Seminar - Sefa Takmaz

Sefa Takmaz (Bakircay University) will present his paper “Financial inclusion in Turkey: unpacking the provincial inequality and its determinants,” co-authored by Erkam Sari (Aydin Adnan Menderes University), and Sedat Alatas (National Research University Higher School of Economics). Please find the abstract below and the manuscript attached.

The invited speaker is interested in a job tenure track in the department (Area: Finance/Accounting)

Abstract

This paper investigates the regional disparity of financial inclusion (FI) and its determinants in Turkey from 2004 to 2020. To this end, we first construct an FI index using the principal component analysis. Then, based on the club convergence approach, we test the existence of convergence to show regional disparities in FI. Finally, we examine the main determinants of provincial disparity using ordered logit models. The convergence results strongly reject the full-panel convergence, indicating a regional disparity in FI. Furthermore, our analyses reveal that financial inclusion positively correlates with population, income, and income inequality, while unemployment hinders inclusion. Overall, our results imply that policies focusing on digital financial services, increasing financial literacy, and reducing unemployment should significantly diminish regional disparities and improve FI.