Halit Yanıkkaya received his Ph.D. degree in 2001 from the University of Delaware, Delaware, USA. He is a full professor in Economics at the Gebze Technical University, Turkey. His primary research interest is growth economics, development economics, industrial policies, and institutional economics.

In his studies, he has examined the growth effects of selected economic, political, and institutional variables such as the lending practices of International Financial Institutions, socio-political instability, polity stability, and natural resource abundancy. Prof. Yanıkkaya is an elected associate member (2015) of the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA).