The Political Economy of Government on Export Success in Turkey

Abstract

This article examines the differences between exporter andnonexporter small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey tounderstand the impact of government programs on their exportdecisions. The empirical data are from a survey of 300 TurkishSMEs (150 exporters and 150 nonexporters) in Turkey. As ourquestion is why some SMEs are exporting while others of a similarsize are not, although the government export promotion programsare same for all SMEs, the dependent variable should be dichotomous,and the applicable analytical model should come from thebinary-choice genre of models, namely. Results suggest thatgovernment export-promoting programs, size of the firms, andmanufacturing status of the firms contribute positively to exportperformance in SMEs, but barriers such as educational level ofmanagers, lack of financial resources, lack of language knowledge,too many government regulations, and high taxes negativelyaffect the export performance of Turkish SMEs.