Turkish economic association international conference on economics
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1 Eylül, Çarşamba Wednesday, September 1 Contributed Session 1- Poverty and Income Distribution Workshop 3 Inflation and Poverty ERBİL, Can (Brandeis University) SİSLİ CIAMARRA, Elif (Brandeis University)
This paper examines the impact of inflation on poverty. The threat of a high inflationary era after the financial crisis is real. Previous studies analyze the effects of official inflation figures on poverty and inequality, with the hidden assumption that the movements in the prices of individual goods that form the aggregate index are uniform. However, the price behavior of commodities consumed by the low-income population is different than the price behavior of the basket of goods and services that form the overall CPI. A more appropriate approach would be to investigate the effect of changes in prices of the commodities that are primarily consumed by the poor. Accordingly, we calculate a consumption basket using the weights of goods and services consumed by the lowest income group in the United States and calculate an inflation measure for the poor by looking at the changes in this index. We call it the “poors’ inflation”. The effects of inflation (both official inflation and poors’ inflation) on poverty are estimated within a vector autoregression (VAR) framework, controlling for the unemployment rate. Our findings suggest, as expected, that the impact of inflation on poverty is higher and more statistically significant when we employ poors’ inflation. We also find that the causality runs from inflation to poverty. One policy implication is that an inflation targeting central bank may accomplish poverty reduction through monetary policy by considering a target price index that is more sensitive to the consumption patterns of the poor. JEL codes: E31, D31
EREN, Ercan (Yıldız Technical University) h.kirer@iku.edu.tr Recent empirical work analyzes the data on personal income distribution in Turkey for the year 2007. The data are got from Income and Living Conditions Survey. Income distribution models are generally explained with lognormal distribution by mainstream economics. Due to the fact that lognormal has no power tails and has a weakness to explain high income groups, it is problematic when it is used as a best fit. As a new science econophysics whose concern is to apply methods and tools of statistical physics to economical problems, may repair this lack of mainstream economics. Within this context, recent work shows explicitly that personal income distribution data don’t follow the lognormal distribution. Whilst emprical personal income distribution is consistent with a Pareto (Power) law function for the high income group (%2-%3), it has a totally different distribution model for the low-middle (%98-%97) distribution group. Pareto exponent is estimated around 2. As a conclusion, the outcomes show that there is a distinct seperation between high and low-middle income groups. From this point, it will be analyzed what causes high power law index in Turkey. JEL codes: D31, A12
SELİM, Raziye (Istanbul Technical University) YILDIZ TELEK, Fahriye (Maltepe University)
In the economic literature there are conflicting opinions about the effects of globalization on the economy. The globalization engenders more inequality and negative effects on poverty in some of the developing countries and at the same time it has a positive impact on growth and poverty reduction in the case of Asian countries. Nowadays, economic growth has come up and become important because of the effects of 2009 global economic crisis. And, countries and societies need political and economic solutions for overcoming negative effects of the crisis. There are many analyzes and researches on economic growth and struggle with poverty. Economic growth and poverty is handled in pro-poor growth which is accrued at the end of 20th century. The basic of pro-poor researches is about how economic growth affects poor, how economic growth’s benefits are distributed and how much poor profit from these benefits. In pro-poor debate, in addition to economic growth and poverty, income distribution is also considered. The objective of this study is analyzing whether growth process is pro-poor or not in 2003-2005 period in Turkey. In this research the data sources comes from The Household Budget Surveys which is conducted by Turkish Statistics Institution. Firstly the standard inequality measures and poverty measures are calculated by using disposable income and OECD equivalence scale. After then, pro-poor growth will be analyzed by the help of Kakwani and Son (2008)’s method by the way of poverty decomposition of growth and inequality. After 2001 crisis Turkey has experienced a rapid growth process, it could be expected that this growth is pro-poor. In this study, this expectation will be examined and analyzed. JEL codes: I32, O15 1 Eylül, Çarşamba Wednesday, September 1 Contributed Session 2-Demographic Economics Workshop 4 Development and Transition to Monogamy ÇİTÇİ, Sadettin Haluk (Sabancı University) halukc@sabanciuniv.edu This paper aims to answer why institution of marriage in modern industrialized countries evolved to monogamy although wealthy men have tended to mate with multiple wives throughout the history. We present a general equilibrium model of the marriage market where increasing labor incomes of both genders explain this phenomenon. The distinctive mark of this study is that the hypothesis can explain nonexistence of polygamy in modern industrialized countries even in the absence of skill inequality among women and high resource inequality among men. In this manner, this study is more comprehensive compared to existing arguments. Moreover, the hypothesis provides an alternative explanation for disappearance of polygamy in advanced economies with emphasizing women’s role for clarification of the phenomenon. JEL codes: J12, Z13
