Ali Demir

Ali Demir

PhD Candidate in Economics.

On the market for postdoctoral and research-oriented academic positions.

Research: migration, family, and labor economics.

Research

My research lies in applied microeconomics, with a particular focus on migration economics, family economics, and labor economics. Much of my current work studies how migration, housing, and demographic imbalances shape household decisions and family outcomes.

Job Market Paper

German Internal Migration: A Marriage Market Perspective

Status: Job Market Paper
Fields: Migration Economics, Family Economics, Regional Economics, Applied Microeconomics
Methods: Shift-share IV, district-year panel data, historical data construction

This paper investigates whether young, female-skewed East–West migration after German reunification altered marital stability in receiving West German districts. I construct district-year measures of cumulative exposure to young East German migrants and use a historical-share-by-push instrument based on pre-reunification East-linked settlement shares and an East German female labour-market push component. The preferred IV estimates show that districts with greater predicted exposure experienced lower post-reunification divorce rates.

Job Market Paper page
Download PDF

Working Papers

Housing Security and Family Expansion: Evidence from German Homeownership

Fields: Family Economics, Housing Economics, Applied Microeconomics
Data: SOEP longitudinal data
Methods: Instrumental variables, parity-specific fertility transitions

This paper examines whether homeownership is associated with fertility outcomes among women in West Germany. The preferred results provide limited evidence for effects on completed fertility, but indicate a positive and statistically meaningful effect on the transition to a second birth among women who already have one child.

Transition to Adulthood: Local Rents and Leaving the Parental Home

Fields: Family Economics, Housing Economics, Migration and Regional Economics
Data: SOEP and RWI-GEO-REDX
Methods: Panel-data models, local fixed effects, regional-year controls

This paper studies whether local rental costs at the parental-home location predict young adults’ first exit from the parental home in Germany. The main finding is cautious: once parental-home postal-code fixed effects and strong regional-year controls are included, there is no robust evidence that local rents explain first-exit timing or systematic spatial substitution across move types.

Research Fields