Research

The Impact of Minimum Wages on Overall Health and Well-being: Global Evidence from the Gallup World Poll (with Cahit Guven, Aydogan Ulker, and Carol Graham), Forthcoming, Social Science & Medicine, (Impact Factor: 4.9, ABS4).

We examine the impact of minimum wage increases on the overall self-reported health and subjective well-being of low-skilled workers using the Gallup World Poll from 2009 to 2020. We identify effects using within-country changes over time and cross-country variations in the timing and intensity of minimum wage increases across 87 countries. Our findings suggest that minimum wage increases benefit health and certain dimensions of subjective well-being. Specifically, we estimate a range of specifications and find that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage leads to an increase in self-reported health ranging from 0% to 1% and an increase in satisfaction with the standard of living between 1% and 6%, at the outcome means. Minimum wage increases are linked to higher incomes, a lower likelihood of overtime work, enhanced social interactions, and more positive daily experiences. These benefits are especially significant in countries with stronger rule of law, among male workers, and for individuals in nations with free and universal healthcare access. A series of sensitivity and placebo tests confirm the robustness of these findings.

• Best Presentation Award in the Faculty of Business and Law at the Curtin EMCR Symposium.

Linguistic Integration Improves Refugee Physical and Mental Health (with Astghik Mavisakalyan, and Yashar Tarverdi), Forthcoming, Scientific Reports, (Impact Factor: 3.8).

Based on existing evidence, refugees have considerably poorer health outcomes relative to other immigrants and the native-born population. Little is known, however, on what works to achieve improvements in refugees' health. Using a unique longitudinal survey from Australia, this paper shows that linguistic integration is an important marker of health among the refugee population. In particular, linguistically integrated refugees have significantly better physical and mental health outcomes, relative to their linguistically marginalized counterparts. Our analysis additionally highlights the significance of maintaining attachment to one's own language, in addition to acquiring English proficiency, for individuals' well-being. The results highlight social integration and labor market integration as key transmission channels. Linguistically integrated individuals are more likely to make friends and socialize with neighbors, as well as understand and trust the community more broadly. Labor income is also shown to have a positive impact on the overall health of refugees who are linguistically integrated. Additionally, while employment generally contributes to better health outcomes, the health benefits of linguistic integration appear to decline for refugees working in blue-collar jobs, whereas health improvements are observed for those employed in white-collar positions. Effects are more pronounced for women and younger refugees. A battery of sensitivity tests confirms the robustness of these findings.

Top-performing Girls are more Impactful Peer Role Models than Boys, Teachers Say (with Sofoklis Goulas and Rigissa Megalokonomou), 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), (Impact Factor 9.4), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2421436122. Supplementary Material. Replication Code.

We examine teachers' perceptions toward top performing students and their role model influence on others in an online survey-based experiment. We randomly expose teachers to profiles of top performing students and inquire whether they consider the profiled top performers to be influential role models. These profiles varied by gender and field of study (STEM or Non-STEM). Our findings show that teachers perceive top-performing girls as more influential peer role models compared to top-performing boys (β = 0.289; p < 0.001). We also investigate the qualities teachers perceive top performers who are successful role models to have. We show that teachers associate a greater sense of learning autonomy and sense of being an example with top-performing girls compared to top-performing boys. Estimated effects are more pronounced among teachers with children and teachers in urban areas. Administrative data from a representative sample show limited observed differences between top-performing boys' and girls' educational outcomes that could justify the differences in teachers' gender perceptions. These findings carry significant implications for education, as teachers play a crucial role in the cultivation of positive externalities between students.

A Tale of Two Life Stages: The Imprinting Effect of Macroeconomic Contractions on Later Life Entrepreneurship (with Matthew Mount, Cahit Guven, Aydogan Ulker and Carol Graham), 2023, Journal of Business Venturing, (Impact Factor 7.7, A*, ABS4, FT 50), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106313. Supplementary Material.

Studies argue that macroeconomic contractions create immediate incentives for individuals to pursue entrepreneurship. However, research has not addressed whether past macroeconomic contractions imprint on individuals and influence their future entrepreneurship. Integrating literature on the business cycle and imprinting with insights from lifespan psychology, we develop and test competing theoretical arguments aligned to two distinct life stages about when a macroeconomic contraction will imprint on individuals to influence their future entrepreneurship, and how such effects are imprinted. Our findings show that only contractions experienced during early adulthood influence entrepreneurship and this effect is transmitted culturally via country-level preferences for time discounting.

Individual Labour Market Transitions of Australians during and after the National COVID-19 Lockdown (with Cahit Guven and Aydogan Ulker), 2022, Applied Economics, (Impact Factor 1.8, A, ABS2), DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2022.2094881. Supplementary Material.

We examine the individual labour market transitions of Australians during and after the National COVID-19 Lockdown, controlling for demographic characteristics and person fixed effects across different subgroups of the population using the Longitudinal Labour Force Survey. The National COVID-19 Lockdown (which began on 21 March 2020 with the introduction of social distancing rules and the closure of non-essential services across individual states and territories and lasted until the end of June 2020) decreased the overall labour force participation by 3% and increased unemployment by 1.8%. However, the economy recovered to a certain extent after the lockdown, with labour force participation increasing by 0.051% and unemployment declining by 0.049% for each additional week after the end of the lockdown. Our conditional estimates show that the national lockdown did not affect the genders differently in terms of unemployment, while females recovered faster during the post-lockdown period. People working in transport, postal, administrative, and arts and recreation services decreased their working hours significantly during the lockdown relative to those employed in other industries, but we do not observe any significant difference in their post-lockdown recovery patterns. Our results could help policy makers better target the labour market outcomes of the most at-risk individuals.

Dowry Expectation and Intimate Partner Violence (with Munirul Nabin, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Vijay Mohan, and Prasad S. Bhattacharya)

This paper investigates the relationship between dowry payment and intimate partner violence (IPV). First, we build a two-period theretical model where dowry is an ongoing payment from the bride to the groom. The novelty of the model is how first period dowry payments elicit expectations on dowry demands in the second period. Specifically, there exists a trade-off from the bride’s perspective: dowry payment in the first period raises the probability of marriage, but encourages demands for higher payments in the second period. IPV occurs in the model when the payment in the second period does not meet the expectation of the groom. Then, the theoretical proposition along with the results of comparative statics are tested using a new dataset from Bangladesh: “Violence Against Women Survey 2015”. The survey has been carried out by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics with support from the United Nations Population Fund, using a nationally representative sample to assess atrocities against women along four dimensions: physical, psychological, economic, and sexual. The survey contains information about whether dowry was given ever (first period), and conditional on that being true, further information on dowry given in the past 12 months (second period). The baseline empirical results show overwhelming support for the theoretical conjectures, i.e., there is a positive and statistically significant impact of dowry given on various forms of IPV in the second period after controlling for several unobservable and observable factors. To address endogeneity, we employ the levels of rainfall and rainfall squared as instruments. The reduced form and instrumental variable results show consistent and robust support that expectation mismatch regarding dowry payments leads to more likelihood of psychological violence in the second period. 

Barriers to Citizenship and the Socio-Economic Integration of Australian Immigrants (with Cahit Guven and Aydogan Ulker)

Drivers of Economic assimilation of immigrants by visa type (with Cem Ozguzel, Jasper Jesse, and Aydogan Ulker)