The Causal Relationship Between Air Transportation Liberalization and Economic Growth: The Case Of Turkey

This paper investigates the causal relationship between economic growth and air transportation liberalization expressed with gradual removal of restrictions related to destination, designation, frequency, capacity and price tariffs in Turkey. In the first step of the analysis, according to WTO-ALI methodology Aviation Liberalization Index computed for the period of 1980-2015 for Turkey. The causal relationship between Air Liberalization Index and GDP per capita utilized based on the Leveraged Bootstrap approach developed by Hacker and Hatemi-J (2006). The results show that there is a positive unidirectional causal relationship between air liberalisation index and GDP per capita in the years of 2005, 2008, and 2015.