Taylan Alpkaya

I am a fourth-year PhD student in economics at the University of Mannheim. My research agenda is to understand how the political economy influences long-run patterns of inequality, mostly by working with historical data. I am broadly interested in economic history, political economy, and labor economics.

I am currently working on the persistence of inequality across multiple generations and barriers to social mobility.

While not my main research field, I am also very interested in Turkish political economy. I would be happy to chat about it!

Here is my CV. I am still young enough to enthusiastically reply to emails, so please feel free to reach out -- taylanalpkaya@gmail.com

Research

Working Papers

Legacy of Servitude: Long-Run Intergenerational Mobility in the US (draft available upon request)

Abstract: This paper provides the first estimates of intergenerational mobility in the antebellum United States. Using surname-based estimators and novel data on colonial migration, I examine the intergenerational mobility of Americans who descended from transported English convicts, who accounted for 10% of all white immigrants during the colonial period. I find that having a convict ancestor is associated with a 9% lower probability of real estate ownership in 1850, a disadvantage that persists at 8% by 1940. This pattern extends to various socioeconomic outcomes. Leveraging exogenous variation in convicts' arrival locations in the US, I show that geographic factors play a crucial role in the persistence of inequality. I further demonstrate that attributes specific to convicts, such as criminal tendencies or social stigmatization, cannot fully account for these results. I calculate a lower-bound intergenerational wealth elasticity estimate of 0.63 between 1750 and 1850. These findings provide new insights into the long-term persistence of initial disadvantages and the structural barriers to social mobility faced by the bottom strata of society.

Work in Progress

Formative Years: Early Life Experiences and Decisions of Federal Judges (joint work with Pablo Zarate)
Migration of Classes: Transition of Economic Inequality from England to the US

Research on Turkish Political Economy

Catastrophes, Social Ties, and Voting Behavior: Evidence from Turkey (joint work with Berkeren Büyükeren, slides available upon request)
Clientelism in Public Procurement: Evidence from Turkish Municipalities

Teaching

Teaching Assistant to Nicolas Schutz, Microeconomics I at PhD level (2022-2025)