Sustainability of Current Account for Turkey: Intertemporal Solvency Approach

This paper examines sustainability of current account for Turkey during the period 1987:1-2002:4. Using the usual intertemporal borrowing constraint, we have tested for a long-run relationship between two Turkey exports measures and imports measures (measured real terms and percentage to real GDP) using quarterly data. In our empirical analysis of the sustainability of current account for Turkey, cointegration approaches have been used. Empirical results suggest that there exists a unique long-run or equilibrium relationship among real exports and imports and their percentage to real GDP and their estimated cointegration factor, β, is very close to 1. The empirical findings suggest that the current account of Turkey is sustainable in the long run.