The mechanism by which monetary policy affects financial institutions' risk perception and/or tolerance has been called the 'risk-taking channel' of monetary policy. It has been recently argued that periods of low interest rates due to expansionary monetary policy, might induce an increase in bank risk-appetite and risk-taking behavior. This paper investigates the bank specific characteristics of risk-taking behavior of the Turkish banking sector as well as the existence of risk taking channel of monetary policy in Turkey. Using bank level quarterly data over the period 2002-2012 a dynamic panel model is estimated. Our sample accounts for 53 banks that have been active in Turkey during the period. To deal with the potential endogeneity between risk and bank specific characteristics, which are explanatory variables in our model, the GMM estimator proposed by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998) is used. Four alternative risk measures are used in the analysis; three accountingbased risk indicators and a market-based indicator-Expected Default Frequency. We find evidence that low levels of interest rates have a positive impact on banks' risk-taking behavior for all the risk measures. Specifically, low short term interest rates reduce the risk of outstanding loans; however short term interest rates below a theoretical benchmark increase risk-taking of banks. This result holds for macroeconomic controls as well. Furthermore, in terms of bank specific characteristics, our analysis suggests that large, liquid and wellcapitalized banks are less prone to risk-taking.

This paper is based on Ekin Ayşe Özşuca's PhD thesis prepared under the supervision of Elif Akbostancı at the Department of Economics, METU. Ekin Ayşe Özşuca would like to thank to Erdal Özmen, Fatih Özatay, Gül İpek Tunç, Teoman Pamukçu, Yener Altunbaş and Yunus Aksoy for helpful comments on her PhD thesis. This research was supported by TUBITAK 2214-coded Ph. D. scholarship program.

Using individual level data from the World Bank Global Findex for 2017, this study analyzes the level of financial inclusion and explores its main determinants in Turkey. In particular, it explores how individual characteristics (i.e. gender, age, income, education) are associated with the usage of formal financial services and impinge on the perceived barriers to account ownership among financially excluded individuals in Turkey. The results of the study indicate that being man, older, richer and more educated increases the likelihood of having a formal account and formal saving. Moreover, mobile banking is found to be driven by identical individual characteristics with that of other traditional formal financial services usage. As regards with the main obstacles for not having a formal account, each one of the individual attributes seems to be significant in explaining different voluntary and involuntary self-reported barriers behind financial exclusion. The findings are of remarkable importance for designing policies to promote financial inclusion in Turkey.

This study aims to analyze the gender dimension of financial inclusion in MENA countries. Using the World Bank’s 2017 Global Findex Database, it explores the underlying factors of gender differences in formal financial services usage via Fairlie decomposition method. The findings of the study indicate that a significant portion of the disparity in financial inclusion is attributable to employment, while age and tertiary education are also found as contributing factors to the financial inclusion gap. Another notable finding is that upper income quintiles contribute positively to the gender gap, indeed to a greater extent compared to lower income groups.

The massive financial liberalization followed by accelerating financial globalization leaded to significant structural changes in the financial sector. Since financial institutions play a dominant role in functioning of financial sector, especially in emerging markets where banking industries are generally among the most sensitive sectors to increased interconnectedness of financial markets, how financial globalization actually affects the efficiency of financial intermediation is a vital question. However, although there exists plenty of research focusing on financial integration, impacts of financial globalization is untouched. Hence, this study investigates the bank profitability effects of financial globalization through focusing on an emerging market, Turkey and searches for any potential differences that may prevail among banks with different ownership structures. The findings indicate that while the market based profitability measures improve with financial globalization, the accounting based measures deteriorate pinpointing to an over optimism in the market which in turn brings in mispricing problems. Besides, ownership structure is found to affect the market based measures where banks with domestic and private ownerships are found to benefit more. However, since no significant distinction could be detected among any of the ownership compositions for accounting based profitability measures, such misappraisals seem to foster the optimism in the market.