Bu çalışmada Türkiye ekonomisinde 1980’li yıllar sonrasında uygulanan finansal liberalizasyon politikalarının ekonomik büyüme oranları üzerinde yol açtığı etki, 1989.Q1-2010.Q1 dönemi kapsamında çeyrek dönemlik veriler yardımıyla belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu amaçla finansal liberalizasyonun de facto göstergeleri olarak tanımlanan üç farklı değişken kullanılarak finansal liberalizasyon ve ekonomik büyüme etkileşimi sınır testi ve ARDL yöntemiyle analiz edilmiştir. Finansal liberalizasyon politikalarının başarısının ülkenin finans sektörünün gelişmişliği, kurumsal kalite düzeyi, dışa açıklık ve eğitim seviyesi göre farklılaştığı dikkate alınarak bu değişkenlerin yer aldığı regresyonlar sonucu uzun ve kısa dönem katsayılar elde edilmiştir. Elde edilen analiz sonuçları finansal liberalizasyonun ve kurumsal kalite, eğitim düzeyi ve dışa açıklık değişkenlerinin incelenen zaman diliminde ekonomik büyüme oranları üzerinde pozitif yönlü etkileri olduğunu göstermektedir.

The financial liberalization hypothesis which owes its theoretical basis to McKinnon (1973) and Shaw(1973) with their studies independent from each other is basically built upon the argument of promoting savings with positive real interest rates and supporting the growth rates. It can be asserted that the financial liberalization policies, which McKinnon (1973) and Shaw (1973) suggested to be implemented on account of their positive effects, are also supported by several other developments. Waves of liberalization becoming more and more popular in developed and developing countries especially after the 1980s, developments taking place in information and communication sectors and technological innovations, facilitate the free capital movements and the increase in the financial instruments which can be used in financial transactions have made it possible for foreign investors to do risk diversification leading to the acceleration of financial liberalization movements. When financial liberalization practices are handled in two different categories, which are internal and external, it can be clearly seen that internal financial liberalization predominantly covers such practices as allowing the determination of nominal interest rates under market conditions in the national finance system, reducing controls in the distribution of the credit and restrictions on entry into the financial system. In external financial liberalization which has a broader scope, however, the residents are allowed to perform activities in international financial markets as the foreigners are allowed to acquire assets in the national finance system and all restrictions in trading over the foreign currency are being removed. Basic gain expected to occur after these practices is the provision that the economic growth gains a stable structure by ensuring economic efficiency as a result of the expansion in the savings volume along with the utilization of resources in optimal investment projects. Practices which facilitate the inclusion of foreign banks in the national finance system with the external financial liberalization will enable international financial standards and technology along with foreign finance institutions to enter the country and serve the economic development. Investors who find the opportunity to diversify their portfolios in the international markets and distribute their risks among various alternative investment instruments will be able to minimize their consumption and income fluctuations and develop a preventive mechanism for sudden depreciations that may occur in their total assets. Projections of this hypothesis which states that developments in line with economic efficiency and stable growth shall take place in such conditions where the government does not interfere with the markets to determine the interest rates have been shaded by financial crisis experiences in the developing countries by the 1980s and has led to the perception of financial liberalization practices as the main cause of financial instability and crises in many countries. In this respect, the financial liberalization hypothesis has been heavily criticized by neo-structuralists and post-keynesians on such grounds that the increase in the interest rates would cause negative effects on savings, investments and the growth rates. In their criticism of the financial liberalization hypothesis, neostructuralists have considered the transfer of resources from unorganized financial markets to the banking sector as a development which impairs the loan supply since the official banking sector is subject to required reserves and, thus, underlined the fact that the positive effects expected from financial liberalization will not happen. Unorganized markets which function as intermediaries between the saver and the investor and perform activities outside the official banking sector were considered more flexible and competitive financial structure by Taylor (1983) as they are not obligated to furnish the required reserve deduction which the official banking sector is subject to. Another member of the structuralist group, Wijnbergen states that profitable investments with high capital return have a more important function in economy than time deposits have and developments in the banking sector will not produce such expanding effects financial deepening and economic growth as promoted by financial liberalization theorists. The criticism of the financial liberalization hypothesis by post-keynesian view concentrated on the effective demand, a determinant of economic growth and the savings were accepted to be a function of income levels rather than the interest rates. Postkeynesians who state that the increase in savings would not imply any expansion in the volume of investment and growth focus on the fact that investments can also be financed through loans provided by the banking sector apart from individual savings and that the increase in the interest rate will reduce the effective demand by producing negative effects on the investment decision. In addition, the information asymmetries in the financial markets and the presence of the externalities and market failures are considered to be factors which may cause instability and fragility in the financial system. Microeconomics-oriented criticisms of the financial liberalization hypothesis by Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) and Stiglitz (1994) highlight the fact that market intervention is inevitable to deal with such problems as information asymmetries and adverse selection faced in financial markets and it is stated that such interventions will reduce the cost of capital and bring with in the results which may enable efficiency in the resource allocation. While Stiglitz and Weiss (1981), with an attitude to support market intervention, consider the government a structure with disciplinary and objective qualities, Fry (1997) points out that intervention may produce positive results to deal with market failures while intervention to a market with no such problems will predominantly produce negative effects. In this study, which analyzes the effect of the financial liberalization experience of Turkish economy on the economic growth using econometric methods, three different models were estimated in order to determine the direction of interaction. Variables such as institutional quality, credit to private sector, education level and trade openness which were used as control variables in each model were fixed and only the financial liberalization indicators were diversified; therefore it was sought to investigate the effect of financial liberalization on the economic growth rates. Studies on this subject in the literature put emphasis on de facto and de jure criteria in order to form financial liberalization indicators and stated the superior aspects of each one to another. This study used de facto variables and the quarterly data of which can be accessed and, by following the methodology in studies by Kraay (1998), Edison et al. (2002), Lane and MilesiFerretti (2006), variables such as financial capital flow, financial capital stock and financial capital inflow were created to represent financial liberalization. The results of the econometric application for quarterly data in the period of 1989.Q1- 2010.Q3 were presented in the part of econometric analysis. Accordingly, the ADF, PP and KPSS unit root tests were applied without regard to the presence of a possible structural break in variables, and then the series were tested for stationary using ZivotAndrews unit root test which takes structural breaks into account. Short- and long-term coefficient estimations were made using ARDL method (Auto-Regressive Distribution Lag) which enables applicability in series which exhibit different levels of stationary in order to determine the long term relationships between variables since the series have mixed stationary levels. The results of the econometric analysis show that all of the three different indicators of financial liberalization produce positive effects on growth rates. Trade openness which is a criterion by which a country's level of integration with the world economy was determined to be a variable positively affecting the growth rate in all estimated models. In addition, the education level variable which was measured as the training period representing the human capital is in positive interaction with the growth rate in all models. The institutional quality variable which has been described in theoretical explanations as a significant catalyst by which financial liberalization will have a positive effect on growth has also an expansive effect on the growth rate. Taken together with Klein’s (2007) finding that the positive effect of financial integration on growth will appear in countries where institutional quality is at a medium level, this positive interaction between institutional quality and growth can be interpreted as that the institutional quality represented by rule of law, bureaucratic quality and corruption criteria in Turkish economy has fallen below the level of developed countries.