Monetary Policy Rules in Practice: Evidence from Turkey

2012

Post-crisis spillovers and heightened capital flows have triggered a search for alternative monetary policy frameworks, especially for small open emerging economies. The Turkish experience since end-2010 sets out an interesting case in this respect. Faced with extreme volatility in cross-border capital flows, rapid credit growth and a sharp deterioration in the current account deficit, Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) has modified the conventional inflation targeting regime by adopting financial stability as a supplementary objective and enriching the set of policy instruments with a particular emphasis on credit and exchange rate channels. This study explains the underlying motivation why the CBT has adopted such a flexible policy, provides an overview of the new framework, and summarizes the initial results. The analysis conducted throughout the paper and the recent evidence suggests that the new policy framework has been quite effective in reducing the macro financial risks related t...

ABSTRACT Monetary policy tools play a big role in macroeconomic stability and in particular the general price level in a given economy. Turkish central bank like most of the banks around the globe is entrusted by the powers to use its monetary tools to control inflation and maintain macroeconomic stability such as employment, inflation exchange rate as well as interest rate. Having employed a regression modal and a correlational research design, we used a time series empirical data of inflation, money supply, interest rate and exchange rate to analyses the performance of Central bank of Turkey in controlling inflation. We found a strong correlation between the dependent variable inflation and the independent variables. R squared was 78% indicating that 78% of the variability in inflation was actually as a result of the changes in money supply, interest rate and exchange rate. The study recommends the economic and political policy makers to harmonize their economic interest so as to avoid conflict of interest between them.

Journal of Policy Modeling, 2010

This paper investigates the monetary policy reaction functions of the Central Bank of Republic of Turkey (CBRT) over the periods 1987: 01-2001:12 and 2002:01-2009:05. We specifically attempt to shed light on question to what extent exchange rate developments still continue to influence monetary policy, even under inflation targeting. This study seeks to investigate how the monetary policy responded to the exchange rate shocks before and after adoption of inflation targeting regime. How large the effect of exchange rate shocks is accounted for in forecast error variances decompositions for monetary policy as compared to other shocks? Using the VAR model, this study shows that there has been strong pass-through during whole period. Moreover, in the postcrisis period, exchange rate has been the main reaction variable for the CBRT.

Effectiveness of monetary policy depends on the degree to which policy interest rate affects all other financial prices, including the entire term structure of interest rates, credit rates, exchange rates and asset prices. An effective monetary policy framework can be seen as a pre-condition for well-functioning financial markets. However, effectiveness of the monetary policy is not straightforward to measure and requires empirical work to understand the effects of financial infrastructure, competitiveness of financial markets as well as current economic conditions. This paper examines the effectiveness of the monetary policy in Turkey by focusing on the interest rate passthrough behavior by means of an Interacted Panel Vector Autoregressive (IPVAR) approach. The results suggest that policy rate innovations transmit fully in less than eight months. Regulatory quality of the country, competition, liquidity, and profitability of banking sector, dollarization and exchange rate flexibility, inflation, and term structure have a positive effect on interest rate pass-through. Short-term credit ratio, GDP growth, monetary growth, and capital inflows have a negative effect. ■ The authors gratefully acknowledge Pascal Towbin and Sebastian Weber for sharing IPVAR statistical tools and Nejat Seyhun for excellent comments.

OECD Economics Department Working Papers, 2008

The challenges of monetary policy in Turkey Monetary policy has been one of the main pillars of the post-2001 stabilisation programme. Encouraged by its success, the central bank shifted from implicit to explicit inflation targeting in 2006 and set a medium-term inflation target of 4%, applicable from end 2007. However this objective faced with two important challenges. On the one hand, inflation inertia settled in and non-tradable inflation stagnated at more than 10%, further fuelled by persistent surge in global commodity and energy prices. On the other hand, real interest rates remained high, continuing to fuel strong capital inflows and currency appreciation, and undermining the competitiveness of labour-intensive segments of the economy. Turkey is, therefore, faced with the classic dilemma of successful catching-up economies: Inflation inertia requires a tight policy while competitiveness losses appear to go beyond the absorption and adaptation capacity of large segments of the economy. This chapter argues that resolving this issue requires monetary policy to be supported by broader policies, including proactive competition policy to reduce costs and prices in services, enforcement of a credible multi-yearly spending framework to consolidate confidence in fiscal stability, and employers' and employees' commitment to anchor prices and wages more on the inflation target. Success with such policies would help shift the burden away from the central bank's interest rate as the only available instrument to increase the credibility of the inflation target.

Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, 2014

This paper studies the new monetary stance of the Central Bank of Republic of Turkey (CBRT) during the Great Recession. We note that characteristics of the post-1997 "great moderation" revealed interest rate smoothing as a valid policy option for the inflation targeting central banks. Utilizing econometric analyses on a general form of a Taylor Rule, we search for the relative weights of the objective function of the CBRT over Jan 2010-Dec 2013. We find that over the great recession, the CBRT's focus on "interest smoothing" had been maintained; and yet the burden of adjustment fell disproportionately on the foreign exchange markets. Furthermore, weak credibility of the CBRT, lack of a simple policy rule, and noisy policy communications evidence that prerequisites of the interest rate smoothing are not being fulfilled. Inevitable sharp policy corrections that follow smoothing periods prove insufficient against the voluminous global flows.

Middle East Development Journal, 2014

Turkey experienced a financial crisis in 2000-2001 that led to significant financial reforms. The reforms resulted in a switch to a floating exchange rate, granted greater central bank independence and pursuit of a more credible monetary policy. Investigation of the channels of monetary policy in both periods finds that monetary policy's output effects have been strengthened considerable by the reforms. In the pre-crisis period monetary policy was highly inflationary, while in the post-crisis period, monetary policy targets low inflation and has become a tool for output stabilization. These results support the importance of central bank independence and a credible policy.

Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam Üniversitesi sosyal bilimler dergisi, 2013

Developed countries experienced serious difficulties after the global financial crisis and used an excessive monetary easing strategy. Due to the decoupling, developing countries recorded high growth rates through raising capital inflows. In this new era, there is an effort to replace the price stability and the inflation targeting regime with a new monetary policy sensitive to financial stability. Also the central bank headed an unorthodox monetary policy in Turkey. The new monetary policy includes new tools such as interest rate corridor and reserve options mechanism. This paper examines this unorthodox monetary policy aiming to sustain macroeconomic stability taking into account the financial stability.

Applied Economics, 2014

A coherent method to measure the effectiveness of a monetary policy improves the monetary authority's management capacity and renders the possibility of applying sound policies prior to and during a crisis. The trend in employing complicated and ambiguity-bearing unconventional monetary tools in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis has increased the value of such a method. The aim of this article is to introduce a coherent and consistent monetary policy evaluation method for Turkey. Accordingly, we suggest that innovations in the spread between overnight interest rates and Treasury auction interest rates are informative for exchange rate, output, and prices. Empirical evidence for this identification reveals that positive innovation in spread (implying a tight monetary policy measure) decreases output temporarily, permanently decreases prices, and appreciates local currency. This result is also robust to alternative specifications.

BIS Papers, 2008