The signaling effect of the Entry was more pronounced in the same provinces that responded more strongly to the Exit: those with lower education levels, stronger support for the governing party, and the Eastern region of the country.

How about the impact of Entry? We find significant decline which is the result of two separate effects: the signaling effect of the Entry, and the deterrence effect of enhanced penalties associated with a new legislation (Law 6284) enacted four months after the Entry

Using two independent data sources and a DID strategy, we show that the withdrawal from the Convention led to an additional 70 female murders per year, primarily committed by intimate partners. The effect size is stronger in provinces with higher support for the government.

on the grounds that it is incompatible with TR’s family values. However, the withdrawal did not alter Law 6284 (that applied the provisions of IST convention) on domestic violence. So although the law remained intact, many saw this as a signal for higher tolerance against women.

Istanbul Convention is the short name for The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. Although Turkey was the first country to sign the Convention in 2011, President Erdogan announced on March 2021 TR is exiting +

And finally, some manual coefficient plots showing how starting wages change with an honours degree for different CGPA bandwidths for male graduates of nonelite unis, but not for females or male graduates of elite unis.

We rely on a Regression Discontinuity Design around the CGPA 3.00 cutoff. Here is our main RDD plot.

Consistent with the statistical discrimination and employer learning perspective, we find that the signal produced around the honours degree cutoff is stronger for the male graduates of non-elite universities with more recent establishment dates.

...and considered to offer more challenging curricula. Thus, STEM fields themselves have a high signal value for ability. Indeed, we do not find a wage premium for an honours degree in starting wages for STEM graduates in Turkiye.

We focus on economics b/c unlike the STEM degrees, an economics degree in Turkiye, -where our data comes from- does not have a strong signal value in terms of the technical and analytic capacity of individuals, whereas STEM degrees are traditionally much more difficult to get in

And, second, regardless of university prestige, we report that females have significantly higher GPAs on average than males, which implies that, conditional on unobserved ability, females get higher grades than males; hence, a high GPA is likely a less valuable signal for females

Graduates of non-elite universities, on the other hand, are harder to screen as additional signals might be needed to gauge their potential labour productivity levels.

Firms often use various proxies to screen job applicants and predict their expected productivity levels on the job. First, being an elite university graduate itself may have a signal value, which likely makes the 3.00 cutoff less important when they apply for a job.

We explain these empirical patterns using the theory of statistical discrimination. A major challenge faced by hiring firms is the difficulty of directly observing the productivity of applicants. Asymmetric information reduces the efficiency of firms' hiring decisions.

We find that graduating with an honours degree increases the entry wages of male econ graduates of non-elite universities by about 4%. But why is there no such effect for females and for male graduates of elite universities?