R&D Intensive Goods Trade and Competitiveness of Turkey in the European Union Market

This paper aims to measure trade competitiveness of Research and Development (R&D) intensive goods of Turkey in the European Union (EU) market, using different trade indices. Concentration Ratio (Michaely, 1958), Export-Import Commodity Composition Index (Muscatelli, 1991), Intra-Industry Trade Index (Grubel, Lloyd, 1971) and Sectoral-Bilateral Trade Intensity Ratios (Seymen, 2009) are calculated to analyze the technology composition of manufacturing goods trade between Turkey and the EU27. Revealed Comparative Advantage Index (Balassa, 1965), Marginal Intra-Industry Trade Index (Brulhart, 1994), and Sectoral-Bilateral Competitiveness Index (Seymen, 2009) are employed to gain insight about the bilateral competition between two parties. Thus, once the general situation related to the R&D intensive goods trade between Turkey and the EU is detected, it will be possible to draw some policy implications through a future study in the following phase, by identifying the value added structures, exterior input dependence and vertical-horizontal specialization levels of the goods revealed to have competitive advantage in this study.