Economic Growth under Embargoes in North Cyprus: An Input-Output Analysis

The North Cyprus economy has been under economic embargoes for many years, and has been struggling to eradicate the income difference with the south of the island with extremely limited facilities. Successive governments have accordingly developed distinctive responses to cope with these difficulties. The paper examines these features of the North Cyprus economy with a particular emphasis on its response to economic embargoes. The paper also examines how important economic embargoes would be (or have been) in the North Cypriot economy. For this purpose total economic growth is decomposed with respect to different components of demand. The results show that despite the presence of embargoes, external demand and the availability of import flows are detrimental factors for economic growth. Also domestic final demand is an equally important source of growth in the North Cyprus economy.