micro firms, in the rest of the paper, firms will be investigated in three groups: total firms,
micro firms employing up to 9 people and firms employing more than 9 persons as well.
3. Changes in Firm Population in Turkey
The analysis is based on the provincial level data. Although the number of provinces were
67 up to 1985 census, this period is followed by the declarations of some new provinces (see
figure 3), reaching up to 80 recently. In order to remove the statistical fallacy, the recently
established cities that were not present in 1985, have been included in their original cities.
However, the two new cities in the South, Batman and Sirnak are grouped with Hakkari,
Mardin and Siirt as the administrative borders do not fit the old one. That is, totally the study
is based on 65 observations.
Figure 3. The location of provinces in Turkey
While change in total firm population from 1985 to 1992 is viewed in figure 4, that of micro
firms is given in figure 5, and that of new firms in which 10 or more persons engaged in
figure 6 as well. The most striking feature from these figures is that in most of the country
the growth rate of firm population is negative between these two censuses. To capture this
structure, the positive rates are highlighted.
The growth rate of total firm population is 0.018 in Turkey from 1985 to 1992. Sinop
(0.267) in the North, Icel (0.264) in the South, Usak (0.210) in the West, and Tekirdag
(0.200) in the Northwest have the highest growth rates (see figure 4), while Rize in the
Northeast has the lowest growth rate (-0.693). The following lowest rates do come from the
same region, the Northeast by Agri (-0.440) and Erzincan (-0.386).