Productivity and Growth in an Unstable Emerging Market Economy: the Case of Turkey, 1960-2004

Abstract

This paper explores sources of growth in the Turkish economy by performing growth accounting exercises over the 1960-2004 period and relevant subperiods. It also analyzes the role of a number of important policy-related factors, such as infrastructure investment, macroeconomic instability, and imports, on total factor productivity (TFP) by performing cointegration and impulse response analyses. The results suggest that both TFP and capital accumulation were crucial sources of growth during the sample period. Nevertheless, TFP growth displayed enormous variation from 1960 to 2004. The descriptive and empirical evidence suggests that TFP is positively affected by imports and public infrastructure investment and negatively affected by macroeconomic instability.