HOW IMPORTANT IS TRADE PERFORMANCE OF TURKEY'S INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

Feride DOĞANER GÖNEL (Yıldız Technical University)

During the last two decades of the last century, we have observed a substantial change of trade patterns in some developing countries. These countries started to export high-tech goods whereas formerly they imported them. The share of developing countries in high-tech exports have shown significant increases such as from 8 percent in 1988 to about 23 percent by 1997. The main factor of this structural turning point is the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICTs). This paper tries to determine the connection between the role of technological factors in Turkey and the country's international competitiveness in exports. In this framework, the paper specifically survey the ICTs influence on competitiveness with the help of some basic statistical analysis such as Revealed Comparative Advantage. The paper is organized as follows: After the introduction, section 2 rely on some quantitative and qualitative information that point the growing role of ICTs in both world economy and Turkey's economy over the 1990s. This chapter is a kind of thematic review relevant to the subject. As an appropriate sector for analyzing the technological competitiveness, section 3 tries to analyze the link between Turkey's activities on this subject using some basic statistical tools. Finally, the last section summarizes and draws conclusions from the analysis.