Pass-Through of External Factors into Price Indicators In Turkey

This study analyzes the pass-through of exchange rate and US Dollar denominated import prices into consumer and producer prices in Turkey. To this end, pricing along a distribution chain framework is utilized and it is estimated by Vector Auto Regression (VAR) for the pre-inflation targeting and the inflation targeting periods. Results show that the pass-through of both external factors into producer prices is higher than it is for consumer prices. In addition, the degree of pass-through is significantly lower in the inflation targeting period compared to the previous period. The cumulative exchange rate and import price pass-through coefficients into consumer prices for the recent period are found similar to each other while import price shocks are reflected much faster. For the producer prices, import price shocks are found to be reflected more than the exchange rate shocks. An exercise based on these estimation results shows that during 2007-2009 external factors were influential on consumer prices. Furthermore simultaneous counter movements of exchange rate and import prices at that period limited and sometimes offset the impact of each other on consumer prices.