Merkez bankasının uluslararası rezerv düzeyinin belirleyicilerinin değerlendirilmesi: Türkiye örneği

International Reserves have always played an important role in the well-being of the countries, especially in fighting against economic crises. As the economy advances, the financial markets and instruments also advance and develop. These changes are also affecting the varieties of the crises, which induce the probability of the burst of a more aggressive type of them that could affect the global countries in a more adverse manner. That`s why the international reserve is very mandatory subject to be considered for the well-being of the whole global world. Taking into consideration all of these reasons, we have evaluated the determinants of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey's international reserves, and based on that we have assessed the reserve adequacy from an optimization point of view in a comprehensive manner by emphasizing its validity of creditworthiness and stability using a completely different approach. This approach is based on using a buffer stock model which had been modified by Frenkel and Jovanovic in 1981. By imposing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Nonlinear Autoregressive Lag (NARDL) methods we derive the optimal level of reserves for the period between 1990:1 and 2020:4. According to the result of the empirical analyses, we found that short-term debt, opportunity cost, exchange rate, and current account balance have a significant symmetrical impact on the demand for reserves by CBRT in the short run. Also, according to NARDL results, there is a significant asymmetrical impact of opportunity cost in the short run and adjustment cost in the long run existing on the demand for reserves by CBRT. The effect of the shocks that had occurred specifically in 1990, 1994,1997,1999, and 2000-2001 led to the experience of major economic crises that had been caused by distortions that have been affected by the exchange rate, short-term debt, and current account balance due to the low amount of reserves. Based on the experiences that had been experienced across that period, CBRT demand for reserves was mainly targeted to decrease the distortions that might emerge from these parameters in the short run. But the insignificancy of the effect of these parameters in the long run, indicates that the risks that these parameters possess in the long run are not taken as a primary concern in the demand for reserves. The lack of concern brought to the emergence of the recent economic crisis in 2018. Although the level of actual reserves was not as low as in comparison to the previous periods so that implying the effect of the 2018 economic crisis on Turkey`s economy was not as severe in comparison to the timeline of the crises that had been evaporated back in 1994 and 2001. This can be induced from the presence of the short-term effect of opportunity cost and the long-run impact of the adjustment cost on the demand for reserves by CBRT. By indicating that the main intention of accumulating the reserves is concerned with precautionary motives rather than mercantilist motives. This aspect also shows what crucial role ARDL and NARDL methods play within the analysis so that be able to reveal these dynamic interactions. Although, despite the increasing trend in the reserve level of Turkey for most of the time it could not catch the trend of optimality level which indicates that despite the increase in the amount of reserves in comparison to the initial years, the economy of Turkey is still vulnerable to the other shocks that are coming apart from the parameters of the analysis. The best example of such kind of shocks is the pandemic of Covid 19 that burst in 2020. That's why CBRT needs to manage its own reserve policies more effectively so that to take more operative steps in order to deprive the effect of vulnerabilities that might splurge on the economy.