EVALUATION OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT WITH BANKING AND FINANCE DATA

This research aims to measure the change of provincial development levels of Turkey's 81 provinces through banking sector data. The applied methodology is the Malmquist Total Factor Productivity Index (MTFPI). We perform the analysis based on two models. The main difference between models relies on handling the factor associated with 'loans'. The first approach sees the loans as an output factor, which is based on the idea that loans indicate investment and therefore development. In the second model, we take the loans as an input factor, which represents the idea that loans indicate debt and therefore they should be minimized. We evaluate the findings with respect to geographical classification and the province development index.