Özden, Çağlar

Person:
Özden, Çağlar

Development Research Group

Fields of Specialization

Financial Infrastructure and Remittances, Trade, Migration

Departments

Development Research Group

Last updated: February 7, 2025

Biography

Çağlar Özden is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank and co-director of the 2023 World Development Report on International Migration. A Turkish national and a professional migrant, Çağlar received his undergraduate degrees in economics and industrial engineering from Cornell University and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. He is a fellow of IZA, CreAM and ERF. His research explores the nexus of globalization of product and labor markets, government policies and economic development. He has edited three books and published numerous papers in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Economic Journal. He is the lead author of the flagship report Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets. His current research projects explore the determinants and patterns of global labor mobility, impacts of migrants on the destination labor market outcomes, medical brain drain, linkages between migration, trade, and foreign direct investment flows.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 48

Global Skill Partnerships for Migration: Preparing Tomorrow’s Workers for Home and Abroad
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-07) Acosta, Pablo; Özden, Çağlar; Lebow, Jeremy; Rodriguez, Limon; Dahlgren, Evelina
Higher-income countries are aging at unprecedented rates, creating skills shortages in critical sectors ranging from healthcare to construction to information technology. At the same time, many lower-income countries are experiencing booming youth populations, but many lack the skills needed to access quality work opportunities both at home and abroad. In Global Skill Partnerships (GSPs), origin and destination countries partner to invest in education and training systems in the origin country to meet skill needs in both countries. Through collaboration and innovation in skills development and migration management, GSPs cost-effectively expand domestic training capacity in the origin while facilitating the benefits of regularized skilled migration. This report reviews the state of knowledge of GSPs, considers terminology and approaches, provides a roadmap for policymakers who want to implement GSPs, and clarifies the role of multilateral development institutions in this pivotal agenda. Various GSP and GSP-like programs and pilots have already been implemented globally and financed through various sources, and this report reviews their essential features, challenges faced, and lessons learned for future initiatives. Before highlighting these examples, the report discusses the current global economic landscape, focusing on demographic and education trends and why they call for international partnerships to invest in education and training for workers to participate in domestic and international markets.
Impacts of Temporary Migration on Development in Origin Countries
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2023-04-17) Bossavie, Laurent; Özden, Çağlar
Temporary migration is widespread globally. While the literature has traditionally focused on the impacts of permanent migration on destination countries, evidence on the effects of temporary migration on origin countries has grown over the past decade. This paper highlights that the economic development impacts, especially on low- and middle-income origin countries, are complex, dynamic, context-specific, and multichanneled. The paper identifies five main pathways: (a) labor supply; (b) human capital; (c) financial capital and entrepreneurship; (d) aggregate welfare and poverty; and (e) institutions and social norms. Several factors shape these pathways and their eventual impacts. These include initial economic conditions at home, the scale and double selectivity of emigration and return migration, whether migration was planned to be temporary ex ante, and employment and human capital accumulation opportunities experienced by migrants while they are overseas. Meaningful policy interventions to increase the development impacts of temporary migration require proper analysis, which, in turn, depends on high-quality data on workers’ employment trajectories, as well as their decision processes on the timing of their migration and return. These are currently the biggest research challenges to overcome to study the development impacts of temporary migration.
Impacts of Temporary Migration on Development in Origin Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04) Bossavie, Laurent; Özden, Çağlar
Temporary migration is widespread globally. While the literature has traditionally focused on the impacts of permanent migration on destination countries, evidence on the effects of temporary migration on origin countries has grown over the past decade. This paper highlights that the economic development impacts, especially on low- and middle-income origin countries are complex, dynamic, context-specific and multi-channeled. The paper identifies five main pathways: (i) labor supply, (ii) human capital, (iii) financial capital and entrepreneurship, (iv) aggregate welfare and poverty, and (v) institutions and social norms. Several factors shape these pathways and their eventual impacts. These include initial economic conditions at home, the scale and double selectivity of emigration and return migration, and employment and human capital accumulation opportunities experienced by migrants while they are overseas, among others. Meaningful policy interventions to increase the development impacts of temporary migration require proper analysis, which, in turn, depends on high quality data on workers’ employment trajectories. This is currently the biggest research challenge to overcome to study the development impacts of temporary migration.
