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Employees' wellbeing is important to the firms. Analysis of job satisfaction may give insight into various aspect of labor market behavior, such as worker productivity, absenteeism and job turn over. Little empirical work has been done on the relationship between structure of working environment and job satisfaction. This paper investigates the relationship between working environment, firm size and worker job satisfaction. We use a unique data of 28,240 British employees, Workplace Employee Relations Survey. In this data set the employee questionnaire is matched with the employer questionnaire. Four measures of job satisfaction considered are satisfaction with influence over job, satisfaction with amount of pay, satisfaction with sense of achievement and satisfaction with respect from supervisors. They are all negatively related to the firm size implying lower levels of job satisfaction in larger firms. The firm size in return is negatively related to the degree of flexibility in the working environment. The small firms have more flexible work environments. This is the first study that explore the effect of work amenities. We further find that, contrary to the previous results lower levels of job satisfaction in larger firms can not necessarily be attributed to the inflexibility in their structure of working environment.

We examine the relationship between wealth and health through prominent growth indicators and cognitive ability. Cognitive ability is represented by nutritional status. In this study, the proxy variable for nutritional status is BMI since there is a strong relationship between cognitive ability and nutrition. We use the reduced form equation in the cubic specification of time preference rate to estimate this relationship. We assume that the time preference rate is one of the outputs of cognitive ability. The growth indicators utilized are GDP per capita, schooling, overall and manufacturing productivities, and savings. We estimate our models using the FE, GMM estimators, and long difference OLS and IV estimation through balanced panel data for 47 countries for the 1980-2009 period, which is a representative period of the neo-liberal and globalization economic policy implications. Furthermore, by using the 1980-2009 period, we may eliminate the ripple effects of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Although there is ample evidence that the association between GDP per capita, overall and manufacturing productivities, and BMI could be cubic, we take the results of the long-difference quadratic specification into consideration and conclude that the relationship between all prominent growth indicators and BMI is inverse U-shaped. In other words, cognitive ability has a significant potential to progress growth and economic development only in a healthy status.

This paper considers the female labor force participation (FLFP) behavior over the past decade in five MENA countries namely, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Tunisia. Low FLFP rates in these countries, as it is in other MENA countries, are well documented. We conduct synthetic panel analysis using age-period-cohort (APC) methodology and decompose FLFP rates into age, period and cohort effects. We present our results with Hanoch-Honig/Deaton-Paxson normalization and maximum entropy estimation approaches to the APC methodology in order to observe robustness of our results. We first study the aggregate FLFP and note the differentials in age, period and cohort effects across the countries we consider. The analysis is carried also out by rural/urban regional differentiation, marital status and educational attainment. Implications of our results for possible government policies to increase FLFP rates are discussed.

This paper considers the female labor force participation (FLFP) behavior over the past decade in five MENA countries namely, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Tunisia. Low FLFP rates in these countries, as it is in other MENA countries, are well documented. We conduct synthetic panel analysis using age-period-cohort (APC) methodology and decompose FLFP rates into age, period and cohort effects. We present our results with Hanoch-Honig/Deaton-Paxson normalization and maximum entropy estimation approaches to the APC methodology in order to observe robustness of our results. We first study the aggregate FLFP and note the differentials in age, period and cohort effects across the countries we consider. The analysis is carried also out by rural/urban regional differentiation, marital status and educational attainment. Implications of our results for possible government policies to increase FLFP rates are discussed.

This paper estimates private and social returns to investment in education in Turkey, using the 2017 Household Labor Force Survey and alternative methodologies. The analysis uses the 1997 education reform of increasing compulsory education by three years as an instrument. This results in a private rate of return on the order of 16 percent for higher education and a social return of 10 percent. Using the number of children younger than age 15 in the household as an exclusion restriction, the analysis finds that returns to education for females are higher than those for males. Contrary to many findings in other countries, private returns to those working in the public sector are higher than those in the private sector, and private returns to those who followed the vocational track in secondary education are higher than those in the general academic track. The paper discusses the policy implications of the findings.

