Pınar Özbay Özlü

Interest Rate Corridor, Liquidity Management, and the Overnight Spread

Recently, massive global liquidity has compelled many emerging market economies to change their monetary policy frameworks in order to address the financial stability challenges posed by volatile capital flows. In this respect, as of the second half of 2010, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) has developed additional policy instruments to support the adoption of financial stability as a complementary objective to price stability. Liquidity management has actively been used in conjunction with a wide interest rate corridor to smooth excessive volatility in shortterm capital inflows. As a result, the spread between the Borsa Istanbul overnight repo interest rate and the CBRT average funding rate (overnight spread) has become wider and more volatile. We analyze the determinants of the overnight spread using data from both the traditional and the new monetary policy episodes and empirically document that this spread has recently been influenced by various factors which are directly or closely related to the liquidity policy of the CBRT.

Monetary transmission with multiple policy rates: evidence from Turkey

ABSTRACT Quantitative easing policies have led to persistent divergence between officially announced policy rates and short-term money market rates in many economies, making it challenging to assess the stance of monetary policy in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Lack of data variation in short-term interest rates across time dimension has made it difficult to identify the monetary transmission mechanisms. In order to shed some light on this topic, we make advantage of a specific period from Turkey during which the central bank deliberately allowed the policy rates to diverge frequently from the interbank rates due to capital flow management purposes. Using bank-level flow data from this episode, we investigate the relationship between various short-term interest rate measures and bank loan/deposit rates through panel estimation methods. Our findings suggest that interbank rates are more relevant than central bank’s officially announced rates for the transmission of monetary policy when the two diverge from each other persistently. Interbank rates particularly play a key role in the pricing of loans and deposits. These findings provide helpful guidance for evaluating the monetary stance under unconventional policies.