Skilled Migration: A Sign of Europe's Divide or Integration?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-09) Bossavie, Laurent; Garrote-Sánchez, Daniel; Makovec, Mattia; Özden, Çağlar
Skilled Migration: A Sign of Europe’s Divide or Integration? examines the trends, determinants, and impacts of migration of high-skilled workers within the European Union in the past two decades. High-skilled migration, whether internal or international, is largely a symptom rather than a cause of the gaps in labor market and educational opportunities, productivity, welfare, and the quality of institutions across the regions. Free movement within the European Union is an incentive for workers and firms to take advantage of these gaps by moving from low- to high-productivity sectors and regions. This process, however, results in winners and losers depending on the extent of the complementarity and substitutability between migrants and natives and on the capacity of the sending regions to realize benefits from return or circular migration and other knowledge spillovers. This study assesses the economic benefits and the costs of skilled migration in the short and long runs, emphasizing the potential implications of a large outflow of highly qualified workers on the economies of the originating regions. This book uses empirical analysis to present recommendations for labor market and education policies and identify effective ways to address the various costs that migration induces among different skill groups within regions that send migrants and those that receive migrants. These methods must also improve cross-country coordination to more effectively unlock the overall benefits of migration.
Occupational Hazards: Migrants and the Economic and Health Risks of COVID-19 in Western Europe
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12) Bossavie, Laurent; Garrote Sanchez, Daniel; Makovec, Mattia; Ozden, Caglar; Garrote Sánchez, Daniel
This paper investigates the economic and health risks arising from the COVID-19 pandemic for migrant workers in the European Union. It first assesses migrants’ economic and health vulnerabilities using ex ante measures based on both supply and demand shocks. The analysis finds that immigrants were more vulnerable than native-born workers to both income- and health-related risks, and that this greater exposure stems from the occupations in which migrant workers are concentrated. Migrants work to a greater degree than native-born citizens in occupations that are less amenable to teleworking arrangements, and in economic sectors that experienced greater reductions in demand during the pandemic. This has led to an increase in both their income and employment risks. The paper shows that individual characteristics, such as educational attainment, age, and geographical location, fail to explain the native-migrant gap in exposure to economic and health risks posed by the pandemic. Limited language ability, the concentration of migrants in jobs with labor shortages among native-born workers, and a reliance on immigrant networks to find jobs all appear to play significant roles in migrants’ exposure to pandemic-related risks. Finally, the paper finds that actual job losses in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, are highly correlated with ex-ante vulnerabilities: immigrant workers experienced significantly higher rates of job losses, which partly originates from their greater concentration in non-teleworkable jobs. Ex-ante vulnerabilities, however, only explain part of the migrant-native gap in job losses that followed the pandemic and being an immigrant still imposes additional risks.
Capital Markets, Temporary Migration and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-02) Bossavie, Laurent; Görlach, Joseph-Simon; Ozden, Caglar; Wang, He
Note: This report was formerly titled "Institutional Voids, Capital Markets and Temporary Migration: Evidence from Bangladesh." This abstract has been amended in January 2024. This paper examines international temporary migration as an intermediary step among aspiring entrepreneurs to accumulate the needed capital when they face credit constraints at home. The analysis is based on a representative dataset of lifetime employment histories of return migrants from Bangladesh. After establishing the credit constraints that potential entrepreneurs face, the paper shows that non-agricultural self-employment rates are significantly higher among returning migrants—over half versus around 20% of non-migrants. Most migrants transition into self-employment by using their savings from abroad as the main source of financing. The paper then offers, for the first time, a detailed account of the financial costs and benefits of international migration. The findings suggest that temporary migration can contribute to structural transformation of lower-income countries by enabling credit-constrained workers to enter into non-agricultural entrepreneurship.
Who on Earth Can Work from Home?
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2021-03-03) Garrote Sánchez, Daniel; Gomez Parra, Nicolas; Ozden, Caglar; Rijkers, Bob; Viollaz, Mariana; Winkler, Hernan
