Arif Oduncu

The Turkish Approach to Capital Flow Volatility

The shock waves of the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the 2011-12 Eurozone debt crisis hit emerging markets from the trade, the finance and the expectations channels. We focus on the finance channel in this paper. We first discuss the challenges arising from capital flow volatility in emerging economies in general. We then focus on the Turkish approach and describe in detail the new policy mix implemented by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey during the 2008-2012 period and the results obtained. This approach differs from others in its emphasis on the use of macroprudential policy measures rather than capital flow measures for improving domestic financial stability in face of volatile capital flows.

Reserve Options Mechanism and FX Volatility

Reserve Options Mechanism (ROM), which is the option to hold FX or gold reserves in increasing tranches in place of Turkish Lira reserve requirements of Turkish banks, was designed and launched by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT). ROM is a tool unique to the CBRT and it is aimed to support the FX reserve management of the banking system and to limit the adverse effects of excess capital flow volatility on the macroeconomic and financial stability of Turkey. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of ROM on the volatility of Turkish Lira, and to the best of our knowledge, it is the first analytical paper on investigating the effects of the ROM. The results suggest that ROM is an effective policy tool in decreasing the volatility of Turkish lira in the sample period.

Twenty Years of the EU-Turkey Customs Union: A Synthetic Control Method Analysis*

The paper studying the 1995 EU–Turkey Customs Union (CU) delivers a quantitative assessment of trade and GDP per capita effects of the CU on the Turkish economy. Our Synthetic Control Method based analysis reveals, contrary to the results of most studies in the literature, that the CUs effects have been substantial by any standards. In particular, the paper shows that in the absence of the EU–Turkey CU, Turkish exports to the EU and GDP per capita would have been 38 per cent and 13 per cent less, respectively.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and Trans-Pacific Partnership: Policy Options of China

The failure to advance the multilateral trade negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was a disruption for the international trading system. Alternatively, many countries have commenced to establish bilateral and regional Free Trade Agreements (FTA). Among those agreements the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are agreements with members from across the Atlantic and the Pacific respectively. This note focuses on the impacts of these agreements on Chinese economy under three scenarios. The effects of various scenarios on Chinese GDP and export are studied by using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) database and a general equilibrium model. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to analytically analyze the economic impacts of the TTIP on Chinese economy. In all of the scenarios the TTIP is realized and China never becomes a member of it. In the first scenario the TPP is not realized. In the second scenario the TPP is realized and China is excluded from it. In the last scenario the TPP is realized and China is included in the initiative. The results suggest that when only TTIP is realized, Chinese economic variables are negatively affected. When both TTIP and TPP are realized and China is excluded, the combined damage in Chinese economy is higher than the damage of TTIP alone. On the other hand, inclusion of China in the TPP affects its economic variables positively despite the negative effects of the TTIP. In other words, positive impacts of participation of China in the TPP compensate for the negative impacts of the TTIP. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Determinants of Precautionary Savings: Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution vs. Risk Aversion

The purpose of this paper is to understand the effects of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS) and risk aversion on savings separately and determine which coefficient is more important factor for precautionary savings. This is an important question since a significant fraction of the capital accumulation is due to precautionary savings according to literature. Thus, knowing the important determinant of precautionary savings will be helpful to understand the capital accumulation mechanism. This paper uses an Epstein-Zin utility function, which permits risk attitudes to be disentangled from the degree of intertemporal substitutability, in the model in order to study the effects of EIS and risk aversion separately. It is shown that saving increases as EIS increases. Similarly, saving increases as the coefficient of risk aversion increases. More importantly, it is observed that EIS is a more important factor for precautionary savings than risk aversion because saving is more responsive to changes in EIS than changes in risk aversion.