Countries that transform their economic structure towards the production and export of more complex products can develop and grow rich. China experienced outstanding improvement in income per capita rankings by its ability to develop and move to new and complex economic activities while Turkey's ranking barely changed in the last two decades, and it even deteriorated after 2005. This paper compares structural transformation of exports of Turkey and China by combining extensive and intensive margin analysis with product complexity measure over the period 1995-2015. We base our analysis on communities that consist of products using similar capabilities in their production process and look at the changes in specialization and presence in each country within 1995-2005 and 2005-2015 sub-periods. We show that China is much more successful than Turkey in transforming its export structure by increasing its specialization and presence in more complex products.
Key words: Product complexity, structural transformation, extensive and intensive margin analysis, trade network
JEL Classification: F14, F41, F43 Article Language: EnglishTurkish
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