The Skill Wage Premium in the Turkish Labor Market from The Race Between Technology and Education Perspective

Abstract

In Turkey, a dramatic surge in the number of university graduates has increased the share of skilled labor in the workforce over the last two decades. This study aims to analyze the effects of this change on the skill wage premium by using Goldin and Katz’s (The race between education and technology. Belknap for Harvard University Press, 2008) framework in The Race between Education and Technology. In contrast with previous studies on developed economies, our results show that the skill wage premium is declining in Turkey, with the primary reasons being supply-related factors and the significant rise in the real minimum wage. This indicates that no significant change in the Turkish labor market’s skill demand in the 2004–2019 period originated from skill-biased technological change. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.