THE TURKISH BANKING SECTOR - CHALLENGES AND OUTLOOK IN TRANSITION TO EU MEMBERSHIP

The paper explores the readiness of the Turkish banking sector for integration into the European Union. We address the issue from four different angles. First, we review the present structure and health of the sector, including the state of the regulatory framework, providing where possible a comparative perspective with the larger EU accession countries. Second, we look at the sector's financial solidity in 2003, with a view to gauging its readiness to adapt to a more challenging banking environment. Third, we look at the present obstacles to financial deepening and identify the most pressing issues that seem to hinder the sector's growth. Fourth, we explore issues of productivity and efficiency in the sector. In a final section, we ask the question of whether the Turkish banking sector is or will be ready in due time for EU accession and formulate some policy recommendations. We conclude that in 2004 the Turkish banking sector compares well with those of the new members of the EU. The major source of financial instability in the past was macroeconomic instability and government involvement. At present Turkey is closer to achieving macro-stability than ever in the past, and the government is reducing its direct involvement. Major strides have been accomplished after the crisis of 2001 in cleaning up a very nontransparent and politicized banking environment and in upgrading the regulatory structure to EU standards. Clearly, the job is not finished yet, with the challenge of introducing risk-management based on Basle II and of bringing the capital market to EU standards. Further consolidation and mergers with foreign partners will be inevitable. Should EU integration become a concrete vision of the future, macro stability has great chances to become rooted in Turkey and the banking sector will quickly move to EU standards, long before any accession date.Banking sector; European Union; integration; Turkey; regulatory framework

The Turkish Banking Sector: Challenges and Outlook in Transition to EU Membership. CEPS EU-Turkey Working Papers No. 4, 1 August 2004

The paper explores the readiness of the Turkish banking sector for integration into the European Union. We address the issue from four different angles. First, we review the present structure and health of the sector, including the state of the regulatory framework, providing where possible a comparative perspective with the larger EU accession countries. Second, we look at the sector’s financial solidity in 2003, with a view to gauging its readiness to adapt to a more challenging banking environment. Third, we look at the present obstacles to financial deepening and identify the most pressing issues that seem to hinder the sector’s growth. Fourth, we explore issues of productivity and efficiency in the sector. In a final section, we ask the question of whether the Turkish banking sector is or will be ready in due time for EU accession and formulate some policy recommendations. We conclude that in 2004 the Turkish banking sector compares well with those of the new members of the EU. The major source of financial instability in the past was macroeconomic instability and government involvement. At present Turkey is closer to achieving macro-stability than ever in the past, and the government is reducing its direct involvement. Major strides have been accomplished after the crisis of 2001 in cleaning up a very nontransparent and politicized banking environment and in upgrading the regulatory structure to EU standards. Clearly, the job is not finished yet, with the challenge of introducing risk-management based on Basle II and of bringing the capital market to EU standards. Further consolidation and mergers with foreign partners will be inevitable. Should EU integration become a concrete vision of the future, macro stability has great chances to become rooted in Turkey and the banking sector will quickly move to EU standards, long before any accession date

Analysis Of An Internet-Inspired Ev Charging Network In A Distribution Grid

Electric vehicles (EVs) are transforming the modern transportation and energy systems. However, due to increasing battery and charger capacities with long charging times, potential adverse effects on distribution grid will become a crucial problem. Safe and efficient operation of the grid along with a fast, convenient, and fair charging strategy is an important research tackle. In this paper, we analyze the additive increase-multiplicative decrease (AIMD) method used to solve a similar problem occurred in the early days of the Internet and apply it to EV charging using only local measurements. Then, we present a detailed analysis to understand the relationship between distance and charging power in a distribution network to better address the fairness in the proposed AIMD EV charging algorithm

Exchange Market Reform, Inflation, and Fiscal Deficits

This paper examines the short- and long-run effects of exchange market reform in developing countries. The first part reviews the recent experience of Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Sri Lanka with exchange market reform. The second part studies analytically the short-run dynamics of the parallel market premium and the money supply upon unification, when the post-reform regime consists of either a pure float or a managed float. The third part discusses the impact of unification on inflation and quasi-fiscal deficits, and identifies a variety of implicit taxes and subsidies that must be taken into account in assessing the longer-run effects of exchange market reform.

Data-driven, Internet-inspired, and Scalable EV Charging for Power Distribution Grid

Electric vehicles (EVs) are finally making their way onto the roads. However, the challenges concerning their long charging times and their impact on congestion of the power distribution grid are still waiting to be resolved. With historical measurement data, EV chargers can take better-informed actions while staying mostly off-line. Proposed solutions that depend on heavy communication and rigorous computation for optimal operation are not scalable. The solutions that do not depend on power distribution topology information, such as Droop control, are more practical as they only use local measurements. However, they result in sub-optimal operation due to a lack of a feedback mechanism. This study develops a distributed and data-driven congestion detection methodology embedded in the Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease (AIMD) algorithm to control mass EV charging in a distribution grid. The proposed distributed AIMD algorithm performs very closely to the ideal AIMD regarding fairness and congestion handling. Its communication need is almost as low as the Droop control. The results can provide crucial insights on how we can use data to reveal the inner dynamics and structure of the power grid and help develop more advanced data-driven algorithms for grid-integrated power electronics control.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy (OAJPE) and is currently under revie