The Turkish export boom: Just reward or just lucky?

After adopting outward-oriented policies like exchange rate depreciation, export subsidies, and import liberalization, Turkey experienced an export boom in the 1980s and beyond. This paper attempts to measure the extent to which the boom was due to the policies undertaken, and the extent to which it was due to external circumstances such as the Iran-Iraq war, changes in consumer incomes in Turkey's markets in Europe and the Middle East, and rainfall fluctuations. Regression analyses with annual data for 1966-91 suggest that the boom was indeed mostly the result of policy, with rising incomes in Europe after 1985 being the strongest of the external influences on export growth.