Abstract:

Following the accession of ten new members to the European Union (EU) in May 2004, discussions about Turkey's new competitive position with regard to a larger EU became even more prominent in both Europe and Turkey. The main goal of this study is to provide a comparative analysis on macroeconomic performance, trade structure and competitiveness of Turkey and four new members of the EU, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Estonia. We employ Balassa's revealed comparative advantage approach to assess Turkey's competitiveness against the four new members in .five commodity groups. Our results suggest that Turkey has a comparative advantage in raw material, labour and partly capital intensive goods against all of the four new members excluding Estonia. However, Turkey appears to have a comparative disadvantage in researchoriented products which require a higher level of technology and investment.

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