Financial inclusion in Turkey: unpacking the provincial inequality and its determinants

Sefa Takmaz, Erkam Sarı and Sedat Alataş

Applied Economics Letters, 2024, vol. 31, issue 7, 661-669

Abstract: This paper investigates the regional disparity of financial inclusion (FI) and its determinants in Turkey from 2004 to 2020. To this end, we first construct an FI index using the principal component analysis. Then, based on the club convergence approach, we test the existence of convergence to show regional disparities in FI. Finally, we examine the main determinants of provincial disparity using ordered logit models. The convergence results strongly reject the full-panel convergence, indicating a regional disparity in FI. Furthermore, our analyses reveal that financial inclusion positively correlates with population, income, and income inequality, while unemployment hinders inclusion. Overall, our results imply that policies focusing on digital financial services, increasing financial literacy, and reducing unemployment should significantly diminish regional disparities and improve FI.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2022.2141442 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:31:y:2024:i:7:p:661-669

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2022.2141442

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().