ERCAN, Hakan (Middle East Technical University) hercan@metu.edu.tr This paper first reviews briefly the Turkish demographic context in order to project later the demand for education in Turkey. The rural-urban migration is yet to end in Turkey. There are still significant population shifts to come. These population movements and the transition to twelve years of mandatory schooling stand to be the two important factors that will influence the level and nature of demand for education in the coming decades. During the analysis period, Turkey may become an EU member. The current EU agenda of new skills for new jobs is as relevant for Turkey as it is for the EU, especially given the low level of Turkish human capital stock. The issue has a direct bearing on the right of Turkish labor to move freely in the EU region. Although Turkey will never pass the 100 million mark in its population, its population is already aging; that is, its young age groups stabilized in numbers. The population of Turkey is increasing because of population momentum. The ensuing changes in the age structure of the population and the final equilibrium of rural-urban population levels will have profound impacts on the future demand for education in Turkey. These issues are directly related to Turkey’s economic growth performance. This paper summarizes recent trends in the growth and structure of the Turkish population. It then employs the available and trusted population projections by age and sex, in order to estimate and discuss two likely future scenarios and their implications of education and labor force participation trends, which are closely related especially for women. Preliminary estimations reveal that, Turkish female labor-force participation rates are twenty points below what they should have been, given its income level. Only increasing education levels could raise these rates, and not before 2030, unless Turkey mandates twelve years of basic education. JEL codes: I21, H52
GÖKSEL, Türkmen (Ankara University) ORMAN, Cüneyt (Central Bank of Turkey) GÜRDAL, Mehmet Y. (TOBB Economics and Technology University) cuneyt.orman@tcmb.gov.tr Studies in family economics and anthropology suggest that grandmothers are a highly valuable source of childcare assistance. As such, availability of grandmothers affects the cost of having kids, and hence fertility decisions of young parents. In this paper, we develop a simple model to assess the fertility implications of the fluctuations in output (as argued by demographers) and the drastic declines in the availability of grandmothers after the 1940’s. Model successfully replicates the bust-boom-bust pattern over the period 1920-1970. When the child-care cost channel is shut down, the model underestimates the baby boom, and fails to capture the subsequent bust. JEL codes: J13, J20
KIRDAR, Murat G. (Middle East Technical University) DAYIOĞLU, Meltem (Middle East Technical University) KOÇ, İsmet (Hacettepe University) kirdar@metu.edu.tr This paper estimates the impact of schooling on the marriage and fertility behavior of teenage women in Turkey using the 2008 Turkish Demographic and Health Survey and duration analysis methodology. The source of exogenous variation in schooling is the extension of compulsory schooling in Turkey in 1997. We find that education reduces the probability of marriage and fertility of teenage women. The magnitude of the impact of education is substantial. The probability of marriage by age 16 is reduced by 44 percent from a level of 7.9 percent to 4.4 percent, and the probability of giving birth by age 17 falls by 36 percent from 5.6 to 3.6 percent as a result of the new policy. The effects of the education policy on marriage and fertility persists beyond the completion of compulsory schooling. In addition, we find that the delay in the timing of first-birth is driven by the delay in the timing of marriage. After a woman is married, schooling does not have an effect on the duration until her first-birth. Finally, we find that the education policy was more effective in reducing early marriage than a change in the Civil Code aimed for this purpose. JEL codes: J12, J13
