Income inequality and economic convergence in Turkey: a spatial effect analysis

Date
2009
Authors
Yildirim, J.
Öcal, N.
Özyildirim, S.
Advisor
Instructor
Source Title
International Regional Science Review
Print ISSN
0160-0176
Electronic ISSN
Publisher
Sage Publications
Volume
32
Issue
2
Pages
221 - 254
Language
English
Type
Article
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract

Even though the convergence of regional per capita income has been a highly debated issue internationally, empirical evidence regarding Turkey is limited as well as contradictory. This article is an attempt to investigate regional income inequality and the convergence dynamics in Turkey for the time period 1987-2001. First, the Theil coefficient of concentration index is used to analyze the dispersion aspects of the convergence process. The geographically based decomposition of inequality suggests a strong correlation between the share of interregional inequality and spatial clustering. Then, we estimate convergence dynamics employing alternative spatial econometric methods. In addition to the global models, we also estimate local models taking spatial variations into account. Empirical analysis indicates that geographically weighted regression improves model fitting with better explanatory power. There is considerable variation in speed of convergence of provinces, which cannot be captured by the traditional beta convergence analysis.

Course
Other identifiers
Book Title
Keywords
Economic convergence, Regional inequality, Spatial analysis, Turkey, Convergence, Decomposition analysis, Econometrics, Empirical analysis, Estimation method, Income distribution, Regression analysis, Spatial analysis, Eurasia, Turkey
Citation
Published Version (Please cite this version)