In this study, determinants and the evolution of the exchange rate passthrough to domestic inflation in the Turkish economy is analyzed. The analyses cover the 1987-2003 period. In the analyses, single equation &ldquo / Error Correction Models&rdquo / are used to estimate the exchange rate pass-through. Estimation results suggest that alike other emerging countries, the degree of exchange rate passthrough to domestic prices is high and the pass-through is completed in a very short time span. Estimations results also indicates that the main factors to account for high pass-through are the past currency crises and the high degree of openness of the economy. These factors create the ground for the indexation behavior of agents. Although, above-mentioned factors are the main determinants of the degree of exchange rate pass-through, the persistency and the volatility of exchange rates can significantly affect the short run dynamics of the pass-through. The results imply that even if the pass-through slows down due to the changing pattern of exchange rates, to achieve the low and stable inflation in the long run, fundamental factors that exacerbate the link between exchange rates and prices should change.

This thesis investigates the role of the exchange rate and interest rate channels in the monetary transmission mechanism in Ukraine. The responses on the domes- tic as well as Russian economy shocks are estimated using the Vector Autoregression Model with block-exogeneity restriction. Monetary transmission did not prove to be strongly effective via neither of the estimated channels, although the exchange rate channel demonstrates the results which are more in line with the economic theory. In addition, the exchange rate channel shows the higher and more significant pass through. Further, we estimate the importance of the shocks of both home and for- eign economies for the domestic variables deviations using variance decomposition technique. The relevance of the Russian shocks in fluctuations of home variables is found out. The current estimation of the transmission mechanism is relevant due to the planned inflation targeting regime implementation in Ukraine which requires understanding of that processes in the economy. 1

The main aim of this thesis is to explain the inflation dynamics in Turkey within a theoretically consistent empirical framework. The New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) is chosen as the basis model for our analysis because, by describing the inflation process within an intertemporal optimizing dynamic general equilibrium model, it provides a rigorous analytical groundwork for credible welfare and policy analysis. We have contributed to the literature by developing a NKPC formulation that is novel in the literature: A constant elasticity of substitution (CES) type of production function incorporating imported and domestically produced intermediate goods was combined with incomplete exchange rate pass through to import prices. The short-run inflation dynamics were analyzed within the context of this new specification by estimating the model&rsquo / s highly nonlinear structural parameters that capture the price-setting behavior in Turkey for period 1988:1 - 2009:4. Our findings suggest that this NKPC formulation can explain the 1994 and 2000-01 crises as well as the current environment of low inflation achieved with the adoption of the implicit and fully fledged inflation targeting regimes quite well. As a policy application we explored the effects of the inflation targeting framework adopted after the 2000-01 crises on the parameters characterizing the inflation process in Turkey. The subsample econometric results suggested that the inflation targeting framework applied was quite successful in decreasing inflation inertia in Turkey. Thus, should the success of the inflation targeting regime continue, this should be taken as an opportunity to reduce inflation substantially with very low output losses.