Figure 2: Contribution to Annual CPI Inflation 12  Tobacco and Gold** Food and Energy* Services Core Goods  10 8 6 4 2  03/08  02/08  01/08  12/07  11/07  10/07  09/07  08/07  07/07  06/07  05/07  04/07  03/07  02/07  01/07  0  * Food and Energy: Food, non-alcoholic beverages and energy. **Tobacco and Gold: Alcoholic beverages, tobacco products and gold.. Source: TURKSTAT, CBT. . Both domestic and international developments have played a part on the course of food prices. A prolonged shortage of rainfall in Turkey resulted in low crop yields in 2007, which turned into an adverse supply shock. Strong global demand for food and continued elevation in agricultural commodity prices further added to domestic food inflation through the external trade channel. Recently, adverse impacts of these factors have been quite visible especially in processed food prices. Accordingly, annual food inflation maintained its high levels with a marked contribution of about 2.3 points to the 3.1 percent year-to-date headline inflation. Therefore, food prices became the main factor impeding the disinflation process (Figure 3, Table 1). Adverse developments in energy prices have been another major factor in slowing the disinflation process. Rising oil prices continued to lead to significant hikes in the prices of fuel-oil products. Elevated oil prices have also affected the prices of energy items in housing utilities, including electricity tariff rates, which were adjusted upwards by a significant margin.
7  In a recent contribution, Nicholas Bloom and co-authors showed that US multinationals obtained higher productivity from IT than non-US multinationals and that establishments taken over by US multinationals (but not by non-US multinationals) increased the productivity of their IT. They attributed a bulk of productivity differences to differing people management practices across US and non-US firms. See Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, 2012, “Americans do I.T. better: US multinationals and the productivity miracle”. American Economic Review 102(1), pp. 167–201. 8  For more information about the Network visit http://www.ecb.europa.eu/home/html/researcher_compnet.en.html. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3