Investment incentive policies: Evaluation of the effectiveness through multi-criteria decision making methods in terms of Turkey

On of the main tools used to eliminate the development difference between regions is investment incentive policies. To ensure the development of underdeveloped regions in Turkey, different ways of investment promotion policies, suitable for the development level of each region, are applied. The purpose of this study is to make the performance rankings of investment incentive policies implemented in all 81 provinces in Turkey between the years of 2010- 2018. İn the study, multi-criteria decision making methods were used as methodology. First, criterion weighting was done with Entropy method. Then, the performance ranking of the provinces was made by TOPSIS, VIKOR and MOORA methods. Finally Borda Count Method was used to obtain a single ranking. In order to use in the analysis seven criteria were determined, including total investment incentive documents, total fixed investment, total employment, GDP, GDP per capita, general butget tax incomes and loan distributions. As a result, it was concluded that the most important criterion for the nine years covered by the analysis was general budget tax incomes. In addition, according to the results, the provinces where investment incentives had the most and least impact between 2010 and 2018 were found to be similar. The provinces that perform best were found to be developed provinces such as İstanbul, Ankara, Kocaeli, İzmir and Bursa; on the other hand the provinces with the worst performance were underdeveloped provinces such as Bayburt, Hakkari, Ardahan, Tunceli and Gümüşhane. Key Words: İncentive, İnvestment İncentive, Multi-Criteria Decision Making, Entropi, TOPSİS, VİKOR, MOORA, Borda Count Method