Exchange rate pass-through effect in Turkey

Following the collapse of Bretton Woods system, a number of countries abandoned the fixed exchange rate system and adopted floating exchange rate system. Accordingly, exchange rate pass-through effect on prices has become quite an important research subject in literature. Pass-through effect is simply the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on domestic prices. The extent to which changes in exchange rate affect domestic prices is of great importance to such developing countries as Turkey, which target price stability. For this reason, one of the main aims of the study is to make a comparative research into the exchange rate effects on domestic prices (export and import prices) in Turkey. Another aim is to analyze the relation between exchange rate pass-through effects on domestic prices and inflation in Turkey. In this study, Structural VAR (SVAR) Model was used to analyze the exchange rate pass-through effects on domestic prices in Turkey, and three models were developed for this purpose. In all the three models, analyses spanned the periods of 1994:02-2001:12, 2002:01-2013:09 and 1994:2-2013:09. The reason why three different periods were used in the study was to investigate the changes in pass-through effects following the introduction of floating exchange rate system in Turkey. For the interpretation of Structural VAR Analysis, impulse-response and variance decomposition were applied. The results have revealed that exchange rate pass-through only has a weak effect on domestic prices in Turkey and this effect has further decreased with the introduction of free floating exchange rate system. Keywords: Exchange rate, pass-through effect, structural VAR, impulse-response analysis, variance decomposition.