The effects of agricultural subsidies and agricultural employment on economic growth: a time series analysis

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of agricultural subsidies and agricultural employment on economic growth in Türkiye by utilizing annual data for the period 2000-2022. Benefiting from empirical analysis, the variables in the study were primarily tested with the unit root test. The differences of the variables for which unit roots were determined were purified from unit roots as the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test suggests. Appropriate lag test was applied to the series and then the causality relationship between economic growth, agricultural employment rate and agricultural support amount was analyzed according to the results of cointegration, error-corrected VAR estimation, and Granger causality test. Based on the results of the analysis, agricultural subsidies do not have a significant effect on economic growth or economic growth on agricultural subsidies, whereas agricultural employment has a bidirectional and positive effect on economic growth. Causality findings indicate no causality between agricultural subsidies and economic growth. A bidirectional and positive economic growth as a result of agricultural employment was determined, and the existence of a causality relationship between the two variables has been demonstrated. In conclusion, it has been found that agricultural subsidies provided for economic growth in Türkiye have not yielded effective results, whereas agricultural employment provided positive reflections. Therefore, taking measures for a controlled transition from the agricultural sector to non-agricultural sectors over time, thus increasing the quality and adaptability of the workforce in the sector, and recording employment through incentives will make a great contribution to the solution of the problem.