• Labour Economics, working conditions, youth employment.

Currently I am involved in four projects:

1- Child labour among seasonal agricultural workers. Estimating how many kids are involved in seasonal agricultural labour, understanding their working conditions and finding a way to stop the vicious circle is the aim of this project.

2- Syrian refugees' working conditions. The aim of the project is two-fold, to gather data on Turkey-based Syrian refugees and to analyze potential working conditions' deficits. 

3- Earthquake response. Setting up an information system for the area affected by the earthquake to monitor working conditions' deficits.

Abstract: This article proposes a strategy to identify Syrian refugees in Turkey’s Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS). Even though Turkey’s HLFS contains information on the migrants’ year of arrival to Turkey, it does not provide details on their nationalities. This unfortunate feature mixes Syrian refugees with the normal flow of migration that arrived to Turkey during the Syrian war. I propose to eliminate the regular flow of migrants arrived between 2011 and 2017 by matching them (based on their  characteristics) with the migrants arrived in the 2004-2010 period. This method obtains, indirectly, non-regular migration,

i.e. Syrian refugees. The results show that the age distribution of the non-regular migrants identified matches the age distribution of Syrian refugees as officially released by the Turkish government. At last, I propose a post-stratification adjustment of the survey weights to find the actual geographical distribution of Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Abstract: This article assesses the role of the services sector as an engine of growth during the 1985–2015 period. Results from testing services within a Kaldorian framework support the view that (a) manufacturing continues to remain important, but its contribution has weakened over time while that of services has become stronger, and (b) job creation is being driven predominantly by the services sector in countries at all income levels, although this is not always associated with productivity gains, raising concerns about its sustainability. In addition to the Kaldorian analysis, we use a shift-share decomposition of labor productivity to analyze the 2005–2015 decade for 11 economic activities. We find that the strongest contribution to overall productivity is provided by what we call “modern” services, mostly through labor reallocation from sectors with lower productivity levels. In contrast, the contribution of the manufacturing sector, although still positive, arises from “within”-sector changes in productivity, partially as a consequence of the sector’s lack of job creation. In light of technological change, and the impact it may have on low- and middle-skill jobs, it is likely that the job creating effects of manufacturing may decline further. Modern services—such as business activities and transport and communications, which are linked to manufacturing— appear to have characteristics similar to those of manufacturing, and are becoming important for countries at all income levels for economic growth overall. However, although expanding quickly, their share of total employment remains small. 

Abstract: Analysis of data from two international surveys of young people allows us to deepen our understanding of the impact of internships and, in particular, to dig deeper into the source of the differential impact of paid vs. unpaid internships. The analysis first confirms the existence of a robust positive association between the payment of interns and beneficial post-internship outcomes. It then takes the analysis one stage further by identifying the specific characteristics underlying `successful' internships. In particular, we find that internships that are structured, last at least six months, involve a mentor and provide health insurance produce better post-internship outcomes than those lacking these features.