Tuna Dökmeci

Tuna Dökmeci, PhD candidate in Economics at the European University Institute

I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the European University Institute (EUI). My research lies primarily in labour economics, where I combine economic theory and empirical analysis to study wage bargaining, matching, and employment. A second strand of my research focuses on industrial policy and firm behaviour.

I am on the 2026–2027 Job Market for Economists. My Job Market Paper endogenises worker bargaining power as a function of labour market tightness and tests its predictions using French data.

My research statement and teaching statement are available here.

My supervisors are Russell Cooper and Giacomo Calzolari.

Feel free to contact me at tuna.dokmeci@eui.eu.

CV

Research

Job Market Paper

Worker Bargaining Power and Market Tightness: Theory and Evidence

What determines worker bargaining power, the share of employment surplus that workers capture? Standard wage bargaining models allow outside options to affect wages, but typically treat the bargaining weight governing the division of surplus as an exogenous parameter. I endogenise bargaining power in a model where workers and firms take turns making wage offers while continuing to meet and choose among potential partners. In tighter labour markets, where vacancies are more plentiful relative to job seekers, firms are less likely to find alternative workers. Workers can therefore reject an unattractive wage offer with less risk of losing their bargaining partner before they can make a counteroffer. This strengthens workers' bargaining power, increasing their share of match surplus and the pass-through of firm productivity into wages. Using French matched employer–employee data, I find that an increase of one standard deviation in labour market tightness raises the pass-through of the firm's hourly marginal product of labour into wages by 13%, from 3.3 to 3.7 cents per euro.

Presented at: SAEe 2026 (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), EWMES 2026 (Warsaw), Fourth Women in Central Banking Workshop (Mexico City), 41st AIEL Conference (Rome), EALE 2026 (Barcelona), EAYE 2026 (Bilbao)

Working Papers

Effects of State Aid on Firm Performance: Evidence from 22 EU Countries

with Andrea Brasili, Annamaria Tueske, Jochen Schanz

Despite renewed interest in industrial policy, empirical evidence on state aid effectiveness remains limited. We examine the short-run effects of large state aid awards across 22 EU Member States, linking firm-level data from Orbis with publicly disclosed awards granted in 2017–2018. Using a generalized difference-in-differences design, we estimate effects on investment, employment, and productivity. State aid significantly increases capital investment, particularly among SMEs and firms receiving regional development aid, which are groups more likely to face financial constraints. Effects are strongest in Central and Eastern Europe. However, we find no corresponding improvements in productivity or employment within two years. These findings suggest that while state aid effectively stimulates investment in the short run, productivity gains may take longer to materialize, and efficiency gains could be obtained from better targeting and EU-wide coordination.

Presented at (* if by co-author): OeNB*, DG Grow Research Conference on the Single Market (Brussels), EUI, Joint Research Centre (JRC) Sevilla

SSRN

Work in Progress

The Ripple Effect: Children's Job Insecurity and Parents' Labour and Consumption Choices

with Elena Lazzaro

This paper studies the effect of young adults' job insecurity on the consumption and labour supply decisions of their parents. Using data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), we causally estimate this effect by exploiting a labour market reform ("Fornero reform") that substantially reduced firing costs for workers in firms with more than 15 employees. According to our findings, working parents of treated adult children reduced their consumption by €2,453 per year on average. This effect is driven by the drop in durable consumption, which yearly decreases by €1,600. Even if we do not find any substantial and significant effect on the intensive and extensive margins of labour, we observe that the impact on consumption is stronger for retired parents who are constrained in their ability to adjust their labour supply and who also reduce their non-durable expenditures.

Labour Demand and Firing Costs under Imperfect Competition: A Non-Monotonic Relationship

In this paper, I analyse the effects of firing costs on job creation and employment in an oligopolistic setting. I show that quantity competition and strategic interaction can generate a positive relationship between firing costs and hiring. The mechanism relies on commitment: when firms face costly lay-offs, they can credibly commit to higher output, discouraging rivals from expanding. However, this effect is not monotonic. At low levels, firing costs limit commitment and deter hiring; at higher levels, they enable firms to lead the market and expand employment. The model also reveals strategic spillovers, as firms respond not only to their own constraints but also to their competitors'. These results challenge the standard view that firing costs necessarily suppress job creation and highlight the importance of market structure in shaping labour market outcomes.

Pre-PhD Work

Policy Work

Teaching

At the EUI, I have served as teaching assistant, mentor, and tutor across several graduate courses in economics.

Graduate Macroeconomics III — Search & Match

Teaching Assistant for Edouard Challe.

MRes Programme Mentoring & Tutoring

Tutor in microeconomics and macroeconomics for Master of Research students.