Relative effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies on output growth in Turkey: an ARDL bounds test approach

Research background: Effects of monetary and fiscal policy on output growth has been one of the major topics that economists have been investigating. Monetary and fiscal policies are tools for economists and policymakers to correctly direct the economy and facilitate the growth and development of the country. Accordingly, it is critically important for policy-makers in the area of economy to study the efficiency and the effectiveness of such policies. But, so far, there has been no generally accepted evidence suggesting the effectiveness of either the policy in Turkey or around the world. Instead, the dominance of either policy is subject to a change period to period and country to country. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this study is to analyze the growth effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies and then determine which of these two policies is more powerful in promoting economic growth in Turkey over the period 1998 and 2016. Methods: To investigate the growth effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies, we use some of the time series econometric techniques, such as ARDL Bounds testing, structural break unit root tests and Granger causality tests. Findings & Value added: Monetary policy variable is creating only short-run effects on growth; but, it's not causing any Granger causality on it. On the other hand, fiscal policy variable has a long-run significant effect and causing to growth. Thus, the fiscal policy seems to be more effective than monetary policy during examination period, implying the rethinking the implementation of both policies in Turkey. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to investigate the relative effectiveness of economic policies on growth in Turkey in terms of both methods used and period chosen.