The Impact Of Fiscal Policies On Unemployment: An Empirical Evidence For Türkiye

The economic policies implemented in a country can directly or indirectly affect many macroeconomic indicators. One of these macroeconomic indicators is the unemployment rate. The government's aim to reduce unemployment with the economic policies they implement. Especially in times of crisis, fiscal policies come to the fore, find a wider application area and support employment. The effects of fiscal policies may differ between expansionary and contractionary policies. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of fiscal policies implemented in Türkiye on unemployment. For this purpose, monthly data for the period 2014:1-2022:12 were used in the study. In the study, public expenditures, direct and indirect tax revenues are used to represent fiscal policy. The ARDL bounds test was used in the analysis. In addition, the frequency domain causality test developed by Breitung and Candelon (2006) was used to the robustness check of the findings. The findings show that increases in government expenditures increase unemployment in the long run. On the other hand, while increases in indirect taxes reduce unemployment, increases in direct taxes have no effect on unemployment. The findings obtained from the causality test also support this situation.