Regional Inequalities and the West-East Divide in Turkey since 1880

Sevket Pamuk (), Gunes Asik and Karakoç, Ulaş

No 15304, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This study examines the evolution of regional income inequalities and its causes within present day borders of Turkey since 1880. We construct indices for value added per capita for agriculture, industry and services as well as GDP per capita for each of the 58 administrative units for about one dozen benchmark years. For the recent period since 1987, we make use of the official series for the same 58 units. We find that the overall trend from the 1910’s to the present has been convergence for the country as a whole. We also find an inverse U shaped pattern for the regional disparities in Turkey since 1880. While all other regions began to move towards country averages, the differences between the East and the rest of the country persisted and even increased. Our comparisons also suggest that regional disparities in Turkey have been and are still larger than those in European countries of similar size such as Italy, France and Spain. Problems of endogeneity make it difficult to establish causality at this stage of the research. Nonetheless, we are able to offer an interpretation consistent with our empirical findings. We argue that not a single cause but a combination of causes led by geography, structural change, industrialization and agglomeration economies, and ethnic conflict and demographic movements are behind this pattern for the country as a whole and for the fact that the East has continued to lag behind.

Keywords: Regional development; Regional inequalities; Industrialization; Ethnic conflict; Turkey; Ottoman empire (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N14 N15 N94 N95 O18 O53 O54 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-geo, nep-his and nep-ure
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15304 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:15304

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15304

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().