MERİH CELASUN 2011 AWARD WINNER ANNOUNCED

Merih Celasun 2011 Award given to the article titled "Agricultural Productivity and Growth in Turkey" by Prof. Ayşe İmrohoroğlu and Prof. Selahattin İmrohoroğlu of South Califonia University and Dr. Murat Üngör of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.

ANKARA- The Competition for the Merih Celasun Awards launched by TEPAV has ended. Winner of this first competition was the study titled "Agricultural Productivity and Growth in Turkey" by Prof. Ayşe İmrohoroğlu and Prof. Selahattin İmrohoroğlu of South Califonia University and Dr. Murat Üngör of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.

The jury of the TEPAV 2011 Merih Celasun Award, the theme of which was Turkey's growth challenge", composed of Prof. Daron Acemoğlu, Prof. Sumru Altuğ, Prof. Hasan Ersel, Prof. Ziya Öniş, Prof. Şevket Pamuk, and Prof. Dani Rodrik. The Jury decided to grant the Merih Celasun Special Award to the same study.

The Awards will be given at the Merih Celasun Memorial Day on June 20, 2012. The Memorial Lecture of next year's Memorial Day will be delivered by Prof. Daron Acemoğlu. The theme will be "Why nations fail?"

"Agricultural Productivity and Growth in Turkey"

The winning study, identifying that "between 1960 and 1977 Turkish GDP per capita fell from 73% of Greece, Portugal, and Spain to around 50% and remained at this level until very recently" investigated the reasons behind this relative stagnation. In this context, authors inquired whether they could isolate particular policies or features that may have been responsible for this experience. In this paper, authors examined the growth experience of Turkey through the lens of a multisectoral model and found that the main reason behind its relative stagnation was its low agricultural productivity growth. Authors provided some evidence that policies that discriminated against agriculture deserved special attention for understanding the low productivity growth in the Turkish agricultural sector.

Authors showed some preliminary evidence that indirect policies such as import substitution and overvalued exchange rates that discriminated against agriculture in Turkey may have hampered the efficient use of intermediate inputs, resulting in lower agricultural productivity.

Merih Celasun Memorial Day...

TEPAV inaugurated the 'Merih Celasun Memorial Day' with events on Turkish economy in commemoration of highly respected scientist Prof. Merih Celasun, deceased in 2004. During the first Memorial Day carried out in 2010, it was decided to grant Merih Celasun Award starting in 2011 to support and promote academic research on Turkey.