E. Mine Cinar

Unskilled urban migrant women and disguised employment: Home-working women in Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract Formal and informal labor market opportunities for women are examined for Turkey. Data collected from three surveys are used to describe types of home work and hourly wages are imputed for home work to compare with formal sector wages. The number of migrant women who take home work in the city of Istanbul is estimated.

Subcontracting, growth and capital accumulation in small‐scale firms in the textile industry in Turkey

This study examines capital accumulation and growth among subcontracting small‐scale textile firms. We find that, in spite of the higher average profitability of non‐subcontracting production relative to subcontracting, the average annual rate of capacity expansion between the two groups is not statistically different from the former. This implies that the higher average productive capacity of the non‐subcontractors relative to that of the subcontracting firms are due to differences in their initial capacity. The study further suggests that there may be no easy transition from subcontracting to independent production. For many subcontractor firms in the sample, the cost of inputs required for independent production exceeds the current value of their gross earnings by a multiple.

The Issue of Insider Trading in Law and Economics: Lessons for Emerging Financial Markets in the World

Growth of the private sector and privatization of state companies around the world have led to the emergence of various stock markets, some of which are depicted by insider trading. Law literature uses the arguments of unfairness, breach of fiduciary rights and damage to others to define and rule against insider trading. Economic literature can be used to interpret insider trading from other perspectives. This study argues that the question of insider trading in developing markets can be resolved by the extent stock markets generate externalities and are public goods. It advocates structural changes in the developing markets and examines the conditions under which the Coase Theorem would work.

Estimating Chinese Trade Relationships with the Silk Road Countries

In this paper we discuss the extent to which countries in the former Silk Road regions are either reaching or failing to reach their trading potential with China. We estimate a gravity model of trade using a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator, and estimate trade potential using in-sample, out-of-sample and counterfactual approaches. We compare trade potential using these three methods for Silk Road country trades with China. Next, we compare the estimated trade potential to actual trade, and find that most Silk Road countries are underperforming in their trade with China. However, trade performance against potential improved for most countries over the years 1990–2013. Our results suggest that Chinas former Silk Road trading partners have yet to realize the full potential benefits of Chinas economic growth but that the gap may be narrowing.

The sensitivity of extended linear expenditure system household scales to income declaration errors

Abstract Extended Linear Expenditure System (ELES) household scales use the income variable of the household in identifying a system of Engel curves. Income data in household surveys may contain declaration errors which result in the errors-in-variables problem. A composite error distribution which incorporates both measurement and declaration errors into the model is proposed and the ELES scales are re-estimated. They are found to be sensitive to income declaration errors and biased measures of household welfare.

Working women and power within two-income Turkish households

We examine the issue of gender power by developing four proxies using data from a field survey conducted in Izmir, Turkey. Four proxies for power include income, absolute and proportional spending, and personal leisure time and all are defined relative to the spouse. We find that women have relative power with respect to monetary measures with a high correlation between intra-family status and socio-economic stratum. In addition we find evidence that working women bear a heavy home work burden. However, we also find that there is a strong socio-economic component to this result, where the lower the socio-economic stratum, the smaller are the number of leisure hours.

Intra-marital sharing rules with evidence from Turkey

Economists have long neglected distribution issues within the household by considering the household as a homogeneous and harmonious decision-making unit where the spouses have equal power. .A well-known empirical fact is that women, in general, earn less than men. In 1986, the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women reported: While women represent half the global population and one-third of the labor force, they receive only one tenth of the world income ... . They are also responsible for two-thirds of all working hours (quoted in Folbre (1986, p. 22)). A substantial body of literature suggests that a womans power within the household is related to her contribution to the households financial resources (see Browning et al (1992) and Phipps and Burton (1992), for instance).