Financial Liberalization and Regional Impacts on Entrepreneurial Behavior in Turkey

Financial liberalization in various forms affects economic growth and activity. While cross country and time series observations underline the benefits of financial liberalization on growth, recent regional studies try to deepen the observation by distinguishing economic growth and economic activity. Firm formation and thus entrepreneurship is one of the major tools to understand the behavior of economic activity. While numerous factors may be labeled to understand the determinants of entrepreneurial behavior, a new debate widens to describe a special role for financial liberalization as to explain motivations of entrepreneurship. Originating from this core debate the study aims to discuss the post 1980 liberalization in Turkey with special emphasis on the regional interaction between financial markets and business environment. Result underline that bank loans continue to dominate the financing of business start ups, while deposit volume’s effect seems to deviate from the expectations.