Kivilcim Metin Özcan

Determinants of private savings behaviour in Turkey

This study investigates the effects on private saving rates of a number of policy and non-policy variables. The analysis covers the period 1968–1994. The empirical private saving model for Turkey is estimated. The findings support the hypothesis that private saving rates have strong inertia. The evidence indicates that government saving does not tend to crowd out private savings and the Ricardian equivalence does not hold strictly. Income level has a positive impact on private saving rate, and growth rate of income is not statistically significant. From a policy point of view, financial depth and development measures in Turkey suggest that countries with deeper financial systems tend to have higher private saving rates. Private credit and real interest rates try to capture the severity of the borrowing constraints and the degree of financial repression for Turkey. Moreover, the negative impact of life expectancy rate lends support to the life-cycle hypothesis. The precautionary motive for saving is supported by the findings that inflation captures the degree of macroeconomic volatility and has a positive impact on private saving in Turkey.

Interest rate pass-through in Turkey and impact of global financial crisis: asymmetric threshold cointegration analysis

This paper aims to investigate the interest rate pass-through of monetary policy rate to banking retail rates in Turkey by employing the asymmetric threshold autoregressive (TAR) and momentum threshold autoegressive (MTAR) procedures introduced by Enders and Siklos (2001). Over the period December 2001 to April 2011, the empirical results of asymmetric threshold cointegration analysis suggest that there exist significant and complete pass-through between policy rate and loan rates. Positive and negative departures from the equilibrium converge to long run path almost at the same speed. Pace of convergence is about two to three months for all loan rates. Policy rate has significant short run impact on loan rates. Our analysis revealed that there is no significant relationship between policy rate and bank deposit rates due to sluggish adjustment of deposit rates. Lastly, the speed and behavior of interest rate pass-through between policy rate and loan rates did not change when we encounter the effect of 2008 financial crisis. Having a banking sector dominated financial system in Turkey, the results suggest that banks adjust loan rates faster than deposit rates. This indicates that Central Bank can affect the consumption behavior of people, in other words aggregate demand through loan rates.

Determinants of Private Savings in the Middle East and North Africa

This chapter investigates the relationship between private savings and a broad range of macroeconomic aggregates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the period 1981–1994. Private savings are explained by the growth rate of income and strong inertia. Public savings crowd out private savings only partially. A financial depth measure suggests that countries with deeper financial systems will tend to have higher private savings. Private credit and real interest rates capture the severity of borrowing constraints and the degree of financial repression. Inflation captures the macroeconomic volatility and has a positive impact on savings.

Chapter 8 Sources of Growth and the Output Gap for the Turkish Economy

Abstract In this study, we analyze the growth dynamics of the Turkish economy. After investigating the sources of growth and comparing both the output and the inflation performance with the other MENA countries, we find that the Turkish economy has not achieved a sustainable growth path and has a much worse inflation performance. Then, we take a closer look at the volatile output performance and discuss the role of the wrong macroeconomic policies on the unsustainable output performance. Utilizing an output gap measure, we find that the short-term capital flows seem to be the main driving force in generating excessive fluctuations in the output. Based on these findings, we can say that the high economic growth rates, which the Turkish economy has achieved in the recent years owe much to massive short-term capital inflows. At this stage, it is too early to evaluate the effects of the recent structural reforms on the long-term output dynamics.