register
Semih Tumen

Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, and IZA, Germany

The IZA World of Labor initiative takes the policy-oriented focus in labor economics one step further by generating ready-to-use knowledge for policymakers and practitioners

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Deputy Director General, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey

Research interest

Labor economics, microeconometrics, social interactions and networks, public economics, inequality, development economics, family economics, economics of education, urban economics

Website

http://www.semihtumen.com/

Qualifications

PhD Economics, University of Chicago, 2011

Selected publications

  • “Is happiness contagious? Separating spillover externalities from the group-level social context.” Journal of Happiness Studies 16:3 (2015): 719–744 (with T. Zeydanli).

  • “Reassessing the trends in the relative supply of college-equivalent workers in the U.S.: A selection-correction approach.” Journal of Economic Inequality 13:2 (2015): 249–273 (with Z. Elitas and H. Ercan).

  • “Skill acquisition in the informal economy and schooling decisions: Evidence from emerging economies.” Labour 29:3 (2015): 270–290.

  • “Quantifying and explaining stickiness in housing rents: A Turkish case study with micro-level data.” Journal of Housing Economics 25C (2014): 62–74 (with C. Aysoy).

  • “Day-of-the-week effects in subjective well-being: Does selectivity matter?” Social Indicators Research 119:1 (2014): 139–162 (with T. Zeydanli).

article(s)

  • The use of natural experiments in migration research

    Data on rapid, unexpected refugee flows can credibly identify the impact of migration on native workers’ labor market outcomes

    Semih Tumen, October 2015
    Estimating the causal effect of immigration on the labor market outcomes of native workers has been a major concern in the literature. Because immigrants decide whether and where to migrate, immigrant populations generally consist of individuals with characteristics that differ from those of a randomly selected sample. One solution is to focus on events such as civil wars and natural catastrophes that generate rapid and unexpected flows of refugees into a country unrelated to their personal characteristics, location, and employment preferences. These “natural experiments” yield estimates that find small negative effects on native workers’ employment but not on wages.
    MoreLess