erc/metu
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN ECONOMICS  IV
September 13-16, 2000, Ankara

Convergence and Growth within GAP Region (South Eastern Anatolian Project) and Overall Turkey”s Regions

Nejat Erk (Çukurova University)
Sanlı Ateş (Çukurova University)
Tuba Direkçi (Gaziantep University)

Abstract  

Convergence among regions have been increasingly under study since mid 1980’s. Towards this trend, there can be two core reasons to be cited. Former is the recent arguments towards economic growth theory on the overall and later is the end result of data set availability at domestic and international levels. This development led to an modeling and an extensive research on why some regions or countries are less developed or in poverty versus other regions or countries comparatively. Concentrating on the recent economic literature on endogeneous economic growth models, emphasis is on the relevance of, endogeneous technological change, technological spillover, patents, externalities, imperfect competition, quasi rents, human capital, public institutional setups and political structures interference. All which has been neglected by neoclassical economic growth models (Romer, 1986; Grossman and Helpman, 1991;Barro and Sala-i-Martin, 1992). These contributions expanded new horizons in economic policy theory enabling alternative answers to the existing unanswered questions like, . 1. Why some countries ( or regions) are less developed than the others ? 2. Are countries( or regions) are on the overall converging towards a same steady state ? 3. Why different steady state and convergence clubs are being formed? Our research aims to test whether the $ 20 billion South Eastern Anatolian Project (GAP) will lead to an convergence at province and regional level within and with the other regions of Turkey. Findings of our model will enable us to test whether new economic growth theories coincides with the empirical findings. But beyond all, major contribution of the research will be towards testing and verifying inter and intra regional convergence in Turkey. One other dimension of the research is to show the input complamentarity versus input substitubility which is employed in endogeneous economic growth models as a criteria for economic convergence. While recent economic growth literature strongly emphasizes the importance of complamentarity (Romer, 1993; Acemoğlu, 1998; Goldin and Katz, 1996; Matsuyama, 1996; Erk and et al., 1998).

Economic Research Center
Middle East Technical University
06531 Ankara Turkey
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e-mail: metuerc@metu.edu.tr