M. Ege Yazgan

Monetary policy rules in practice: evidence from Turkey and Israel

Forward looking monetary policy rules are estimated for Israel and Turkey. When variable inflation targets are taken into consideration, as opposed to the fixed targets used in prior research that use data from developed countries, forward looking Taylor rules seem to provide reasonable description of Central Bank behaviour in both countries. In general, it can be said that monetary policy appears to be quite strong in these countries, and especially so in Turkey, when compared with developed countries.

The Purchasing Power Parity Hypothesis for a High Inflation Country: A Re-Examination of the Case of Turkey

The long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis is re-examined for Turkey and strong evidence on long-run PPP is provided by using standard multivariate cointegration techniques. It is argued that the refutation of PPP by Telatar and Kazdagli does not necessarily imply the failure of taking the non-linearity in real exchange rate adjustment into account, as proposed by Sarno, but it may be due to the use of univariate framework for testing PPP chosen by Telatar and Kazdagli. By using persistence profiles, half-life deviations from PPP are estimated as low as one and a half years. Since these estimates are substantially lower than those previously obtained in the literature, the analysis suggests that high inflation environment does not constitute a case for the PPP puzzle.

Persistence in Convergence

In this paper, we examine the convergence hypothesis using a long memory framework that allows for structural breaks and the non reliance on a benchmark country. We find that even though the long memory framework of analysis is much richer than the simple I(1)/I(0) alternative, a simple absolute divergence and rapid convergence dichotomy produced by the latter is sufficient to capture the behavior of the gaps in per capita GDP levels and growth rates results respectively. This is in contrast to the findings of Dufrenot, Mignon and Naccache (2009) who found strong evidence of long memory for output gaps. The speed of convergence captured by the estimated long memory parameter d, is explained by differences in physical and human capital as well as fiscal discipline characteristics of economic policies pursued by different countries.

Effects of Credit and Debit Cards on the Currency Demand

We analyze the effects of credit and debit cards on the currency in circulation by using GMM estimation. Instead of using the data obtained by surveys, we use monthly data obtained by an interbank institution that keeps the statistics of all credit and debit cards usage of a small open economy, Turkey, for the period over 2002M1–2006M10. As expected from the theory, we find that an increase in the usage of credit and debit cards leads to a decrease in the currency demand. Moreover, the usage of the debit cards has a bigger effect on the money demand, compared to the usage of the credit cards. We also find that the effect of credit cards is mostly through purchases and the effect of debit cards is mostly through withdrawals

Has ‘inflation targeting’ increased the predictive power of term structure about future inflation: evidence from Turkish experience?

This article contributes to the vast literature on the predictive power of term structure on future inflation by focusing on an emerging market case: Turkey. The most important result emerging in our article is the following: Monetary policy change is an important determinant of the relationship between term structure and inflation to the extent that even the existence of the relationship critically depends on the nature of the monetary policy regime. In our case, the change in monetary policy is associated with the beginning of the implementation of an Inflation Targeting (IT) regime. While, before IT, the information in term structure does not provide any predictive power for future inflation; this phenomenon seems to be completely reversed after IT. Since the implementation of IT, the term structures of interest rates seem to have gained considerable forecasting power for future inflation.

Persistence in Real Exchange Rate Convergence

Abstract In this paper we use a long memory framework to examine the validity of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis using both monthly and quarterly data for a panel of 47 countries over a 50 year period (1957–2009). The analysis focuses on the long memory parameter d that allows us to obtain different convergence classifications depending on its value. Our analysis allows for the presence of smooth structural breaks and it does not rely on the use of a benchmark. Overall the evidence strongly points to the presence of a long memory process, where 0.5<d<1. The implication of our results is that we find long memory mean reverting convergence, something that is also consistent with Pesaran, M. H., R. P. Smith, T. Yamagata, and L. Hvozdyk. 2009. “Pairwise Tests of Purchasing Power Parity.” Econometric Reviews 28: 495–521. In explaining the speed of convergence as captured by the estimated long memory parameter d we find impediments to trade such as distance between neighboring countries and sticky prices to be mainly responsible for the slow adjustment of real exchange rates to PPP rather than nominal rates for all country groups but Asia, where the opposite is true.

Measuring Human Development in the MENA Region

ABSTRACT We aim to assess welfare improvements in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using the Human Development Index (HDI). We obtain weighting schemes that yield the best- and worst-case scenarios for measured human development, relying on consistent tests for stochastic dominance efficiency (SDE), with the official equally weighted HDI taken as a benchmark. In the best-case scenario index, life expectancy and GDP indexes receive the highest weights for the 1975–2005 period, while the education index is the dominant contributor to the worst-case scenario in the same period. In addition, we observe a relative change in the best- and worst-case scenarios between two fifteen-year periods. The GDP index is the main contributor to the best-case scenario between 1975 and 1990, whereas the education index is the main contributor to the worst-case scenario during that period. Life expectancy is the main contributor to the best-case scenario in the 1990–2005 period, while the GDP and education indexes are the primary contributors to the worst-case scenario during that period.

Exchange rate pass-through in Turkish export and import prices

This article examines exchange rate pass-through into prices of internationally traded goods in the case of a small emerging open market economy such as Turkey. In this study, we provide empirical evidence on complete pass-through in export prices in Turkey using aggregate data on the manufacturing sector. Our data do not however support complete pass-through in import prices in Turkey. This contradicts with the findings of the existent literature, which typically concludes that the degree of pass-through in import prices is higher than the one of export prices. This can be interpreted as a result of competition between import and import substituting industries where importers fall short of competing successfully with import substituting sectors. Although Turkish importers can be responsive to exchange rate changes to a certain degree in the short-run, in the long-run, they seem to lose their market power perhaps as a result of swift competition. A complete exchange rate pass-through to export prices in Turkey implies that the Turkish manufacturing export sector has the competitive strength to transmit exchange rate movements into their prices.

The Role of Regime Shifts in the Term Structure of Interest Rates: Further Evidence from an Emerging Market

In this paper, we investigate the interrelationships among Turkish interest rates having different maturities by using a regime-switching vector error correction model. We find a relationship of long-run equilibrium among interest rates having various maturities. Furthermore, we conclude that term structure dynamics exhibit significant nonlinearity. A forecasting experiment also reveals that the nonlinear term structure models fare better in forecasting than other linear specifications. However, we cannot conclude that interest rate adjustments are made in an asymmetric way in the long run.

Quantile forecast combination using stochastic dominance

This paper derives optimal forecast combinations based on stochastic dominance efficiency (SDE) analysis with differential forecast weights for different quantiles of forecast error distribution. For the optimal forecast combination, SDE will minimize the cumulative density functions of the levels of loss at different quantiles of the forecast error distribution by combining different time-series model-based forecasts. Using two exchange rate series on weekly data for the Japanese yen/US dollar and US dollar/Great Britain pound, we find that the optimal forecast combinations with SDE weights perform better than different forecast selection and combination methods for the majority of the cases at different quantiles of the error distribution. However, there are also some very few cases where some other forecast selection and combination model performs equally well at some quantiles of the forecast error distribution. Different forecasting period and quadratic loss function are used to obtain optimal forecast combinations, and results are robust to these choices. The out-of-sample performance of the SDE forecast combinations is also better than that of the other forecast selection and combination models we considered.