender peer effects on student achievement has recently attracted a lot of attention in the literature. Yet, the results are inconclusive. A substantial amount of research shows that having relatively more girls in a division increases the academic achievement of all students. Nevertheless, the identification of pure gender effects remains a challenge due to the fact that girls outperform boys in overall academic performance. Our study overcomes this identification problem in a setting where girls are not academically better. Using 2009-2010 school year data on 8th graders in Turkey, this paper disentangles pure “academic” peer effects and “gender” peer effects. Our estimations reveal that the higher the share of females in a division, the lower the likelihood that a student drops out. One standard deviation increase in the share of females in the division decreases the likelihood of dropout by 0.3 percentage points. This result holds even though females are 9.32 percentage points more likely to drop out. These findings are robust to the inclusion of various control variables e.g. parental and academic background of the student, school and regional characteristics. We also find that the gender peer effects are prevalent in both females and males

Abstract:
Measuring the gender peer effects on student achievement has recently attracted a lot of attention in the literature. Yet, the results are inconclusive. A substantial amount of research shows that having relatively more girls in a division increases the academic achievement of all students. Nevertheless, the identification of pure gender effects remains a challenge due to the fact that girls outperform boys in overall academic performance. Our study overcomes this identification problem in a setting where girls are not academically better. Using 2009-2010 school year data on 8th graders in Turkey, this paper disentangles pure “academic” peer effects and “gender” peer effects. Our estimations reveal that the higher the share of females in a division, the lower the likelihood that a student drops out. One standard deviation increase in the share of females in the division decreases the likelihood of dropout by 0.3 percentage points. This result holds even though females are 9.32 percentage points more likely to drop out. These findings are robust to the inclusion of various control variables e.g. parental and academic background of the student, school and regional characteristics. We also find that the gender peer effects are prevalent in both females and males.