Özet:

The mean income trap is a concept expressed in the form of countries staying in the same income group for a long period of time and losing their international level of competition. One of the key strategies expressed in the study of Kanchoochat and Intarakumnerd (2014) is that countries should focus on diversity in their export compositions. In the current study to test the impact of the diversification of the export composition on the risk of the middle-income trap, the selected countries are divided into two countries, according to the proposal of the middle-income trap by Robertson and Ye (2013) for the period 1995-2015, which are in the middle-income trap and flee from the middle-income trap. In the analysis, the relationship between the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and economic growth, which shows the diversity of export composition, is tested by panel data analysis methods. The results are that the economic growth of the countries in the middle-income trap is positively affected by the product diversity in exports, while the countries that escape the middle-income trap are negatively affected. The results of the analysis show that middle-income countries should focus on product diversity in exports, while countries who escape the middle-income trap should focus on exports. In this framework, the resulting section of the study provides various policy suggestions for supporting product diversity in exports for countries in the middle-income trap until the stage of elevation to the high-income country class.