Causes of spatial agglomeration economies and spatial agglomeration in exports and employment in the tourism sector by nuts-2 regions in Turkey (2012-2021; 2014-2021)

The New Economic Geography has an impact on production, growth, employment, and exports and is important for the national economy. In countries implementing the export-oriented growth (development) roadmap, exports and product diversity are as necessary as R&D. Therefore, the hypothesis that economic geography is important for exports is the main hypothesis of this thesis. The aim of this thesis is to identify spatial agglomeration in exports and agglomeration in employment in the tourism sector according to level-2 regions. First of all, in this thesis, spatial agglomerations for exports and tourism sector employment are determined by spatial econometric methods, and comparative static analysis is performed. Then, two different complementary models are used in this thesis. In Model 1, the factors affecting the spatial agglomeration in exports in the 2012–2021 period on the basis of level-2 regions in Turkey were determined, and the agglomeration according to imports, electricity consumption, and road length were investigated. In Model 2, the factors determining the spatial agglomeration in tourism sector employment in Turkey in the 2014–2021 period are determined to be the basket exchange rate, gross value added, number of airplanes (total number of landing-take-off airplanes), and total roads (km of provincial-state roads and highways), and both models are estimated by the spatial panel data analysis method. As a result, electricity consumption and imports affect exports positively, while road length affects them negatively. Employment in the tourism sector is positively affected by gross value added, the number of airplanes, and the number of airplanes in neighboring regions, while total roads, total road length in neighboring regions, and the basket exchange rate have a negative effect.