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

Productivity in Turkish Manufacturing Industry: A Comparative Analysis on the Basis of Selected Provinces

Özlem Önder (Ege University)
Aykut Lenger (METU)

Abstract

One of the main concerns of the studies dealing with the competitiveness and growth accounting is productivity in manufacturing industry. However, the overall consideration of the productivity on the national level leads us to ignore the fact that productivity rates may diversify among regions within a country. A comparative analysis of productivity on the regional level might provide policy-makers with the necessary information to attain efficiency in the allocation of resources among regions. This paper compares the productivity levels in manufacturing industry on the basis of the selected twenty-one provinces in Turkey for the 1994-97 period. The analysis is based on the value added per hour worked, labour productivity, and total factor productivity (TFP) in manufacturing industry. The capital stock in manufacturing industry was estimated for each province since the computation of TFPs required. The TFP analysis in this paper employs the growth accounting approach. The estimations of productivity in each province for the public and private sector were also provided. Interestingly, contrary to the common view, productivity levels in the public sector exceed those of private sector with respect to some indicators in most provinces. The last section of the study is devoted to the discussion of the probable reasons of diversified productivity among the provinces.

Economic Research Center
Middle East Technical University
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