Development level of hosting areas and the impact of refugees on natives’ labor market outcomes in Turkey☆

Doğu Tan Aracı, Murat Demirci () and Murat Kırdar

European Economic Review, 2022, vol. 145, issue C

Abstract: We examine how the impact of refugees on natives’ labor market outcomes varies by the development level of hosting areas, which has important implications for the optimal allocation of refugees across regions and countries. For this purpose, in the context of the largest refugee group in the world in a single country, Syrian refugees in Turkey, we exploit the significant variation in the development level across regions of Turkey, several of which host a substantial number of refugees. We find that the impact of refugees on natives’ labor market outcomes becomes significantly less adverse as the regional development level rises. For instance, the adverse effects of the refugee shock on women's employment and labor force participation observed at the mean level of development vanish at high levels of development. Moreover, while the refugee impact on men's employment is negative for the least developed regions, it is positive for highly developed regions. Our findings imply that developed regions and countries are better positioned to protect their local population from the short-term adverse effects of refugees in the labor market.

Keywords: Refugees; Optimal refugee allocation; Labor market impact; Development level; Employment and wages of men and women (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 O15 R23 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292122000666
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:145:y:2022:i:c:s0014292122000666

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104132

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().