The impact of oil price shocks on Turkish sovereign yield curve

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate the impact of oil price shocks on the Turkish sovereign yield curve factors. Design/methodology/approach - To extract the latent factors (level, slope and curvature) of the Turkish sovereign yield curve, we estimate conventional Nelson and Siegel (1987) model with nonlinear least squares. Then, we decompose oil price shocks into supply, demand and risk shocks using structural VAR (structural VAR) models. After this separation, we apply Engle (2002) dynamic conditional correlation GARCH (DCC-GARCH (1,1)) method to investigate time-varying co-movements between yield curve factors and oil price shocks. Finally, using the LP (local projections) proposed by Jorda (2005), we estimate the impulse-response functions to examine the impact of different oil price shocks on yield curve factors. Findings - Our results demonstrate that the various oil price shocks influence the yield curve factors quite differently. A supply shock leads to a statistically significant increase in the level factor. This result shows that elevated oil prices due to supply disruptions are interpreted as a signal of a surge in inflation expectations since the cost channel prevails. Besides, unanticipated demand shocks have a positive impact on the slope factor as a result of the central bank policy response for offsetting the elevated inflation expectations. Finally, a risk shock is associated with a decrease in the curvature factor indicating that risk shocks influence the medium-term bonds due to the deflationary pressure resulting from depressed economic conditions. Practical implications - Our results provide new insights to understand the driving forces of yield curve movements induced by various oil shocks to formulate appropriate policy responses. Originality/value - The study contributes to the literature by two main dimensions. First, the recent oil shock identification scheme of Ready (2018) is modified using the “geopolitical oil price risk index” to capture the changes in the risk perceptions of oil markets driven by geopolitical tensions such as terrorism and conflicts and sanctions. The modified identification scheme attributes more power to demand shocks in explaining the variation of the oil price compared to that of the baseline scheme. Second, it provides recent evidence that distinguishes the impact of oil demand and supply shocks on Turkey's yield curve.