A comparative analysis of the EU and Turkey: Macroeconomic convergence and trade similarity

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, İktisat Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2010

Öğrenci: AYŞE AKCA

Danışman: GÜL İPEK TUNÇ

Özet:

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the sufficiency of Turkey for joining the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union (EMU) in terms of similarity and convergence. The study has been conducted in a comparative and descriptive way. First, the similarity and convergence of Turkey to some selected countries are examined with respect to her macroeconomic position. When taking EMU as a benchmark and comparing the convergence of Turkey with the convergence of some of the countries and country groups, it is found that the macroeconomic deficiencies of Turkey are not in an extent that characterizes Turkey as a totally insufficient candidate for EMU. Next, whether there are similarity and convergence in trade structures of Turkey and the European Union of 15 member states (EU15) for the period between 1995 and 2008 is inspected. The results indicated that Turkish export structure is clearly converging to the export structure of EU15 in the course of time. In general, findings of the thesis indicated that there is mostly a continuous convergence in all of the indicators considered but still Turkey does not meet all of the convergence criteria, perfectly. Therefore, as a result of the examinations, some suggestions have been made which would facilitate EMU membership of Turkey.