Exchange rate and Turkish agricultural trade balance with EU (15)

Abstract

This paper investigates the short-run and long-run impact of exchange rate on the trade balance of Turkish Agriculture with EU (15) countries. The bounds testing approach to the cointegration and the error correction modeling is employed. A new strategy in the model selection phase is adopted and the optimal model is selected from the set of those models that satisfy both diagnostic tests and cointegration. Thus, unlike the previous literature utilizing this approach, it is ensured that a statistically reliable and cointegrated model is picked up for estimation. Estimation results based on the data for 1988-I to 2008-IV period indicate that in the short-run real exchange rate variable affects agriculture trade balance in trade with EU(15) and depreciation of Turkish Lira improves the trade balance. As for the long-run impact of the exchange rate, depreciation of domestic currency has a statistically significant negative effect on trade balance of agriculture.