Patterns of financial capital flows and accumulation in the post-1990 Turkish economy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold: using time series econometrics, we first investigate the determinants of short-term foreign capital inflows for Turkey following its capital account liberalization in 1989. We next investigate the changing nature of the private investment function under post-capital account liberalization and deduce hypotheses on its correlation with capital inflows and the key macroeconomic prices, such as the exchange rate, the real rate of interest, and real wages. Our results suggest that financial capital inflows have a significant negative correlation with the industrial production index and trade openness, and are positively correlated with real currency appreciation. Fixed private investment was found to have an inconclusive relationship with financial capital inflows. Real wage costs were observed to carry a significant negative relationship with private investment, indicating that at a time of currency appreciation, investors had to rely on declining wage costs in order to keep their export competitiveness. Under the volatile and uncertain conditions of speculation-driven investment patterns, the downward flexibility of real wages has to be seen as a concomitant factor of the post-financial liberalization episodes.