• https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/kayae

Dr Ezgi Kaya is a Reader in Economics at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, and a fellow at the Global Labor Organization (GLO). She is also a co-investigator of the GW4 Maternity Leave Network. Between 2023 and 2025, she was a Research Fellow funded by ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK), an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) investment (part of UK Research and Innovation).

With expertise in labour economics and economic demography, Dr Kaya works with large scale survey and administrative data and applied methodologies. Her recent research projects explore labour market inequalities, particularly in relation to gender and immigration, the effectiveness of transparency legislation and family-friendly policies in shaping labour market outcomes, the relationship between labour market institutions and fertility, and the role of assortative mating and household interactions in shaping the labour supply behaviour of married women and men. She has also conducted research on identifying peer effects in academic and economic performance, as well as the co-residence decisions of young adults with their parents—decisions often linked to fertility, mobility, and future labour market outcomes. To learn more about Dr Kaya's research, visit her website.

This work has been featured widely across the media and published in high-quality peer-reviewed journals, including International Economic Review, Labour Economics, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Canadian Journal of Economics, and Economica, among others. It has also received the Etta Chiuri Best Paper Prize (2014), the Turkish Economic Association Postgraduate Research Award (2008), commendations for Collaboration and Methodology at the ONS Research Excellence Awards (2025), and nominations for the People’s Choice Award at the ONS Research Excellence Awards (2020 and 2025).

Dr Kaya received her PhD in Economics from the IDEA Graduate Programme at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2014. For her latest CV, visit her personal website.