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Abstract
Turkey entered a customs union (CU) with the EU in January 1996.
Agricultural trade is not covered by this CU but it is subject to extensive
preferential trade rules. In this article, the effects of an
inclusion of agricultural products in the CU as well as alternative
policy options on the Turkish agricultural sector are analysed. To
this aim, a comparative-static, partial equilibrium model of the Turkish
agricultural sector is developed. The complete liberalization of
the agricultural sector is found to lead to significant comparative
static welfare gains of about €670 million as compared to the status quo. It appears that for most products, with few but significant
exceptions, the inclusion of agriculture in the CU with the EU is
very similar to the complete liberalization of agricultural trade.