International capital flows and their impact on the Turkish economy PDF Download

Author: Ahmet Çimenoğlu
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Languages : tr
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The 1990s witnessed a significant surge in international capital flows. However, unlike in the previous episodes of high capital mobility , not only developed countries but also developing countries were subject to international capital flows. Especially in the first half of 1990s, there has been a significant increase in capital flows to developing countries. However in 1997, the wave of crises that started in Mexico in 1994 spread to the South East Asian countries that were pinpointed as success stories, to Russia in 1998, to Brazil in 1999, to Turkey in 2000, and to Turkey and Argentina in 2001. All of these countries have been severely hit by this recent wave of crises. The increase in the frequency of crises in developing countries raised concerns about their relationship to capital flows. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of international capital flows on developing country economies, paying specific attention to Turkey .In doing so, first a brief history of the international capital flows has been presented, then discussions about the determinants of capital flows have been reviewed. In fact, international capital flows were quite mobile at the end of the 19th century.However, these flows almost disappeared after the World War 1. Capital flows started to increase among developed countries in the 1970s. However, the surge in capital flows in developing countries only became significant in the 1990s. The wave of liberalisation of capital accounts should be seen as complementary to liberalisation and deregulation of foreign trade and financial sectors. Following the developed countries that put in effect liberalisation process in the 1970s, developing countries started to implement similar policies, mostly at the suggestion of international financial institutions and developed country goverments. Although there are some minor differences from country to country , the general outline of the liberalisation episodes of. developing countries were quite similar. This outline was basically prepared by elements of the so-called Washington Consensus, mainly in the last two decades. These elements are the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Organisation (WTO), American economic bureaucracy, and private think-tank institutions mostly based in Washington. The proposed process of liberalisation and integrati9n with the world financial markets was submitted to the developing countries that expressed their willingness to accept liberalisation and integration. The crises that many countries have been subject to in the 1990s were mainly classified as currency and banking sector crises. For this reason, understanding what exactly currency crises are, which mechanisms produce them, whether it is possible to foresee them, and what their effects are on macroeconomic variables need to be examined carefully. Moreover, the observation that the currency crises usually come along with banking crises raised concerns about the relationpship between the two, and a substantial literature on this issue emerged. Another important discussion is about the choice of the exchange rate regime and whether this choice is influential in instigating a crisis. The literature on these issues is presented in the third chapter of this study .These discussions are quite relevant for Turkey which is on the brink of implementing a new exchange rate and monetary policy . The last chapter of this study is devoted to the analysis of Turkey's experience with international capital flows. Until the 1990s, Turkey was almost completely isolated from international capital flows. Liberalisation of capital account transactions in 1989 can be regarded as the continuation of the liberalisation process that started in 1980 with the liberalisation of foreign trade, followed by gradual deregulation of financial markets. Through the effective implementation of capital account liberalisation in 1990, there has been an increase in international capital movements in Turkey .When capital flows in the 1990s are analysed, there are two features that distinguish Turkey from her peers. The first is that the net capital flows to Turkey , when measured as the share of capital flows in Gross National Product (GNP), were lower than those flowing to comparable developing countries. The second is that the volatility of the flows was higher in Turkey than in other developing countries, meaning that Turkey could not enjoy sustained net capital inflows in the 1990s. Another issue that has been investigated in this study is the degree of success Turkey had in integrating into the global financial markets. For this investigation, two methods that have been widely employed have been adopted to Turkey .These methods are testing whether the uncovered interest parity (UIP) holds for Turkey , and whether savings and investments are correlated in Turkey .In the first test, the rationale is to test whether the yields on similar assets in domestic and foreign markets do approach each other, as the theory predicts. The results of this test for Turkey indicate that the domestic and foreign interest rates on similar assets do not converge. The second test that has been conducted for Turkey is to check whether savings and investments are correlated. The rationale behind this test is that capital has the ability of searching for the highest yield and investing there, given that capital can flow freely across borders. Hence, savings generated in a specific country can be directed to somewhere else in the world, if investment there offers a higher yield than the country of origin. In other words, investment at home does not necessarily have to be financed by savings at home. The theory predicts that, if a country is successfully integrated into the international financial system, then there should be no correlation between her savings and investments. The tests that have been run for Turkey to check for this relationship yielded somewhat confusing results. Moreover, the lack of data to resolve the endogeneity problems inherent in this test forces one to be cautious in interpreting the results obtained. The results obtained from annual and quarterly data differ as well. While with the annual data it is not possible to argue that savings and investments are not correlated at any time in Turkey , with quarterly data, it is possible to argue that a correlation,between the two disappears after 1990. Roughly summarising .the results of the tests, it can be argued that investments and savings in Turkey exhibited a much stronger correlation before 1990, but this correlation weakened afterwards, just as the theory would predict. To sum up, Turkey made the necessary legal and regulatory changes in order to liberalise her capital account in 1990. This apparently increased the volume of international capital transactions in the 1990s. However, it is difficult to argue that Turkey successfully managed to completely integrate her financial system with global financial markets. The main reasons behind this are macroeconomic instability , underdeveloped financial markets, and working 'in a regulatory and supervisory environment that was too weak to help enhance the efficiency of the system. The final part of this study is devoted to the analysis of the effects of international capital flows on the Turkish economy .In order to analyse these effects, a simple framework has been used in which the channels through which capital inflows are transmitted to the domestic economy are determined. Afterwards, the existence of these channels has been tested using econometric techniques. The findings suggest that a surge in capital inflows firstly increases private sector consumption expenditures and then private sector investments. However, the increase in investment is directed more heavily to non-tradable sectors. This finding has far reaching implications on the process that leads to crises in Turkey .Increased investments in non-tradable sectors do not contribute to the foreign exchange earning capacity of the country .In times of crises, this turns into a major problem as the country faces significant capital outflows and eventually goes into a crisis accompanied by large current account deficits. Given the above process, in this study it is argued that the existence of international capital flows exacerbates the crisis thatTurkey faces. However, it does not mean that it is the ''capital inflows'' themselves that create the crisis. In fact, it is the handling of the foreign capital flows that triggers the crisis. The Turkish financial system was not, and in fact is still not, developed enough to damp down the excessive volatility in international capital flows. Moreover, most of the capital inflows that were relied upon in financing current account deficits were of short-term nature. In other words, Turkey relied mainly on short-term capital inflows in financing her current account deficits, with a domestic financial system that was not large and sophisticated enough to handle the potential difficulties associated with sudden capital inflow reversals. Even more importantly , successive governments over the last decade ignored the fact that these capital inflows might not be sustainable, and went on expanding the public sector deficits all through 1990s. Hence, given the above vulnerabilities, crises were inevitable.