AN ANALYSIS OF TURKEY’S EXPORT COMPETETIVENESS ACCORDING TO THE SITC TECHNOLOGY CLASSIFICATION

The main purpose of this paper is to determine Turkey’s export competitiveness in respect of SITC Technology Classification. The classification has five different categories of goods, namely, raw-material-intense, labour-intense, capital-intense, easy-to-imitate and hard-to-imitate. For analysis, Turkey’s export data (US dollars) between 1996 and 2015 is used. Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) formula by Bela Balassa (1965) is taken as methodology to analyse. In compliance with Turkey’s RCAs of the period, it is found out that Turkey has competitiveness (comparative advantages) on the export of labour intensive and capital intensive goods while it has competitiveness disadvantage on the raw-material intense, easy-to-imitate and hard-to-imitate goods which are research-based goods. It means the goods exported by Turkey is mostly production of labour intense technology, thus it demonstrates that the labour factor is the most significant production factors for Turkey. However, Turkey has disadvantage on easy-to-imitate and hard-to-imitate researchdevelopment-based goods strengthen by innovation and high value added products, which are commonly accepted as development indicators for countries.

Keywords:

Export competitiveness, SITC, technology classification Balassa Index, RCA,

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