Durmuş Yılmaz: Turkey beyond 2008 Speech by Mr Durmus Yılmaz, Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, at the Annual Investment Conference "Turkey beyond 2008", organised by the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) and The Turkish-American Business Council (TAIK), New York, 17 March 2008. *  *  *  Dear Guests, As you all may know, the Turkish economy used to experience boom-and-bust cycles throughout the 1990s. The economic crisis in 2001 was the low point of this period, when the economy contracted more than 5 percent. Since then, Turkey has put in place a very intense and ambitious structural reform agenda, coupled with sound monetary and fiscal policies, to establish macroeconomic and financial stability and to improve the business environment. Central Bank independence that was granted by Law in 2001 was one of the milestones of this agenda. The introduction of free-floating exchange rate regime in 2001 and inflationtargeting regime in 2002 were other key steps. The Central Bank of Turkey has also experienced a comprehensive institutional change towards a better communication policy and clearly defined accountability measures. We have experienced a significant disinflation process since 2001. The consumer price index came down from 68.5% in 2001 to 8.4% in 2007. I should call your attention to the fact that the list of countries that lowered inflation in 2007 was quite short, thanks to global inflationary pressures in food and other commodities.
By drawing explicitly on the information embedded in the network, PageRank produced dramatically improved web search capabilities. By now, the graduate project had become a company called Google. The vast, growing multi-dimensional cats-cradle of global information could now be sliced and diced in fractions of a second. Navigating the web no longer required a specialist pilot; it could be mapped by a novice. The World Wide Web had been given an instantaneous backrub. That has yielded vast productivity improvements. Google itself is today valued at around $ billion, having gained in value by on average $ million every week of its life. Applications of Google’s network mapping technology grow by the day. For example, Google indicators produced from the analysis of the popularity of search terms such as “estate agents” or “motor vehicles” have outperformed some existing indicators of house prices and motor sales.19 And what has allowed the World Wide Web to be Googled in this way? A common language. (d)  Lowering barriers to entry  Creating a common language also has the potential to transform the industrial organisation of an industry. It does so by simultaneously expanding the frontiers of a global network and by lowering the barriers to entering it. This allows new companies, with innovative and superior product offerings, to quickly erode the market share of incumbents. Higher productivity and growth have been the fruits.20 Global supply chains are one example. Prior to GS1 standards, small suppliers faced an uphill struggle connecting to global supply chains.