A Remarkable Achievement for Our Economics PhD Program
5 MONTH(S) AGO
In the 2025 PhD Dissertation Awards organized by the Turkish Economic Association (TEA), one of Türkiye’s oldest and most distinguished academic organizations, founded in the 1920s to promote the development of economics through publications, conferences, seminars, and scholarships, the Best PhD Dissertation Award was granted to Tuğçe Tatoğlu, a graduate of the Economics PhD Program of the Institute of Social Sciences at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, for her dissertation entitled “Essays on Health Economics.”
Adding to this success, the Second Best PhD Dissertation Award was awarded to Çağlar Yüncüler for his dissertation “The Role of Minimum Wage and Employment Subsidies on Employment, Investment and Export Decisions of Firms: Evidence from Turkey.” Considering that both award-winning dissertations originated from the same doctoral program, the 2025 TEA PhD Dissertation Awards showcased an exceptional accomplishment by the Economics PhD Program of TOBB ETÜ’s Institute of Social Sciences.
We warmly congratulate our graduates on their outstanding achievements. We also extend our sincere congratulations to Prof. Dr. Nur Asena Caner, advisor of the first-prize-winning dissertation, and to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Belgi Turan and Dr. Güneş Aşık, co-advisors of the second-prize-winning dissertation.
It is worth recalling that the 2022 Best PhD Dissertation Award in the same competition was also awarded to a graduate of our program, M. Utku Özmen, the first graduate of the Economics PhD Program of the Institute of Social Sciences at TOBB ETÜ, for a dissertation completed under the supervision of Prof. Dr. İsmail Sağlam and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Belgi Turan.
Since 2022, the Economics PhD Program has produced a total of five graduates. Remarkably, three of these graduates have received the prestigious annual dissertation awards of the Turkish Economic Association, demonstrating not only the program’s academic excellence but also the consistency and sustainability of its research achievements.
