Effects of Capital Flows on Carry Trade Activities: The Case of Turkey

Carry trade is described as the capital flow coming into a country based on interest rate differential. A negative change in capital flow affects carry trade activities negatively, which in turn distorts particually the exchange rate and the financial stability of a country. In order to examine the effects of capital flows on carry trade in Turkey for different states of its economy (e.g. contraction or expansion) between January 2005 and April 2018, Markov Switching Vector Autoregressive Model (MSVAR) is employed. According to the findings, an increase in capital flows in the previous period enhances carry trade activity in the current period when expansion regime is in effect. However, for the contraction regime, no evidence is found toward a significant relationship between carry trade and capital flows. Moreover, it is seen that exchange rate uncertainty is considered as an important risk factor by investors in contraction periods when risk aversion levels of investors are high.