Trade openness, urban concentration and city-size growth in Turkey

Abstract

Aim of the present study is to investigate two important issues on urban concentration in Turkey. First, we investigate whether population tend to have an uneven distribution across cities between 1965-2012, second, we analyze the determinants of city-size growth by relating it to the process of trade liberalization and to a range of other socio-economic and geographical factors. In terms of methodology, we employ various cross sectional and spatial econometric tools to implement our analysis. Our results indicate three major conclusions: First, urban concentration tends to increase recently, leading to an unevenly growing cities and creating urban giants (i.e. Istanbul). Second, trade liberalization is shown to intensify this process since metropolitan areas, which are more open to trade, tend to grow faster than others. Third, specialization of cities in industrial activities (i.e. manufacturing) and economies of agglomeration are likely to reinforce the spatial concentration of population around larger cities.