This paper reviews the emerging literature on which jobs can be performed from home and presents new estimates of the prevalence of such jobs based on the task content of occupations, their technology requirements and the availability of internet access by country and income groupings. Globally, one of every five jobs can be performed from home. In low-income countries, this ratio drops to one of every 26 jobs. Failing to account for internet access yields upward biased estimates of the resilience of poor countries, lagging regions, and poor workers. Since better paid workers are more likely to be able to work from home, COVID-19 is likely to exacerbate inequality, especially in richer countries where better paid and educated workers are insulated from the shock. The overall labor market burden of COVID-19 is bound to be larger in poor countries, where only a small share of workers can work from home and social protection systems are weaker. Across the globe, young, poorly educated workers and those on temporary contracts are least likely to be able to work from home and more vulnerable to the labor market shocks from COVID-19.
Temporary Migration for Long-term Investment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07) Bossavie, Laurent; Gorlach, Joseph-Simon; Ozden, Caglar; Wang, He
In the presence of credit constraints, temporary migration abroad provides an effective strategy for workers to accumulate savings to finance self-employment when they return home. This paper provides direct evidence of this link and its effects on workers’ employment trajectories by using a new, large-scale survey of temporary migrants from Bangladesh. It constructs and estimates a dynamic model that establishes connections between asset accumulation and credit constraints, and, thus, between workers’ migration and self-employment decisions. Interlinked impacts also emerge from simulations of three key policy interventions that target migration costs or domestic credit constraints for entrepreneurship. Lowering migration costs increases emigration, reduces the age at which workers depart, and reduces the duration of their time abroad, which together lead to higher savings and domestic self-employment. Reducing the interest rate for entrepreneurial loans reduces migration and savings levels, undercutting the positive effects on business creation at home. Correcting workers’ inflated perceptions about overseas earnings potential reduces emigration rates and durations, triggering a decrease of both repatriated savings and self-employment in Bangladesh. The findings, which have implications for migrant-sending countries, highlight the need for policies to take into account the linkages between migration and self-employment decisions.
Who on Earth Can Work from Home?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Garrote Sánchez, Daniel; Gomez Parra, Nicolas; Ozden, Caglar; Rijkers, Bob; Viollaz, Mariana; Winkler, Hernan
This paper presents new estimates of the share of jobs that can be performed from home. The analysis is based on the task content of occupations, their information and communications technology requirements, and the availability of internet access by country and income groupings. Globally, one of every five jobs can be performed from home. The ability to telework is correlated with income. In low-income countries, only one of every 26 jobs can be done from home. Failing to account for internet access yields upward biased estimates of the resilience of poor countries, lagging regions, and poor workers. Since better paid workers are more likely to be able to work from home, COVID-19 is likely to exacerbate inequality, especially in richer countries where better paid and educated workers are insulated from the shock. The overall labor market burden of COVID-19 is bound to be larger in poor countries, where only a small share of workers can work from home and social protection systems are weaker. Across the globe, young, poorly educated workers and those on temporary contracts are least likely to be able to work from home and more vulnerable to the labor market shocks from COVID-19.
Do Immigrants Shield the Locals? Exposure to COVID-Related Risks in the European Union
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12) Bossavie, Laurent; Garrote Sánchez, Daniel; Makovec, Mattia; Ozden, Caglar
This paper investigates the relationship between immigration and the exposure of native workers to the health and labor-market risks arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Using various measures of occupational risks based on European Union labor force survey data, the paper finds that immigrant workers, especially those from lower-income member countries in Eastern Europe or from outside the EU, face greater exposure than their native-born peers to both income and health-shocks related to COVID-19. The paper also shows that native workers living in regions with a higher concentration of immigrants are less exposed to some of the income and health risks associated with the pandemic. To assess whether this relationship is causal, a Bartik-type shift-share instrument is used to control for potential bias and unobservable factors that would lead migrants to self-select into more vulnerable occupations across regions. The results show that the presence of immigrant workers has a causal effect in reducing the exposure of native workers to various risks by enabling the native-born workers to move into jobs that could be undertaken from the safety of their homes or with lower face-to-face interactions. The effects on the native-born population are more pronounced for high-skilled workers than for low-skilled workers, and for women than for men. The paper does not find a significant effect of immigration on wages and employment — indicating that the effects are mostly driven by a reallocation of natives from less safe jobs to safer jobs.