IMPACTS OF EURO/USD VOLATILITY ON STEEL PRICES OF TURKEY

Steel sector is the driving force of industry as it provides raw or semi-finished materials for the majority of manufacturing industries. Turkey is an important steel producer, importer and exporter. 45% of steel imports are from EU-27 zone while only 24% of the exports are destined to the European countries. The study is concentrated on the effects of EUR/USD volatility on the steel prices of Turkey. VAR models, Impulse Response Functions, Granger Causality Tests and Variance Decomposition analysis are employed for the data covering the period of April 2008- January 2015. The study reveals that EUR/USD currency volatility has significant effect on steel prices explaining about 5-6% of the changes in the prices.