International developments and credit demand
Fatih Özatay, PhD
28 June 2011
It is signaled that business people tend to be more cautious due to the current milieu facing the world. The Greek parliament has to adopt the planned budget measures for a certain part of the loan extended for Greece to be released and for the additional bailout package decided by the European Union to be approved. The voting is scheduled on Wednesday. The ruling party holds 155 of the 300 seats in the parliament. But it is announced that some MPs from the ruling party declared that they are against certain proposed measures. Meanwhile, a 48-hour general strike is taking place. Still, it is expected, or more correctly hoped, that the measures will be adopted with the support of some MPs from the opposition party. The unrest about Greece The circumstances in the neighbor Greece closely
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Some observations on the academic life -4
Fatih Özatay, PhD
25 June 2011
It will be useful to group universities as "research" universities and "other" universities. Many universities are completely introverted in contradiction with what the notion of university presupposes. Some of these are big universities which offer doctorate level programs. This means that they do not make effort to hire academics from different universities. What is more, they do not send young academics to abroad for doctorate studies. The members of such universities do not at all attend the national conferences.
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BRSA decisions with an alternative viewpoint
Fatih Özatay, PhD
23 June 2011
I am not arguing that the latest BRSA decisions were in the wrong direction. But the BRSA did not take a decision that will strengthen the effectiveness of the CBT decisions. A number of articles and comments were released in the last three days following the latest decisions of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA). The decisions were on consumer loans excluding vehicle and mortgage loans. It is maintained that with the BRSA decisions, interest on the mentioned loans will increase slightly which will limit the credit expansion (as desired) by affecting the rise in credit demand negatively. It is a subject matter of another discussion to what extent these claims are valid.
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Committee on Financial Stability
Fatih Özatay, PhD
21 June 2011
Although the Financial Stability Committee seems to be a good idea in terms of coordination, it turns out to be the opposite when you think through.
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Some observations on the academic life -3
Fatih Özatay, PhD
18 June 2011
Under normal conditions, the number of courses one lecturer teaches in one academic year must not be more than four in research universities. There is a correlation between the problems I addressed in the last two Saturdays and the number of lectures one lecturer teaches in a week. In research-oriented universities, lecturers teach four courses in average in an academic year. This can be three, five and even six courses depending on the research performance of the faculty member and sometimes on the conditions.
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There are lessons to learn from what Portugal is called for
Fatih Özatay, PhD
16 June 2011
We have to learn lessons from what the IMF and the European Union calls Portugal for as prerequisite of the US$ 116 billion bailout plan. It is doubtless that the economic program that was launched after the 2001 crisis and was pursued roughly until the eruption of the global crisis with certain modifications brought economic stability in Turkey. This way, public debt, budget deficits, interest rates and inflation was reduced significantly. One of the key pillars of that program was the steps taken to change the institutional structure that made possible the implementation of undisciplined economic policies observed in the large part of 1980s and 1990s. Institutional reforms are insufficient Of course the institutional structure was not altered completely; but considerable progress was
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What is the usual monetary policy?
Fatih Özatay, PhD
14 June 2011
What if the BRSA does not step in? If so, the CBT will have to settle with one intermediate target, that is the inflation target. My previous commentary on the possible monetary policy after the elections turned out to be so long that I could not dig into the main issue, the monetary policy. I said: "...Fiscal policy would have been tightened. Measures to slowdown the credit expansion would have been implemented in collaboration with the Bank Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA). With these two critical steps, the monetary policy that has been implemented since the second half of 2010 would have been replaced with a more usual one. Great minds think alike; I believe that these steps will be taken." Credit expansion can be limited I have to specify the concept of 'usual monetary poli
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Possible economic policy after the elections
Fatih Özatay, PhD
13 June 2011
FED's policy saves Turkey time to solve the accumulated problems. I was assigned the task of seeking an answer to the question "how the monetary policy will be shaped in the context of the outlook the election results created?" The analysis must be conducted on two scales: short term and long term. Let me start with the short term.
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Some observations on the academic life-2
Fatih Özatay, PhD
11 June 2011
If some studies had not been published, and fewer trees would have been cut and less paper would have been wasted. I addressed the disincentive mechanisms in the academic life and the weird results these give way to focusing on the associate professor qualification examinations. I stressed two findings about the candidates. First was that, there existed significant qualitative differences between the studies conducted by candidates, which is quite unnatural. Second, some candidates are not aware of the high-quality studies in the field they lecture. . In some extreme cases the candidate teaches MA or PhD level courses but does not know the names, let alone the contents of the generally accepted and though books in the field. And the main problem with some jury members is that they ask ques
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The first string to the pitch, substitutes to the bench
Fatih Özatay, PhD
09 June 2011
The infantry rifle the CBT fired hoping for the impossible might backfire, harming its own reputation. The number of players on the pitch must be increased as soon as possible. Recently I have written a number of commentaries on monetary policy. The first reason was that the monetary policy in effect was an unusual one. Second was that there populated many reports that have the potential to harm the reputation of the monetary policy authority. Third reason was that financial investors frequently expressed that they were confused by the new policy framework. Therefore, it was necessary to address the new monetary policy in detail.
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