Spatial analysis of the relationship between public expenditures and socio-economic development: The case of Turkey

Socio-economic development may indicate interregional disparities domestically. Resolving disparities of interregional socio-economic development is one of the government roles and is equal to supply social needs as well. Socio-economic development includes parameters such as demography, technology, health, education, economic development, fiscal capacity, competitive structure and standard of living, and informs about what social needs are and what extent supply with data of these parameters in meso-level.Since resolving interregional disparities of socio-economic development is meant to supply social needs, government may use public expenditure as a tool when government supply social needs. Is narrowing the disparities of interregional socio-economic development in Turkey? How does the effect of public expenditures resolve disparities of interregional socio-economic development? How do public expenditures make convergence on disparities of interregional socio-economic development? How do regional disparities of socio-economic development and public expenditures take place in what way? Within the scope of these hypotheses, the aim of this study is to analyze functional classified public expenditures effect on interregional socio-economic development level difference whether increase or decrease, and to analyze spatial dispersion of socio-economic development and public expenditures in Turkey.According to the results, interregional socio-economic development level was not narrowed in Turkey. Moreover, services of social security and social aid increase socio-economic development whereas general public services decrease, which are statistically significant, in convergence analyze. Mainspring of regional disparity of socio-economic development in Turkey is the terror problem in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia of Turkey. In the event of solving this problem, interregional socio-economic development level difference would have been decreased so that economic and social welfare would have been spread to all segments of society and all regions of country. Keywords: Socio-economic development, public expenditures, social welfare, economic welfare, convergence analysis, ESDA, LISA, spatial autocorrelation, spatial spillover, regional disparity, terror.