The Economic Impact of Syrian Refugees on Host Countries: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Turkey
American Economic Review · 2016 · Volume 106 · Issue 5
Abstract
The Syrian Conflict generated forced immigration from northern Syria to southeastern Turkey. Arrival of refugees resembles a natural experiment, which offers good opportunities to study the economic impact of immigration. I study three main outcomes: labor markets, consumer prices, and housing rents. I document moderate employment losses among native informal workers, which suggests that they are partly substituted by refugees. Prices of the items produced in informal labor intensive sectors declined due to labor cost advantages generated by refugee inflows. Finally, refugee inflows increased the rents of higher quality housing units, while there is no effect on lower quality units.
Keywords
International Migration, Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants, Non-labor Discrimination, Informal Labor Markets, Geographic Labor Mobility, Immigrant Workers, Economic Development: Human Resources, Human Development, Income Distribution, Migration, Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration, Regional Labor Markets, Population, Neighborhood Characteristics, Production Analysis and Firm Location: Government Policy
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