A Note on the Debt Sustainability Issue In Turkey

The purpose of the paper is to shed light on the composition of the public sector debt stock and using the end-2002 net public debt stock-to-GNP ratio as the starting point, estimate the primary surplus-to-GNP ratio that will be necessary for the sustainability of the debt stock, using a modified version of the approach suggested by the World Bank (2000:16-18; 121-124). The relevant tables on the primary surplus-to-GNP ratio requirements are constructed under different scenarios with respect to real interest rate, growth rate and inflation rate. At the second stage, the weighted average real interest rate on the current central government debt stock is estimated. Then the debt sustainability issue is evaluated by comparing the estimated primary surplus-to-GNP ratios required with the targeted primary surplus ratio, taking into consideration the real interest rate on the existing stock.Turkey, debt, sustainability

The Story of a Stabilization Effort: Turkey (2000-2002)

The purpose of the paper is to give an overview of the Turkish economy before and during the implementation of two different stabilization programs over the 2000-2002 period. Reforms undertaken and things that need to be done in both general terms and in the monetary and fiscal area are listed. The targets of the program are compared with the realizations. Success of the program is discussed in reference to developments in the main economic indicators. The most significant issue remaining concerns debt sustainability. Hence this topic is given special attention against the background of debt stock composition.Turkey, stabilization

Debt Sustainability and the Exchange Rate: The Case of Turkey

The paper attempts to estimate the primary surplus requirement for debt sustainability in Turkey, taking into consideration not only the operational deficit and seigniorage factors but also the exchange rate factor. In estimations, a modified version of the approach suggested by the World Bank (2000:16-18; 121-124) is used (see Appendix A for the derivation of the original formula, which is slightly different from the one in the document mentioned). The analysis is carried out in two steps. First the real interest rate is estimated and then the results are plugged into the primary surplus equation. The exchange rate factor is taken up during the estimation of the real interest rate in TL, on FX-related debt. The debt sustainability issue is evaluated by comparing the estimated primary surplus-to-GNP ratios required for debt sustainability, with the targeted primary surplus ratio, taking into consideration the real interest rate and composition of the existing debt stock.Turkey, debt, sustainability

Improving delete relaxation heuristics through explicitly represented conjunctions

Heuristic functions based on the delete relaxation compute upper and lower bounds on the optimal delete-relaxation heuristic h+, and are of paramount importance in both optimal and satisficing planning. Here we introduce a principled and flexible technique for improving h+, by augmenting delete-relaxed planning tasks with a limited amount of delete information. This is done by introducing special fluents that explicitly represent conjunctions of fluents in the original planning task, rendering h+ the perfect heuristic h* in the limit. Previous work has introduced a method in which the growth of the task is potentially exponential in the number of conjunctions introduced. We formulate an alternative technique relying on conditional effects, limiting the growth of the task to be linear in this number. We show that this method still renders h+ the perfect heuristic h* in the limit. We propose techniques to find an informative set of conjunctions to be introduced in different settings, and analyze and extend existing methods for lower-bounding and upper-bounding h + in the presence of conditional effects. We evaluate the resulting heuristic functions empirically on a set of IPC benchmarks, and show that they are sometimes much more informative than standard delete-relaxation heuristics

Oversubscription Planning as Classical Planning with Multiple Cost Functions

The aim of classical planning is to minimize the summed cost of operators among those plans that achieve a fixed set of goals. Oversubscription planning (OSP), on the other hand, seeks to maximize the utility of the set of facts achieved by a plan, while keeping the cost of the plan at or below some specified bound. Here, we investigate the use of reformulations that yield planning problems with two separate cost functions, but no utilities, for solving OSP tasks. Such reformulations have also been proposed in the context of net-benefit planning, where the planner tries to maximize the difference between the utility achieved and the cost of the plan. One of our reformulations is adapted directly from that setting, while the other is novel. In both cases, they allow for easy adaptation of existing classical planning heuristics to the OSP problem within a simple branch and bound search. We validate our approach using state of the art admissible heuristics in this framework, and report our results

Designing an interactive non-linear documentary contributed by public participation suburbs of Istanbul

Suburbs of Istanbul is a web-based interactive documentary project that examines the identity of suburban neighborhoods in Istanbul through the participation of its residents via online submission of their visual and written stories. Public participation also led the design process and helped prototype the interfaces of this non-linear documentary. This project aims to contribute to the field of interactive documentary and non-linear storytelling by integrating participatory design techniques in the prototyping process of documentary interfaces. Involving public both as content providers and as active decision makers in design process lead to a more genuine outcome with a human-centered approach. This project also intends to create an interactive experience to provide a greater insight into rapidly changing lifestyles of Turkish people, to provide a global context to the stories presented, and to generate widespread awareness of issues surrounding suburban lifestyles across the world.Publisher's Versio