KAÇAKÇILIĞIN BELİRLEYİCİLERİ: AVRUPA VE ORTA ASYA ÜLKELERİ ÜZERİNE YAPISAL EŞİTLİK MODELİ UYGULAMASI.

Smuggling is done for avoiding taxation through escaping some certain duties in the foreign trade of goods and by-passing border controls. The liberalization of foreign trade without constructing institutional efficiency creates new opportunities for illegal traders. While there are many theoretical studies based on the determinants of smuggling in the literature, studies with applied analyzes are limited. In the study, unlike other studies, smuggling is investigated around the findings obtained from the MIMIC model, which is a special type of Structural Equation Model (SEM). The purpose of the study is to analyze the causes and indicators of smuggling based on 2015 data of selected variables from 52 countries in European and Central Asian in the geographic country classification of World Bank. As a result of the study, the most important determinants of smuggling in European and Central Asian countries are the rule of law, globalization and GDP per capita. For Turkey, the most important determinants of smuggling are found to be cost of imports, trade, tariffs, rule of law, globalization and GDP per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]