This paper considers the public and private sector wage earners in Egypt and examines their wage distribution during 1998-2012 using Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey. We estimate the public-private sector wage gap with Mincer wage equations both at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution. In this process we take into account observable and unobservable characteristics of the individuals using the panel feature of the data with a fixed effects model. We address sector of employment selection issue for both males and females. We find that there is very little evidence of sample selection in our data. Therefore, we present both the selection corrected results and the results with no selection correction. We find a persistent public sector wage penalty for males and public sector wage premium for females in the face of extensive sensitivity checks. They are larger when unobserved heterogeneity is taken into account for males but insignificant for females. They are similar across the quantiles for males but, smaller at the top than at the bottom of the conditional wage distribution for females. We further examine the public sector wage gap over time and in different sub-groups according to age and education. The public sector wage penalty for males has decreased recently over time and is larger for the better educated and younger. We also find substantial regional differences in public sector wage gap for males. ****** Please cite the published version: Aysit Tansel, Halil I. Keskin and Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir (2020), "Public-Private Sector Wage Gap by Gender in Egypt: Evidence from Quantile Regression on Panel Data, 1998-2018", World Development, vol. 135: November 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105060 ****** Please cite the published version: Aysit Tansel, Halil I. Keskin and Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir (2020), "Public-Private Sector Wage Gap by Gender in Egypt: Evidence from Quantile Regression on Panel Data, 1998-2018", World Development, vol. 135: November 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105060

The strong relationship between various health indicators and education is widely documented. However, the studies that investigate the nature of causality between these variables became available only recently and provide evidence mostly from developed countries. We add to this literature by studying the causal effect of education on days hospitalized and days out of work for health reasons. We consider two educational reforms. One is the educational expansion of the early 1960s and the other is the 1997 increase in compulsory level of schooling from five to eight years. However, due to the possibility of weak instruments we do not further pursue this avenue. We focus on individuals in two cohorts namely, 1945-1965 which is an older cohort and 1980-1980 which is a younger cohort. We estimate Tobit models as well as Double Hurdle models. The results suggest that an increase in years of education causes to reduce the number of days hospitalized for both men and women unambiguously and the number of days out of work only for men while an increase in education increases the number of days out of work for a randomly selected women.

This study investigates the factors that may influence the obesity in Turkey which is a developing country by implementing Quantile Regression (QR) methodology. The control factors that we consider are education, labor market outcomes, household income, age, gender, region and marital status. The analysis is conducted by using the 2008, 2010 and 2012 waves of the Turkish Health Survey (THS) prepared by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT). The obesity indicator in our study is the individual's Body Mass Index (BMI). QR regression results provide robust evidence that additional years of schooling has negative effect on individual's BMI and this effect significantly raises across different quantiles of BMI. QR results also indicate that males tend to have higher BMI at lower quantiles of BMI, whereas females have higher BMI at the top quantiles. This implies that females have higher tendency to be obese in Turkey. Our findings also imply that the positive effect of age on individual's BMI levels raises across the quantiles at a decreasing rate. In addition, the effect of living in urban or rural areas do not significantly differ at the highest quantile distributions of BMI. Our results also reveal that the negative effect of being single on BMI increases gradually in absolute value across the quantiles of BMI implying that single individuals have less tendency to be obese or overweight compared to the married or widowed/divorced individuals. Moreover, the negative effect of being in labor force on individual's BMI increases across the quantiles of BMI implying that an individual is more likely to be obese if he/she is out of labor force. Finally, the impact of household income on BMI is positive and significant at all quantiles.

In this paper we have examined the unemployment rate series in Turkey by using long memory models and in particular employing fractionally integrated techniques. Our results suggest that unemployment in Turkey is highly persistent, with orders of integration equal to or higher than 1 in most cases. This implies lack of mean reversion and permanence of the shocks. We found evidence in favor of mean reversion in the case of female unemployment and this happens for all the groups of non-agricultural, rural, urban and youth unemployment series. The possibility of non-linearities are observed only in the case of female unemployment and the degree of persistence is higher in the cases of female and youth unemployment series. Important policy implications emerge from our empirical results. Labor and macroeconomic policies will most likely have long lasting effects on the unemployment rates.

