MONETARY VS FISCAL DOMINANCE IN TURKISH PUBLIC FINANCES

Abstract

The interactive roles of monetary and fiscal policies are represented by two competing theories in the literature. The advocates of the first theory, the monetarist view, argue that the fiscal authorities tune the primary balance in an attempt to preserve the fiscal solvency for each price level. On the contrary, the proponents of the new approach assert that the fiscal authorities are able to set primary surplus without making a binding commitment to restore solvency. In this study, the purpose is to figure out which approach is valid for Turkish public finances. To accomplish this objective, we run a model based on Bohn (1998) using the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method so as to determine the type of regime prevalent in the Turkish economy. Besides, we run a Toda-Yamamoto type causality analysis to detect the direction of causality among public debt and primary balances. The results from both analyses reveal that the Turkish public finances are characterised by monetary dominant regimes which indicate that the fiscal solvency is restored by primary balance alterations by a set of active fiscal policy actions.