Türkiye's export competitiveness by province: Forecasting with machine learning

The importance of export competitiveness for development has increased. The efficiency of the strategies, policies, and incentives should be carefully considered for export competitiveness. Within the scope of this study, the export competitiveness of Türkiye was analyzed by province and manufacturing sector. İstanbul, İzmir, and Kocaeli stand out regarding Türkiye's exports, which were determined as pilot provinces for the competitiveness analysis. Also, traditional and machine learning techniques for forecasting were examined and the export of provinces was forecasted by arima, boosting, and neural network. Comparing the accuracy of the models, arima was selected for competitiveness analysis. Competitiveness analyses were conducted with RCA index. The data at 2-digit levels according to ISIC Rev.4 were used from TurkStat. Accordingly, while İstanbul was competitive in 12 sectors, 2 high, 4 medium-high, 2 medium-low, and 4 low technology, in 2021, it is estimated that İstanbul will be competitive in 9 manufacturing sectors in 2024. İzmir was competitive in 2 medium-high, 3 medium-low, and 6 low technology sectors, and it is predicted that it would be competitive in 8 sectors in 2024. Kocaeli was an export competitor in 1 high, 2 medium-high, and 4 medium-low-technology manufacturing sectors in 2021 while it would be competitive in 6 sectors in 2024. It is suggested that this study, which is carried out by sector, should be expanded with analyses on the basis of product/product groups for all provinces in Türkiye. Hence, especially incentives and strategies should be evaluated in line with the findings.