Evrimsel Ekonomik Coğrafya Perspektifinden Türkiye’de Bölgelerin İlişkili Çeşitlilik Dinamiklerine Yönelik Ampirik Bir Analiz

Abstract

Relatedness and regional diversification have been among the most debated topics in economic geography and regional development over the last 15 years. These two concepts, on the one hand, explain the sources of the growth and diversification of regional economic activities, and on the other hand, they explain how industrial development emerges and how it changes and branching out spatially over time. This study aims to examine the related variety and regional diversification dynamics of provinces in Türkiye in the context of the relatedness. Using provincial product-based export data for the period 2012-2017, the related and unrelated diversification indices based on the entropy measure are calculated for the export portfolio of provinces. The results of analysis reveal significant heterogeneity across provinces and prove that metropolitan cities have higher values in terms of both related and unrelated diversity. Additionally, the evidences of diversification analysis show that provinces tend to diversify towards products that are predominantly related to their current productive structure. The results provide important implications for Türkiye's regional development policy and smart specialization strategies.

Keywords

• evolutionary economic geography
• regional diversification
• related variety
• unrelated variety
• regional branching
• regional development