"Life After BilEcon" Seminar Series Started with the presentation by Cevdet Çağdaş Ünal (Econ '08)
The Department of Economics, with the initiative of its students, has started a new seminar series entitled “Life After BilEcon” under the “Bilkent Economics CEO” initiative. Bilkent Economics CEO, where CEO stands for both Chief as well as Community of Economic Officers, referring to the idea that the activities organized by the BilEcon CEO allows students to excel in their individual skills and become Chief Economic Officers (CEO) while creating a Community of Economic Officers (CEO) that organize around different platforms that allow a community of individuals interested in economics to learn and grow together.The “Life After BilEcon” seminar series aims to bring together the larger Bilkent Econ family where its alumni meets with current students to share their post-graduation experiences post-graduation as well as give a short seminar on a topic related to their jobs. The seminar series kicked-off Thursday, March 21, with the seminar given by Bilkent Econ ’08 Alumni Cevdet Çağdaş Ünal’s presentation entitled ‘’ Unorthodox Monetary Policy of the Turkish Central Bank’’.
In his presentation Cevdet Çağdaş Ünal provided an overview of the key macroeconomic indicators of the Turkish economy in the post 2008 crisis period, focusing specifically on the unorthodox monetary policy tools used by the Central Bank. He argued that while these tools are labeled as unorthodox they have finally started looking more like pseudo-orthodox policies. He showed evidence on the initial ineffectiveness of these policies in slowing down domestic growth, accompanied by evidence that their effectiveness has significantly increased since the latter half of 2012. He ended his presentation by discussing the risks pertaining to the Turkish economy.
This short but very effective presentation was followed by Cevdet Çağdaş Ünal sharing with student his experience upon graduation. After graduating from Bilkent in 2008 Cevdet Çağdaş Ünal completed his Master\'s degree in Economics at New York University as a Fulbright Student Scholar. Upon returning to Turkey he started his career at Finansbank, and has later joined his current job as an economist at the Ankara office of the World Bank.