Aytekin Güven

Wage Inequality and Wage Mobility in Turkey

This paper investigates wage inequality and wage mobility in Turkey using the Surveys on Income and Living Conditions (SILC). This is the first paper that explores wage mobility for Turkey. It differs from the existing literature by providing analyses of wage inequality and wage mobility over various socioeconomic groups such as gender, age, education and sector of economic activity. We first present an overview of the evolution of wages and wage inequality over the period 2005-2011. Next, we compute several measures of wage mobility and explore the link between wage inequality and wage mobility. Further, we compute the transition matrices which show movements of individuals across the wage distribution from one period to another and investigate the determinants of transition probabilities using a multinomial logit model. The results show that overall the real wages increased over the study period and wage inequality exhibits a slight increase.. Wage inequality is one of the highest among the European Union (EU) countries. The wage mobility in Turkey is lower than what is observed in the European Union countries although it increases as time horizon expands. Wage mobility has an equalizing impact on the wage distribution, however; this impact is not substantial enough to overcome the high and persistent wage inequality in Turkey.

The Effects of Market Structure on Uncertainty-Investment Relationship: Evidence from Turkish Manufacturing Industry

Bu calismanin genel amaci belirsizligin yatirimlar uzerindeki etkilerini Turkiye icin incelemektir. Ozel amacimiz ise Caballero (1991)’nun belirsizlik ile yatirim arasindaki negatif iliskinin eksik rekabet kosullarinda daha belirgin olacagi iddiasini test etmektir. Bu amac dogrultusunda, belirsizlik-yatirim iliskisinde piyasa yapisinin etkisini inceleyebilmek icin 1992-2001 donemine ait Turk imalat sanayiinden elde edilen panel veriler kullanilmistir. Sonuclarimiz belirsizligin yatirimlar uzerinde azaltici etkisinin oldugunu ve bu azaltici etkinin eksik rakebet kosullari altinda daha guclu oldugunu gostermektedir.

Wages, Profitability and Market Structure: Threshold Regression Analyses

This paper employs threshold regression techniques to examine the effect of product market structure on real wages and profitability. Using longitudinal data on Turkish manufacturing industries over the period of 1985-2001, we show that market concentration has positive effects on wages and profitability. The positive effect of market concentration on wages is only significant over a certain threshold level whereas, the positive effect of market concentration on profitability exists in both regimes determined by a lower threshold level of concentration but weakens over this threshold. Our results suggest that the imperfectly competitive structure of Turkish manufacturing industry offers more monopoly rent to employers than employees.