Türkiyede teknoloji geliştirme bölgelerinin inovasyon üzerindeki etkisi

This study focuses on the impact of Technology Development Areas (TDAs) on innovation activity in Turkey. Importance of TDAs arises from their role in promoting innovation through encouraging creation and development of knowledge-based businesses. Also, TDA environment helps participating firms by enabling technology and knowledge transfer between firms in TDA and between firms and universities. These are the main reasons why TDAs have been a popular policy regulation for innovation. However, their impact on innovation has been a controversial research area that presents mixed results. This study sheds more light on this issue by estimating the impact of being located in TDA on the innovation outcomes; completed Research and Development (R&D) projects, sold and developed products and registered patents by the firms. The estimations are based on the Turkish data for TDAs, which are taken from the "2012 Impact Evaluation Survey for Technology Development Areas" that is performed by Turkish Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology. This study is the first academic work that uses this survey. It is found that being in TDA increases the number of completed R&D projects by 0.16-0.4 units. TDAs have a negative and insignificant impact on number of sold R&D products and developed R&D products of firms. The analysis shows that being in TDA decreases the number of patents registered, by 0.1 units. TDAs have other incentives for the firms in terms of firm performance. I estimate the impact of being in TDA on firm performance using sales as a performance measure. Entering a TDA is found to decrease sales by 31%.