Regional Specialization Pattern of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) in Turkey

Abstract

Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) are perceived as important drives of economic development and innovation. In general, KIBS are one of the most important activities of regional and national scale development in terms of economic power, knowledge production and knowledge transfer and therefore, geographical density of KIBS are expected to be a critical factor for regions. The paper seeks to introduce the concept of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and to analyze the role of KIBS in regional development, especially from the viewpoint of regional specialization. For this purpose, detailed sector data have been used. Knowledge-intensive business services are subordinate to producer services and are defined in 10 sub-sectors. These 10 sub-sectors have been analyzed for 26 NUTS-2 regions of Turkey, based on the number of workplace and employment, and giro data of the years of 2009 and 2015 received from Turkey Statistics Institution. The location quotient (LQ) technique has been used in the analysis. The results show that all KIBS sectors, except the telecommunication sector, have been specialized in metropolitan cities. Explaining the regional specialization pattern of the KIBS is very important for offering guidance to regional plans and policy makers.

Keywords

• Bilgi Yoğun İş Hizmetleri (BYİH)
• Yerelleşme Katsayısı (LQ)
• Bölgesel Uzmanlaşma Örüntüsü