The Impact of Mass Migration of Syrians on the Turkish Labor Market

Ege Aksu (), Refik Erzan () and Murat Kırdar
Additional contact information
Ege Aksu: CUNY Graduate Center

No 12050, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We estimate the effects of the arrival of 2.5 million Syrian migrants in Turkey by the end of 2015 on the labor market outcomes of natives, using a difference-in-differences IV methodology. We show that relaxing the common-trend assumption of this methodology - unlike recent papers in the same setting - makes a substantial difference in several key outcomes. Despite the massive size of the migrant influx, no adverse effects on the average wages of men or women or on total employment of men are observed. For women, however, total employment falls - which results mainly from the elimination of part-time jobs. While the migrant influx has adverse effects on competing native workers in the informal sector, it has favorable effects on complementary workers in the formal sector. We estimate about one-to-one replacement in employment for native men in the informal sector, whereas both wage employment and wages of men in the formal sector increase. Our findings, including those on the heterogeneity of effects by age and education, are consistent with the implications of the canonical migration model. In addition, increases in prices in the product market and in capital flow to the treatment regions contribute to the rise in labor demand in the formal sector.

Keywords: difference-in-differences; Turkey; Syrian refugees; formal and informal sectors; immigrant workers; wages; labor force and employment; instrumental variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 J21 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 99 pages
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-cwa, nep-int, nep-iue and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2022, 76, 102183

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12050.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of mass migration of Syrians on the Turkish labor market (2022)
Working Paper: The Impact of Mass Migration of Syrians on the Turkish Labor Market (2019)
Working Paper: The Impact of Mass Migration of Syrians on the Turkish Labor Market (2018)
Working Paper: The Impact of Mass Migration of Syrians on the Turkish Labor Market (2018)
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:iza:izadps:dp12050

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().