Construction Industry in Turkey: An Input-Output Analysis Using the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) For the 2002-2011 Periods

The construction industry is considered to be one of the main drivers of the overall economy due to its strong inter-industrial linkages. Its backward and forward linkages are ranked to be among the first four out of twenty industries. In many of the developing countries, the growth of the construction industry is used as an instrument to accelerate the overall growth in the economy. Turkish economy witnessed the growth of construction industry as well after 1980s. Two main growth periods, notably 1982-1988 and 2002-2008, in construction industry have been observed since 1980. Between 2002 and 2012, on the average the growth rate of construction industry was about 11.1 percent per year, except for 2008 and 2009, which is almost twice as much of the growth rate of national economy. In this study, the input-output tables constructed by the WIOD Project from 2002 to 2011 are employed and backward-forward linkages and several multipliers are also calculated by using 10 input-output tables.it is aimed to discuss whether the construction industry can be considered as the driver of the economy.