The investigation of recent trends in Turkish current account

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, İktisat Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: GÖKAY YÜKSEL

Danışman: HASAN CÖMERT

Özet:

International trade is still indispensable for each country in today’s world for both economic and political reasons. Correspondingly, world trade volume has been uninterruptedly rising. By the same token, Turkish trade volume, in line with other developing countries, has been also growing. However, Turkish imports have been rising much faster than Turkish exports since the 1990s. As a result, Turkey has been chronically suffering from current account deficit problem for years. What is more, Turkish current account balance has started to give huge deficits constantly since the late 1990s. Therefore, the main objective of the thesis is to enlighten the determinants of global current account imbalance and to analyze whether or not those determinants explain the Turkish current account balance and a possible structural break in it. In consequence, there are three main findings of the thesis. First, the evidence from a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model suggests that the main determinants of Turkish current account are mostly structural factors. Second, VAR model also suggest that Turkey has to import in order to be able to export because Turkish industry is highly dependent on intermediate goods importation to produce export commodities. Third, empirical analyses suggest that there is a structural break in Turkish current account balance in 1999Q1.