IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ekd/006356/7126.html

Importance of Firm Heterogeneity for Exports Policy Design in Turkey: Implications for 500 Billion $ Exports Target for 2023

Author

Listed:
  • A. Emre AKEL

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to present how firm heterogeneity influenced Turkey's exports during 2003-2012 and why Turkey's exports would be better off if Turkey's exports policies took into account the differences in structure of its exporters. Using firm-product-country level data, this study suggests a new approach to decompose exports, which can be considered as an extension of Amurgo-Pacheco and Pierola (2008), focusing on the "decomposition of exports in each year", rather than the common approach that focuses on the "decomposition of growth of exports" as suggested by Eaton et al (2007). In addition, a number of definitions such as "Exporters Portfolio of a Country", "Product and Market Portfolios of a Firm", "N-Year Survivors" and "Last-Time Exporters" are introduced. Using these definitions, this study offers its own perspective for product and market diversification, survival rate of exporters, firm entries and exits, as well as extensive and intensive margins of exports; while providing results that take into account the heterogeneous structure of the exporters. According to the results, between 2003 and 2012, 140,678 different firms exported from Turkey. Each year, on average, 97% of the exporters were SMEs, while micro-sized exporters constituted 53% of total exporters. Although an average Turkish exporter exported 10.9 products to 4.4 markets in 2012, an average micro-sized exporter exported 9 products to 2.9 markets, while an average large-sized exporter exported 28.5 products to 15.8 markets. Almost all of the new exporters and last-time exporters were small-sized or micro-sized firms, while contribution of new firms to Turkey's exports was only around 3.8% each year. 81% of Turkey's exports in each year were a result of exports in intensive margin, while 12.5% were a result of market diversification and 8% were thanks to product diversification. 80% of market diversification and 88% of product diversification in each year were realized by SMEs, while average market and product portfolios of an average SME were significantly smaller than an average large-sized exporter. In addition, there were 8789 10-year survivors that constituted almost 67% of Turkey's exports in each year, while having significantly larger market and product portfolios compared to an average exporter, performing better with respect to all of the metrics. Despite the heterogeneous structure of Turkey's exporters, Turkey's exports policies have a uniform structure. Therefore, there is a significant opportunity for increasing efficiency of Turkey's exports policies taking into account this phenomenon. . .

Suggested Citation

  • A. Emre AKEL, 2014. "Importance of Firm Heterogeneity for Exports Policy Design in Turkey: Implications for 500 Billion $ Exports Target for 2023," EcoMod2014 7126, EcoMod.
    • Handle: RePEc:ekd:006356:7126
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ecomod.net/system/files/ECOMOD-2014-FINAL.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew B. Bernard & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2011. "Multiproduct Firms and Trade Liberalization," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1271-1318.
    2. Elhanan Helpman & Marc Melitz & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Estimating Trade Flows: Trading Partners and Trading Volumes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 441-487.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pişkin, Erhan, 2017. "Türkiye İhracatının Ölüm-Kalım Meselesi [The Matter of Survival for Turkish Exports]," MPRA Paper 81459, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mercedes Campi & Marco Due~nas & Le Li & Huabin Wu, 2018. "Diversification, economies of scope, and exports growth of Chinese firms," Papers 1801.02681, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2018.
    2. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2014. "Gravity Equations: Workhorse,Toolkit, and Cookbook," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 131-195, Elsevier.
    3. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2007. "Firms in International Trade," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 105-130, Summer.
    4. Devereux, Michael B. & Dong, Wei & Tomlin, Ben, 2025. "Trade flows and exchange rates: Importers, exporters and products," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    5. Herkenhoff, Philipp & Krautheim, Sebastian & Sauré, Philip, 2024. "A simple model of buyer–seller networks in international trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    6. Hejazi, Mina & Grant, Jason H. & Peterson, Everett, 2017. "Tariff Changes and the Margins of Trade: A Case Study of U.S. Agri-Food Imports," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 42(01), pages 1-22, January.
    7. Tuan Anh Luong & Wei-Chih Chen, 2016. "Extensive and Intensive Margins of Exports and Labor Heterogeneity," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 201-213, February.
    8. Isaac Holloway, 2014. "Foreign entry, quality, and cultural distance: product-level evidence from US movie exports," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 150(2), pages 371-392, May.
    9. Pişkin, Erhan, 2017. "Türkiye İhracatının Ölüm-Kalım Meselesi [The Matter of Survival for Turkish Exports]," MPRA Paper 81459, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Crinò, Rosario & Bonfiglioli, Alessandra & Gancia, Gino, 2021. "International Trade with Heterogeneous Firms: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 16249, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Gervais, Antoine & Jensen, J. Bradford, 2019. "The tradability of services: Geographic concentration and trade costs," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 331-350.
    12. repec:cam:camjip:2408 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Peluffo, Adriana, 2022. "A portrait of success: Uruguayan firms in international trade," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    14. Di Comite, Francesco & Thisse, Jacques-François & Vandenbussche, Hylke, 2014. "Verti-zontal differentiation in export markets," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 50-66.
    15. Balazs Murakozy & Gabor Bekes, 2009. "Temporary Trade," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 0909, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    16. Békés, Gábor & Muraközy, Balázs, 2012. "Temporary trade and heterogeneous firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 232-246.
    17. Ahn, JaeBin & Khandelwal, Amit K. & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2011. "The role of intermediaries in facilitating trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 73-85, May.
    18. Antoine Gervais, 2018. "Multiregional Firms And Region Switching In The U.S. Manufacturing Sector," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(2), pages 955-982, April.
    19. Berlingieri, Giuseppe & Pisch, Frank, 2022. "Managing export complexity: the role of service outsourcing," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117832, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Egger, Peter H. & Li, Jie & Wu, Han, 2024. "Decomposing China’s bilateral export growth: A firm-regional-transactions structural gravity approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    21. Anca D. Cristea & Anna Miromanova, 2022. "Firm‐level trade effects of WTO accession: Evidence from Russia," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 237-281, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ekd:006356:7126. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Theresa Leary (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecomoea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.