Assessment of trends in the comparative advantage and competitiveness of the Turkish textile and clothing industry in the enlarged EU market

Abstract

In this paper, Turkey's comparative advantage and competitiveness in the textile and clothing industries are analysed by using Balassa's revealed comparative advantage index and Vollrath's indices of competitive advantage for the period of 1988-2008 in the enlarged EU market. The results revealed that Turkey has overall a strong comparative advantage and competitiveness in textile and clothing in the EU market. All competitiveness indices for the years 2005-2008 showed an increasing trend for the textile industry and a decreasing trend for clothing. The decrease in the competitiveness of clothing was observed more intensively in the enlarged EU market compared to that of the EU12. These findings can be thus interpreted: the Turkish textile industry responded well to the elimination of quotas, while the clothing sector has been more vulnerable to the inclusion of low-cost labour countries in the market since 2005.