This study investigates the factors that may influence the obesity in Turkey which is a developing country by implementing Quantile Regression (QR) methodology. The control factors that we consider are education, labor market outcomes, household income, age, gender, region and marital status. The analysis is conducted by using the 2008, 2010 and 2012 waves of the Turkish Health Survey (THS) prepared by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT). The obesity indicator in our study is the individual's Body Mass Index (BMI). QR regression results provide robust evidence that additional years of schooling has negative effect on individual's BMI and this effect significantly raises across different quantiles of BMI. QR results also indicate that males tend to have higher BMI at lower quantiles of BMI, whereas females have higher BMI at the top quantiles. This implies that females have higher tendency to be obese in Turkey. Our findings also imply that the positive effect of age on individual's BMI levels raises across the quantiles at a decreasing rate. In addition, the effect of living in urban or rural areas do not significantly differ at the highest quantile distributions of BMI. Our results also reveal that the negative effect of being single on BMI increases gradually in absolute value across the quantiles of BMI implying that single individuals have less tendency to be obese or overweight compared to the married or widowed/divorced individuals. Moreover, the negative effect of being in labor force on individual's BMI increases across the quantiles of BMI implying that an individual is more likely to be obese if he/she is out of labor force. Finally, the impact of household income on BMI is positive and significant at all quantiles.

This paper analyzes the drivers of wage differences among college graduates who hold a degree in a different field of study. We focus on Turkey, an emerging country that is characterized by a sustained expansion of higher education. We estimate conditional wage gaps by field of study using OLS regressions. Average differentials are subsequently decomposed into the contribution of observable characteristics (endowment) and unobservable characteristics (returns). To shed light on distributional wage disparities by field of study, we provide estimates along the unconditional wage distribution by means of RIF-Regressions. Finally, we also decompose the contribution of explained and unexplained factors in accounting for wage gaps along the whole distribution. As such, this is the first work providing evidence on distributional wage differences by college major for a developing country. The results indicate the existence of important wage differences by field of study, which are partly accounted by differences in observable characteristics (especially occupation and, to a lesser extent, employment sector). These pay gaps are also heterogeneous over the unconditional distribution of wages, as is the share of wage differentials that can be attributed to differences in observable characteristics across workers with degrees in different fields of study.

This study provides causal effect of education on health behaviors in Turkey which is a middle income developing country. Health Survey of the Turkish Statistical Institute for the years 2008, 2010 and 2012 are used. The health behaviors considered are smoking, alcohol consumption, fruit and vegetable consumption, exercising and one health outcome namely, the body mass index (BMI). We examine the causal effect of education on these health behaviors and the BMI Instrumental variable approach is used in order to address the endogeneity of education to health behaviors. Educational expansion of the early 1960s is used as the source of exogenous variation in years of schooling. Our main findings are as follows. Education does not significantly affect the probability of smoking or exercising. The higher the education level the higher the probability of alcohol consumption and the probability of fruit and vegetable consumption. Higher levels of education lead to higher BMI levels. This study provides a baseline for further research on the various aspects of health behaviors in Turkey.

This article explores the long-run relationship between unemployment rate and labor force participation rate in Canada. The cointegration analysis vindicates the existence of a long-run relationship between these two variables. This finding leads us to doubt the pertinence of the unemployment invariance hypothesis for Canada. This is consistent with the empirical studies for Japan, Sweden and the United States, but contradicts the empirical studies for Australia, Romania and Turkey. There are contradictory studies for the United Kingdom.

This article explores the long-run relationship between unemployment rate and labor force participation rate in Canada. The cointegration analysis vindicates the existence of a long-run relationship between these two variables. This finding leads us to doubt the pertinence of the unemployment invariance hypothesis for Canada. This is consistent with the empirical studies for Japan, Sweden and the United States, but contradicts the empirical studies for Australia, Romania and Turkey. There are contradictory studies for the United Kingdom.