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Article Citation - WoS: 11Citation - Scopus: 14Card Spending Dynamics in Turkey During the Covid-19 Pandemic(Central Bank Republic Turkey, 2021) Kantur, Zeynep; Özcan, GülserimThis paper provides an extensive analysis of card spending during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey by using weekly aggregated and sectoral credit and debit card spending data from March 2014 to December 2020. At an aggregated level, we show that aggregate demand decreases significantly at the early stages of COVID-19 and seems to reinstate its pre-COVID trend. However, when we include the pre-existing conditions of Turkey, the 2018 currency crisis, we observe that the recovery in demand is not that strong. To highlight the underlying reasons for structural change in aggregate demand, we estimate the model with stringency index and unemployment-related search index. The estimated model indicates that containment measures and restrictions and fear of job/income loss mainly explain the overall impact of COVID-19 on aggregate demand. We also examined sectoral data to understand aggregate demand dynamics better. Only stable and delayable sector groups have reached a trend above their pre-pandemic trajectories. However, the social and work-related sectors are far from their respective pre-pandemic trend.Article Citation - WoS: 4Citation - Scopus: 4Dissecting Turkish Inflation: Theory, Fact, and Illusion(Springer, 2022) Kantur, Zeynep; Ozcan, GulserimThe policy debate in Turkey over the impact of interest rate on inflation concerns the question of what policymakers should do when faced with volatile and high inflation. Motivated by this discussion, we provide an empirical analysis by connecting the cost channel to the Phillips relation. Our findings prove the existence of the cost channel. However, other determinants of inflation -labor share of income, prices of imported inputs, and consumption goods -dominate the cost channel in Turkey.Article Citation - WoS: 11Citation - Scopus: 13What pandemic inflation tells: Old habits die hard(Elsevier Science Sa, 2021) Kantur, Zeynep; Ozcan, GulserimCOVID-19 has led to changes in individuals' consumption habits, which will cause the calculation of inflation based on the average consumption basket to give distorted information. Using debit and credit card spending data of Turkey, we build CPI weights and compute an alternative pandemic consumption basket price index for Jan 2020-Feb 2021. Our findings show that the pandemic inflation is higher than the official inflation rate during the first lockdown, suggesting a behavioral change in consumption. However, in the reopening period, old habits come back. During the second lockdown, the difference between the pandemic and the official inflation rates is trivial in comparison with the first lockdown. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
