PINAR DERIN                                                      

                                                       PhD Candidate in Economics

Job Market Paper

      “Does Terrorism Have Economic Roots?” October 2008

        This paper investigates the roots of international, domestic, and separatist terrorism using MIPT (Memorial Institute of Prevention of Terrorism) - a new, extensive, multi-country panel data set. I augment the MIPT data by classifying the target country, the terrorist's country of origin and by classifying each terrorist incident as international, domestic or separatist. International terrorism refers to terrorism committed by foreign nationals. Domestic terrorism references terrorism committed by domestic nationals. Separatist terrorism is committed by domestic nationals engaged in separatist causes.  The findings are striking and at considerable odds with the literature. Using a panel data analysis with country fixed effects, I find that a country's GDP is negatively related with the likelihood of international terrorist attacks made by that country's nationals and is not related to the likelihood of being a possible target of international terrorism. Similarly, domestic terrorism is negatively related to the country's GDP. I build an entirely new data set with regional GDP of separatist regions and I find that separatist terrorist incidents do have economic roots.

Publications/Submitted Papers

“Charitable Giving under Inequality Aversion” with Neslihan Uler,  submitted to Public Finance Review in January 2008

     This paper focuses on the relationship between voluntary giving and the degree of inequality aversion. Our model suggests that voluntary giving is increasing in the degree of inequality aversion for individuals of higher than average income; however, the sign of the effect is reversed for individuals that are poorer than the average. Contributions are monotonically increasing in the income level, holding the degree of inequality aversion constant. We test our theoretical findings using the General Social Survey data on the United States and show that empirical results support our predictions

Work in Progress

“Simulating Social Security Reform in Turkey”

     This paper investigates the welfare effects of Social security reform in Turkey using an Auerbach and Kotlikoff overlapping generations model with money and informal sector. Although the results suggest that recent social security reform in Turkey has significantly improved the long-run sustainability of the pension system and welfare of the individuals, increase in the contribution rates suggested by the reform might have adverse effects of the informal sector and welfare of the generations. I suggest further improvements in the existing social security system and show their effects in welfare of different generations in Turkey.

“Separatist Terrorism and Poverty in Southeastern Turkey”