Empirical Analysis of Structural Change in Turkish Exports

Turkish exports has experience high growth rates since 2001, which is well above its historical average. While the average yearly growth rate of exports is 11.2 percent between 1948 and 2000, it reaches to 20.9 percent in the 2001-2006 period. The paper extensively examines the strong performance of Turkish exports, particularly after 2001. The results suggest that none of the elasticity parameters of Turkish export function are stable during the 1987-2006 period. There is a continuous increase in imports as well as income elasticity as opposed to the persistent decrease in the real effective exchange rate elasticity. Change in the composition of exports from traditional to non-traditional commodities played an important role in structural transformation of the Turkish export function