Dr. Bilgel is an Associate Professor of Economics at Istanbul Okan University, Turkey. He holds a B.A. degree in Business-Economics from Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey and a M.A. degree in Economics from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and a Ph.D. degree in Law and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. Dr. Bilgel’s areas of interest include health economics, political economy, empirical legal studies and causal inference. Dr. Bilgel spent the 2017-18 academic year as a Visiting Research Scholar at Montana State University, with the Initiative for Regulation and Applied Economic Analysis where he worked on organ donation and gun control.
Turkey has a longstanding problem of uneven economic development across its regions. This column explores the interactions between the market access of central and remote parts of the country, the varying levels of human capital accumulation in those places, and the wage returns to education. The research evidence indicates the potential of regional policy to reduce inequalities.