AKIBA, Hiroya (Waseda University) FENG, Yixin (Fujitsu Co. Ltd.) KIYONO, Kazuharu (Waseda University) hiroyaakiba@hotmail.com This paper attempts to synthesize the pricing and money holding behavior of a representative agent in a two-country New Open Economy Macroeconomic model. We believe that currency substitution (CS) is a logical consequence of pricing-to-market (PTM) behavior. CS was shown to display its effects only when PTM firms exist. CS is stabilizing the exchange rate movements in the short-run by mitigating volatility magnified by PTM. Effects of expansionary monetary policy are weakened because of a consumption reducing effect of CS. We also found that CS works as an insulation device to protect from a beggar-thy-neighbor effect by PTM. JEL codes: F41, F31
DUMAN, Alper (Izmir University of Economics) ÇELİK, Gökçe (Koç University)
The impact of real exchange rate (RER) movements on employment dynamics has been studied in the literature. There are a number of studies that focus on the transmission channels through which this impact is realized. The three main channels addressed in the literature are the competitiveness, growth and the labor substitution channel which is also the main interest of this study. The mechanism works through the adjustment of production factors. An appreciation of the domestic currency would imply the relative price of imports to decline. As the capital goods constitute a significant part of the imports while labor is relatively a domestically produced good, the appreciation would make the capital relatively cheaper and thus, would encourage the substitution of capital for labor in the production process. Replacing labor with capital -and so making the production less labor intense- would result in a drop in the employment. While the former two channels have attracted considerable interest, the labor substitution channel has not been paid the same attention. The literature on this topic is quite scarce and the little piece of empirical evidence available is on firm level and it deals with the impact of RER on the level of employment (Leung and Yuen, 2007). However, we believe that this channel deserves to be paid further interest as it seems to be one of the key concepts to explain the structural unemployment problem which has been frequently discussed during the current crisis. To fill this gap, our study aims to show how the fluctuations in RER affect the capital-labor ratio, capital imports and thus the growth in employment by making use of a panel dataset for 20 developing countries. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide a cross country evidence on the labor intensity channel. The preliminary results support our hypothesis. We report positive and statistically significant effects of RER overvaluation on both the growth rate of capital and capital import. The capital imports and the capital-labor ratio on the other hand are both found to have negative impacts on employment growth. Thus, RER overvaluation unambigiously reduces the long term employment growth. JEL codes: F41, J21
PAYASLIOĞLU, Cem (Eastern Mediterranean University) cem.payasli@emu.edu.tr On account of the frequent variations in exchange rates, interest rates and commodity prices during the past decades, studies on the currency composition of external debt have always been a hot issue in the research agenda of international economists and finance specialists, whilst those dealing with the currency composition of foreign exchange reserves have been relatively less prominent. On the other hand, all these studies have relied on either theoretical and/or econometric methodologies but neglect to highlight the stylized facts of either debt and/or reserve series in different currencies. Now that all economies are faced with the ripple effects of the global crisis, knowledge of these stylized facts would be of substantial interest to policy makers than ever before.The present study attempts to address the issue by uncovering stylized facts about the currency composition of foreign exchange rezerves. The data for series is taken from COFER (an IMF database that keeps end-of-period quarterly data on the currency composition of official foreign exchange reserves). Foreign exchange reserves in COFER consist of the monetary authorities’ claims on nonresidents in the form of foreign banknotes, bank deposits, treasury bills, short- and long-term government securities, and other claims usable in the event of balance of payments needs.Since the data for individual countries is strictly confidential, only aggregated data for each currency for three groupings of countries, namely World, Advanced economies (33 countries), and Emerging and developing economies (107 countries) has been used. The methodology is based on multivariate structural time series (MSTS)-also called unobserved components- applied to quarterly foreign exchange reserve series involving four main currencies namely, U.S. dollar, Euro, Pound Sterling and Japanese Yen for the 1999:1-2009:4 period. Rather than using the level of these series, their shares in total allocated reserves are calculated and hence used here. MSTS models are set up as a vector of time series, each expressed in terms of components such as trends, cycles, seasonal and irregulars which have a direct interpretation. Since the variances of these components drive their movements, the link across the different series can be established through the correlations of the disturbances. Moreover, latest enhancements in the modeling software now create further flexibility by allowing specification of different and idiosyncratic components for