Person:

Eskici, Burak

In this dissertation I investigate the historical, institutional, and cultural roots of different regional development trajectories in modern Turkey. Historical comparison of two similar cities of 1920's, namely Kutahya and Kayseri, enabled me to solve the Anatolian Tigers Puzzle, which can be defined as how come very similar cities of rural Anatolia in 1920's experienced such different development patterns in the last 80 years. The most similar case design led to the model, which explains the different regional development patterns of Anatolian cities. In this model, I argue that behind the success story of Kayseri, there is a path dependent virtuous cycle, which was initiated by early state enterprises; accelerated via local institutional reforms during critical junctures; and sustained by socio-cultural context. This theoretical model explains not only the difference between Kutahya and Kayseri, but it is also in line with the success story of other developed Anatolian cities.

Migrant remittances comprise an important capital source for developing countries. Research to date connects migrants’ remittance behavior to altruism, exchange, insurance, and investment motives or to a desire to maintain options available through origin communities. This study provides an alternative ‘network’ perspective: remittance behavior may depend on the remitting patterns of those in one’s social ties: (a) to members of the origin household, (b) to members of ‘sibling’ households, where a member of the ego household has a sibling, and (c) to members of the origin village. We explore this idea using complete census data from 51 villages in Nang Rong, where one in four residents migrated to internal destinations in either 1994 or 2000, and about half of those migrants remitted to their origin households. We find preliminary evidence on network effects: migrants’ likelihood of remitting increases with the number of remitters in the household and with the share of remitters in the village, net of other determinants of remittance behavior, village and year fixed effects, and other potential confounders. We provide additional evidence that connects the former pattern to inheritance-seeking behavior in the household, and the latter to shared norms in the village.