There is an excess demand for university education in Turkey. Highly competitive university entrance examination which rations the available places at university programs is very central to the lives of young people. In order to increase the chances of success of their children in the university...

This paper analyzes the relationship between higher education and body weight and smoking behavior among women in Turkey. We exploit the largely exogenous and substantial increase in the openings of universities throughout Turkey. Based on the spatial and temporal variability of university...

We examine the dramatic expansion in the Turkish higher education system during 2006-2008, which resulted in the establishment of 41 new public universities and a 60% increase in the number of available slots. Using the variation in the exposure intensity of expansion across cohorts and regions,...

We investigate emigrant self-selection according to institutional quality using up to 3,566 observations on bilateral migration flows from 77 countries over the 1990-2000 period. We relate these flows to differences in political and economic institutions. We improve and expand upon previous...

Using household data from Vietnam, we provide evidence on the effects of education on freedom of spouse choice. We use war disruptions and spatial indicators of schooling supply as instruments. The point estimates indicate that a year of additional schooling reduces the probability of an...

Utilitarian foundations for limited government are shaky insofar as they assume rational and consistent individuals. Recently economists' assumption of rational actors has come under sustained attack. Behavioural economics has suggested that people are plagued by irrational biases and...

The literature on happiness shows that there are many factors that influence a person's happiness. Extending previous studies, we investigate the role of the freedom of choice as a key contributing construct in influencing a person's happiness. We define two hypothetical sub-constructs for the...

We study paternalistic preferences in two large-scale experiments with participants from the general population in the United States. Spectators decide whether to intervene to prevent a stakeholder, who is mistaken about the choice set, from making a choice that is not aligned with the...

Available wisdom suggests that a negative relationship prevails between economic freedom and perceived corruption among firms. However, the relationship is far from linear and a number of complex interactions make it fairly nuanced. We show that greater competition may accentuate the problem of...

This paper studies the effects on registered employment, earnings, and number of registered establishments of two employment subsidy schemes in Turkey. We implement a difference-in-differences methodology to construct appropriate counterfactuals for the covered provinces. Our findings suggest...