each series. Preliminary findings indicate that a strong but negative correlation can be detected between the trend disturbances of UsD and Euro-Pound rezerve shares while a high positive correlation exists between the latter two. Consequently, this imposes a dependence structure in the form of a common trend between rezerve shares in these currencies. Same pattern can be observed regardless of groupings of countries. In spite of a downward trend in both UsD and Yen rezerve shares, their association is weak. In the advanced economies group, whilst the same overall specification can be maintained, pound rezerves exhibit a level break in the last quarter of 2008 and Yen rezerves in first quarter of 2000.No evidence of a Cyclical pattern has been observed for these currency rezerves except for Pound Sterling. In the second stage of the study,association between exchange rates and rezerve series will be investigated and component based forecasts will be evaluated. JEL codes: F37, C53 1 Eylül, Çarşamba Wednesday, September 1 Contributed Session 3-International Macroeconomics I Workshop 5 International Macroeconomic Policy Coordination And Economic Crises SEYİDOĞLU, Halil (Doğuş University) hseyidoglu@dogus.edu.tr Over the last couple of decades the world economy has become increasingly more integrated, and countries are more interdependent now, both economically and financially. Increased interdependence, inter alia, reduced efficiency of the national economic policies and led to increased spill over effects of the domestic economic policies. This is true especially for the big industrial powers. In addition, coordinative economic policy implementation avoids competitive devaluations which are self-defeating in the end. An extreme example of the lack of coordination among nations and adoption of narrow-sighted nationalistic policies characterizes the era of the 1930’s. During the Inter War era, countries of the world were looking forward to the establishment of a liberalized, coordinated and multilaterally adjustable economic and financial system. This explains why they got together at the Bretton Woods Conferences in 1944 to shape the economic and financial system to be pursued after the Second World War, even before the war was ended. The Bretton Woods System envisaged a system of rule-based cooperation, at the center of which stood the IMF and the World Bank. This system was under the heavy influence of the big industrial countries, a natural outcome of the composition and distribution of the quotas with the IMF. IMF, as the main institution responsible for the monitoring and smooth operation of the international monetary system strictly adhered to the conditionality principle which was applied invariably to the countries. However a few attempts of International policy cooperation were made in this period. These attempts, though ad hoc and narrow in scope appeared especially when the international monetary system got into trouble. The last Global Crisis emerged in the mortgage sector in the US and spread to Europe and Asia in an amazingly short period of time. The crises provided the countries with a new opportunity for a close collaboration. It is now well understood that measures against the crises could not be successful unless taken and implemented in a coordinated manner. The attempts within the G-20 might mean to indicate the changing structure of the world economy. Since the Bretton Woods Conferences in 1944 the world economy has undergone serious changes which should be reflected in the framework of the prevailing international economic and monetary order. For long periods of time the developments in the world economy were directed to a large extent by the decisions of the big industrial countries that cooperated in G-5, G-7 or G-8 and the changing nature of the international monetary order, the rising power of the newly industrializing countries in particular was almost entirely neglected. The G-20 brought together the new emerging nations with the major industrial countries and altogether they account for about 85% of the current world output. Therefore the formation of the G-20 could be viewed as an attempt to address the legitimacy and effectiveness deficits faced by the former G-5 or G-7. Nonetheless, the world public opinion has extensively concentrated on discussing crises in the framework of financial markets. But it should be reminded that the issue is to be discussed in a much broader perspective, because crisis in future might arise from non-financial sectors as well. Therefore international economic policy cooperation should be made in a broad sphere to comprise all sectors and all markets of the economies involved. JEL codes: F33, F30 1 Eylül, Çarşamba Wednesday, September 1 Seçilmiş Oturum 4-Makroekonomik Politikalar: Türkiye Örneği Workshop 6 Küresel Ekonomik Krizin Uluslar Arası Pazarlama Faaliyetleri Üzerine Etkileri, Karşılaşılan Sorunlar ve Çözüm Önerileri: Karaman Bisküvi Sektörü Örneği BAŞARAN ALAGÖZ, Selda (Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey Üniversitesi) EKİCİ, Nezahat (Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey Üniversitesi) GÜLCAN, Beyazid (Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey Üniversitesi)
JEL kodları: M31, M16 |