The previous post focused the extent to which Turkey’s revised GDP data changed the recent history of economic growth in Turkey. A particularly striking fact of the new series is how much higher the growth rate in GDP in Turkey has been ever since the global financial crisis in 2008/2009. Of interest is then also how this changes Turkey’s economic performance in a comparative sense internationally, both in terms of economic growth as well as key economic indicators.
In this blog post, I take as the basis of economic performance the change in real GDP per capita obtained from the most recent October 2016 World Economic Outlook (WEO) from the IMF. For most of it I will show how this measure of economic growth – in two periods of six-year-averages for 2004-2009 and 2010-2015 respectively – correlates with a selected number of key economic indicators, most of which are included in the WEO database, and how much of Turkey’s (and other countries’) growth can be explained by a relatively simple regression model including a number of indicators of interest.
These indicators are: the natural logarithm of the average GDP per capita during the preceding six-year period, the natural logarithm of the average of population size during the preceding six-year period, the average growth rate in GDP per capita during the preceding six-year period, the current account balance as a % of GDP, the CPI inflation rate, the investment rate as a % of GDP, government debt as a % of GDP, and the unemployment rate. In addition, I also draw on the World Development Indicators database from the World Bank for labor force participation rate, domestic credit to the private sector as a % of GDP, the age-dependency ratio, the urbanization rate, and from the IMF’s Balance of Payments database I also add the net international investment position (NIIP) as a % of GDP. For the investment rate, private credit, urbanization, and the NIIP-to-GDP measures, I also include a change variable with each measured as the change between the average during one six-year period and the corresponding average of the preceding six-year period. The IMF WEO indicators are quite standard and hopefully require little introduction. Most of added variables from the WDI are a bit Turkey-specific as they will show Turkey’s comparatively low labor force participation rate, the rapid growth of private credit in the economy, and the change in urbanization serving as a proxy for factor that could drive some of the large construction investments apparent in the new revised GDP series for Turkey. Continue reading →