anyone here know anything about the history of import substitution in Turkey?
I ask because: I happen to be reading a book by a non-economist which is in significant measure about the modern political history of Turkey, but mostly not about economic policy, which happens to contain the following snippet of text: "Ozal scrapped the import-substitution model, under which Turkey tried to produce everything it needed, and embraced a new one driven by export and global trade. Thus liberated, the Turkish economy began a long boom that has continued to this day." I don't doubt that in Turkey, and in other countries, "import substitution" became a cover for clientilism. Still, to see I-S described in this way - "under which Turkey tried to produce everything it needed," irked me. Of course that's not the standard notion of an I-S strategy - taken literally, that would be autarky. The standard I-S idea is that you pick particular sectors that you think are strategic, where you might not be competitive now but you think that you have a potential advantage such that with temporary subsidies and protection you could become competitive. As I said, the author is not an economist, so it could just be an unintentionally sloppy formulation in this case. But it made me want to ask: does anybody here happen to know anything about the particular history of the Turkish case - to what degree was the Turkish policy consistent with the I-S story and to what degree was it merely cronyist? They always bash I-S this way. It always makes me suspicious... PS: before Ozal entered politics, he worked for the World Bank... -- Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] Urge Congress to Support a Timetable for Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
