Some Observations on the Convergence Experience of Turkey

This study, without providing a complete picture of the country’s economic development, aims to bring about a better understanding of the convergence experience of Turkey. We explore some aspects of the convergence process of Turkey and provide some international comparisons tracking the changes in both nominal and real per capita income figures. With respect to the per capita income, Turkey is closer to Brazil than to Korea. From the 1960s until now, Korea is closing the gap in per capita income that separates the country from the richest countries of the world. On the other hand, Brazil and Turkey lost ground in the last two-three decades of the 20th century. After the lost decades, Turkey had high growth rates during 2002-2007. We perform a growth accounting exercise and discuss the importance of productivity growth in Turkey’s long-run growth. Lastly, we carry out an exercise, in which we decompose the growth rate of nominal per capita income into the growth rates of real GDP and population in Turkey; the rate of inflation in the U.S.; and the appreciation of the Turkish Lira. We present several alternative scenarios for the time-path of per capita income in Turkey