Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for more information on Teaching Inquiry Science in Middle and Secondary Schools

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
International Regional Science Review
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Yildirim, J.
Right arrow Articles by Özyildirim, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Income Inequality and Economic Convergence in Turkey: A Spatial Effect Analysis

Jülide Yildirim

Department of Econometrics, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey, julide{at}gazi.edu.tr

Nadir Öcal

Department of Economics, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, ocal{at}metu.edu.tr

Süheyla Özyildirim

Faculty of Business Administration, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, suheyla{at}bilkent.edu.tr

Even though the convergence of regional per capita income has been a highly debated issue internationally, empirical evidence regarding Turkey is limited as well as contradictory. This article is an attempt to investigate regional income inequality and the convergence dynamics in Turkey for the time period 1987—2001. First, the Theil coefficient of concentration index is used to analyze the dispersion aspects of the convergence process. The geographically based decomposition of inequality suggests a strong correlation between the share of interregional inequality and spatial clustering. Then, we estimate convergence dynamics employing alternative spatial econometric methods. In addition to the global models, we also estimate local models taking spatial variations into account. Empirical analysis indicates that geographically weighted regression improves model fitting with better explanatory power. There is considerable variation in speed of convergence of provinces, which cannot be captured by the traditional beta convergence analysis.

Key Words: regional inequality • economic convergence • spatial analysis • Turkey

International Regional Science Review, Vol. 32, No. 2, 221-254 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0160017608331250
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?