Competitiveness in Services: Turkey versus European Union

Abstract

Giving the fact that services as a trade instrument have become quite crucial and critical in the growth of economies in many nations, the research associated with measuring the competiveness in services are limited, especially for developing countries such as Turkey. The aim of this study is to investigate the competitiveness of the selected services in Turkey in comparison with the EU and the selected EU countries based on three comparative advantage indices. In this context, three different revealed comparative advantage indices were utilised in a combined way using import and export figures of six service sectors for the period of 2000-2010. The results indicate that strong comparative advantages exist for Turkey in construction, tourism and transportation sectors. Although Turkish financial and insurance and communication and computer-information sectors appear to be weak compared to EU, there is a substantial potential for improvement in these sectors. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Arasli