published in: Journal of Development Economics, 2023, 162, 103081.
This study combines an administrative dataset of the full population of Turkish firms and the setting of the sudden mass migration of Syrian refugees to Turkey to identify the effect of migrants on firm performance and market structure. As a result of the migrant shock, existing firms expand and new firms are established. Quantitatively, a 10 percentage-point rise in migrant-to-native ratio increases average firm sales by 4% and the number of registered firms by 5%. While the number of firms rises, new firms are more likely to be small. The resulting market structure shows less concentration and firms reduce the share of workers formally employed.
We further document an increased propensity to export and an increase in the variety of exported products. The impact on exports is driven by a rise in competitiveness of firms in regions hosting Syrians as a decline in export prices is observed. We also uncover evidence for an effect of migrants' skills and networks on exports, as the export value and variety of products to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region increase more than those to the EU region among exporters while the prices of products exported to the two regions show similar changes.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.