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Cold Turkey
I had written about the state of the Turkish economy three weeks ago. At that time, I had concluded that the signals were mixed. I then used that conclusion to argue that the Central Bank (CBT) would not ease traditionally by cutting the ceiling of its interest corridor. The data that followed indeed did not [...]
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Spanish Unemployment: Mondays in the Sun
The title of course refers to the Javier Bardem movie, which along with the following year’s The Sea Inside, made him one of my favorite actors, much earlier than the Coen Brothers introduced him to the U.S. audience. The movie is about unemployed men in the Spanish port city of Vigo in 2001. The IMF [...]
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Desperate Housewives of Turkey?
A report from Ankara-think tank TEPAV made a big splash a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the intro. to my latest Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, on the low labor force participation rate (LFPR) of women in Turkey. You can read the whole thing at the HDN website. I have an announcement to make before [...]
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Games 2012 and Murat Sertel
Here’s guest blogger Ali G. (not the rapper, yeah yeah, I have to make this joke every time) again, in a complement to my latest post: As you may know, Bilgi University hosted the 4th World Congress of the Game Theory Society (Games 2012) this year. It is a huge event. It is pretty much [...]
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Game Theory and the Fate of the Eurozone
Thanks to the World Congress of the Game Theory Society at Bilgi University, this week Istanbul is hosting four Nobel Prize winners in Economics. Here’s the intro. to my latest Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, where I refer to a recent Bank of America Merrill Lynch research report to discuss what game theory has to [...]
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Are Turkish Growth Numbers to Be Questioned?
Not in the sense of Greece, or more recently China… But writing in Radikal, Fatih Ozatay has been noting that the surge in gold imports and exports, (which I was one of the first to mention, and then I summarized the Turkish & international media reaction in a separate post), has been distorting the GDP [...]
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More on TOKI, the Turkish Housing Development Administration
Monday’s Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, which I posted here at the blog as well, was very well-read. Not only it was the third most popular item on the HDN website (see the picture below for solid proof on my inflated ego- click to enlarge), it got shared in social media 68 times, which is [...]
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Why Europe Still Has a Chance (wonkish a la Krugman)
Guest blogger Ali G. (not the rapper) is back from vacation, and it seems driving around in Western Europe had made him more optimistic about the Eurozone’s chances: I drove around Western Europe for vacation and although the decline of the West (Europe in particular) and rise of emerging economies has been a very hot [...]
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Turkey: Don’t Mess with Loki or TOKİ
For my readers not too familiar with Turkey, TOKİ is not Loki’s little brother. It is the acronym by which the state-run Housing Development Administration is known among Turks. Here’s the intro. to my latest Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, where I discuss TOKI and the economic distortions it is creating.You can read the whole [...]
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More on Gold Exports from Turkey to Iran
I don’t consider myself a journalist, merely an economy columnist, but when I do don my journalist hat, I don’t perform that badly. You’ll be able to see another example of my doppelganger on Monday’s Hurriyet Daily News column, when I will take on Turkey’s famous (or infamous) TOKI, the Housing Development Administration of Turkey. [...]
















