The effect of land, rail and sea transportation on economic growth in Turkey: An empiricial application

One of the activities of logistics, the transportation is a system that comprises an essential part of daily life, enabling economic and social existence and adding value to the country. The importance of the logistics sector is ever increasing in Turkey where the growth potential is quite high. In this study, we have focused on the transportation activities which are the basis of the logistics sector and attempted to explain the effect of cargo transportation on the economic growth in Turkey. The study will be an important addition to the literature since it encompasses a wide timescale of 40 periods as well as analyzing three different modes of transportation instead of one. The relationship between cargo transportation and economic growth in the period of 1980 – 2019 are analyzed with multiple regression through gathering yearly data. In the econometric analyses, cargo transportation amount (KM- ton) with the road, rail and marine modalities are used as the independent variant while GDP per capita is used as a variable variant for economic growth. Firstly, we have presented the definition of the concept of logistics, the scope and principles of logistics, logistics performance index, the progress of the logistics sector in Turkey and transportation modes in logistics. Then, the concept of economic growth, the models of economic growth and the relationship among international trade-transportation-economic growth are presented. In the last section of the study, we have presented our empirical findings and results. The findings show that there is a positive relation between cargo transportation and economic growth. A unit of growth in cargo transportation influences economic growth in the following order: an increase of %23 (0.2260) for land cargo transportation, an increase of %11(0.1121) for rail cargo transportation and an increase of %5 (0.04685) for marine cargo transportation. It has been concluded that a one-unit increase in all freight transport by road, rail and sea increases the economic growth by approximately %37 (0.3712).