The effects of capital inflows on real exchange rate

This thesis aims to analyze the effects of capital inflows on real exchange rate. It is claimed that there is a strong relationship between capital flows and real exchange rate. International capital flows have exceeded international trade flows in goods and services recently due to globalization so capital flows are expected to have more significant effects on real exchange rate than other variables. Therefore, we initially focus on the literature about the relationship between real exchange rate and capital flows as well as the other variables like exports and imports. Then, we mention about the changes in exchange rate and exchange rate policies during the last thirty years in Turkey. The data used in our analysis are taken from electronic data delivery system of the Central Bank of Turkey and the website of IMF. In this thesis, monthly data are used from 2003:01 – 2016:06. We implement the VAR method in our analysis and start our analysis by removing seasonality from our data in order to obtain more robust results. Three different models are estimated in the study. In the first model, we investigate the relationship between real exchange rate, foreign direct investments, portfolio investments, other investments and interest rate. We observe that the foreign direct investment explains the biggest share in error prediction variance of real exchange rate except for real exchange rate. Furthermore, our second model includes real exchange rate, export, import and interest rate and we clearly observe that capital inflows are better in explaining the changes in real exchange rate. Moreover, we develop our third model by including all variables we use in both model 1 and model 2. We also obtain consistent results and the foreign direct investment explains most of the change in real exchange rate.