Turkey as a Regional Natural Gas Hub: Myth or Reality? An Analysis of the Regional Gas Market Outlook, Beyond the Mainstream Rhetoric

Over the last years Turkey has been increasingly associated in the international political and economic debate with concepts such as gas corridor and gas hub. This characterization of Turkey is clearly mainly due to its unique geographical position at the crossroads the Caspian region, the Middle East and Europe. In particular, this argument is often advanced in the political discussion on the rise of Turkey as a leading regional power and in the debate on the future prospects for the EU-Turkey relations. However, by going beyond the political slogans and by focusing on the concrete gas realities around Turkey this picture could be seriously put into question. The aim of this paper is to explore the real potential role of Turkey in the regional gas markets, firstly focusing on the current situation of gas producing countries around Turkey and then moving to the future prospects of gas cooperation in the region. To this end, the paper will provide an assessment of both the current situation and outlook of gas markets in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel and Cyprus, subsequently providing a discussion of the future prospects of the Southern Gas Corridor and of the potential Eastern Mediterranean Gas Corridor. This analysis will indicate that Turkey will hardly have the potential to become a regional gas hub in the medium term (up to 2020-2025). However, Turkey could have the potential to play an important role in the regional gas markets in the longer term (after 2025-2030) if a number of infrastructural, commercial and political barriers described in the paper are overcome and -last but not the least- if the EU gas demand recovers and the EU market actually needs more natural gas supplies

Ageing, Productivity and Wages in Austria: Evidence from a Matched Employer-Employee Data Set at the Sector Level

In this paper we analyse the link between the age structure of the labour force and average labour productivity at the intermediate level of economic sectors. The analysis is based on a panel data set ranging over six years (2002-2007) and covers the sectors of mining, manufacturing and market oriented services in the Austrian economy. Our results exhibit a positive correlation of the share of older employees and productivity, while we cannot find any evidence for a significant relationship of the share of younger employees and productivity. Moreover, the estimated age-wage pattern does not hint at an over-payment of older employees