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Essays in Public Policy and Labour Economics

Öztek, Abdullah Selim; (2019) Essays in Public Policy and Labour Economics. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

This thesis comprises three chapters that provide discussions for labour income taxation and labour market effects of immigration and minimum wage. Chapter 1 studies the optimal income taxation with a finite number of types. It is shown that Rawlsian social welfare and maximax social welfare functions constitute upper and lower bounds for the second-best optimal marginal tax schedules. Therefore, any marginal tax schedule with a higher tax rate than Rawlsian bound or with a lower tax rate than maximax bound would be inefficient. Moreover, it is shown that reasonable marginal tax schedules between these two benchmarks could be supported as a second-best tax schedule with appropriate social weights. These results are also valid when bunching is optimal. Additionally, some characterization for the total tax rates at the top and bottom of the income distribution are given. Chapter 2 analyses the labour market effects of the Syrian refugees on Turkish natives. Our results suggest that there are no negative effects on native employment but there is a compositional change in the labour market. On the contrary, we provide evidence for positive effects on formal employment which is confirmed by the administrative data. When we analyse the changes in labour outcomes by gender, results are differentiated in a systematic way. For males, while there is an increase in formal employment, informal employment decreases. Results are the opposite for females. There is a reduction in formal employment but an increase in informal female employment. These results suggest that while refugees are substitutes for females in the formal market, they are complements to formal male workers. Chapter 3 investigates wage and employment effects of the minimum wage in Turkey. Our analysis suggests that while formal wages are increasing with the minimum wage, there is no significant change in informal market wages. For the employment outcomes, we observe a significant increase in informal employment however there is no significant change in formal employment. The increased share of informal labour is mainly due to increased labour force participation. Since females are paid less than males, the wage and employment effects are much stronger for women. Although minimum wage is set for a calendar month, we observe no changes in formal and informal working hours.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ph.D
Title: Essays in Public Policy and Labour Economics
Event: UCL (University College London)
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author 2019. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10083548
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