An asymmetric analysis of the J‐curve effect in the commodity trade between China and the US

This paper follows a non‐linear ARDL error‐correction approach to examine the presence of the J‐curve in the commodity‐level trade between the United States and China. The analysis disaggregates the US–China trade flows by commodities and separately examines the trade balance responses of 97 commodities to the changes in the real yuan–US$ exchange rates. The analysis at the commodity level alleviates potential aggregation bias that is present in earlier studies offering little evidence for long‐run asymmetric effects of exchange rate on the China–US trade balance. We find strong support for short‐run asymmetric effects in the case of two‐third of the commodities, whereas significant long‐run asymmetric effects are present in the case of one‐third of the commodities including those commodities which command large shares in the China–US trade.     

A Synthesis of the Effects of Exchange Rate Volatility on International Trade: A Meta-Regression Analysis

ABSTRACT

This article surveys literature that investigates the effects of exchange rate volatility on international trade. We perform meta-regression analysis on 41 studies with 807 estimates. We show that the empirical works exhibit substantial publication selection and show a significant genuine exchange rate volatility effect on trade flows after correction of publication bias. In addition, the literature reveals a pronounced heterogeneity with respect to model specifications, samples, time horizons, and countries’ characteristics. These findings are supported by separate assessment of primary studies with, respectively, total exports and sectoral exports as the dependent variable.     

Commodity Price,Carry Trade,and the Volatility and Liquidity of Asian Currencies

This study examines how the volatility and liquidity of 10 Asian exchange rates against the US dollar change with volatilities in commodity price and carry trade over the period of January 2000 to June 2010. We find that uncertainties in commodity markets and carry trades are significantly correlated with the volatilities and the bid‐ask spreads of most Asian currencies. The correlation with carry trade is generally stronger and has been rising over the sample period. While high volatilities in carry trade are associated with high volatilities in many Asian currencies, high volatilities in commodity price do not coincide with excessive volatilities in Asian currencies. This suggests that investors and policymakers should be more concerned with the volatility in carry trade.     

Exchange rate volatility and Japan–U.S. commodity trade: An asymmetry analysis

Exchange rate volatility is said to affect trade flows in either direction. When increased volatility is separated from decreased volatility, asymmetric analysis reveals even more support for the fact that both increased volatility and decreased volatility affect trade flows in either direction. We add to this new literature by considering 57 industries that trade between Japan and the US. In addition to providing evidence of asymmetric response of their trade flows to a measure of exchange rate volatility, our approach identifies industries that could benefit from increased exchange rate volatility and those that could be hurt. Similarly, we identify industries that could benefit from decreased volatility and those that could be hurt. The overall conclusion is the adverse effects of dollar–yen volatility on the trade between the two countries.     

人民币实际汇率及波动对进出口贸易的影响——以江苏省与美国进出口贸易为例

本文基于进出口需求方程,通过建立AR-GARCH模型及协整模型来研究影响江苏省与美国进出口贸易的主要因素。研究发现,江苏省和美国两个各自的国内收入(生产总值)、人民币实际有效汇率水平对进出口贸易都有较大的正向显著影响,而人民币汇率波动没有显著影响,在分析这一结果背后原因的同时,提出密切关注美国经济走势,及时指导外贸企业规避风险,树立企业外汇风险意识,增强企业外汇风险管理能力,进一步增强经济实力,优化贸易结构等政策建议。     

Determinants and Relationships in Sectoral Trade: A Bilateral Model for Knitwear Clothing

The generalized aggregated trade models do not capture the industry or product‐specific competitive situation and overgeneralize the bilateral cases. As a result, product‐specific trade determinants at the sectoral or bilateral level cannot be sufficiently drawn from such generalized models. This holds true for knitwear clothing products, an important component of international textile trade. To remedy this, we propose a sector‐specific bilateral model in the context of knitwear clothing exports from India to the United States. This pair of countries is chosen due to unilateral trade flows as well as to underline the contrasting features of developed north versus developing south. The vector autoregression (VAR) model was found more appropriate than other available modeling choices. We used monthly frequency data from January 2006 to December 2012. The traditional determinants such as exchange rate and price competitiveness remain relevant. Chinese competition emerges as a significant determinant, which underlines the relevance of a sector‐specific bilateral trade model. The 2009 recession showed a clear impact, albeit for only a few months. Our model is parsimonious but has more explanatory power than generalized models. Policy researchers may further explore the model for more fine‐tuned policy on sector‐specific factors. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Exchange-Rate Volatility,Exchange-Rate Regime,and Trade in OIC Countries

The authors examine the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) countries from 1995 to 2008 using panel estimations to distinguish differences between disaggregate trade, and examine its threshold effects. Results reveal that exchange rate volatility generally has significant negative effect on export and import with lag. However, exports of OIC with flexible exchange rate regime have significant positive exposure to exchange rate volatility. The authors also document a threshold effect for countries with trade value constitutes more than 30% of the real gross domestic product, and the exchange rate volatility becomes significant positive for export but significant negative for import with lag.     

人民币实际有效汇率调整及其波动率与中美贸易收支

基于1995年1月至2007年9月的月度数据,分析了人民币实际有效汇率与中美贸易收支的关系。结果显示,人民币汇率波动率增加有助于缩小中美贸易收支顺差,人民币汇率升值无论长期或是短期,都不能解决中美双边贸易收支失衡问题。美国经济增长引致的进口需求是中美贸易顺差和我国收入增长的重要原因,在当前经济形势下,要警惕美国经济下滑导致我国的出口下降,进而使我国经济出现"硬着陆"的风险。     

Trade intensity and purchasing power parity

In this paper, we seek to contribute to the PPP literature by presenting evidence of a link between trade intensity and exchange rate dynamics. We first establish a negative effect of trade intensity on exchange rate volatility using panel regressions, with distance as an instrument to correct for endogeneity. We also estimate a nonlinear model of mean reversion to compute half-lives of deviations of bilateral exchange rates from the levels dictated by relative PPP, and find these half-lives to be significantly shorter for high trade intensity currency pairs. This result does not appear to be driven by Central Bank intervention. Finally, we show that conditioning on PPP may help improve the performance of popular currency trading strategies, such as the carry trade, especially for low trade intensity currency pairs.     

Subjective Probability Density Functions from FX Option Prices: Predictive Power and Performance on a Carry Trade Strategy

In this article, we extracted the risk‐neutral densities (RNDs) and subjective probability density functions of the US Dollar/Brazilian Real (USD/BRL) exchange rate and evaluated its performance in predicting the future realizations of the USD/BRL exchange rate. The RNDs were estimated using two structural models and three nonstructural models. In the first category, we included the Variance Gamma‐OU model and the CGMY Gamma‐OU model. In the second category, we included the density functional based on confluent hypergeometric function model, the mixture of lognormal distributions model, and the smoothed implied volatility smile. The density functional based on confluent hypergeometric function and the CGMY Gamma‐OU produced 1‐month term densities (RND and subjective probability density function) with the highest forecasting power of the 1‐month USD/BRL exchange rate. Finally, we applied the CGMY Gamma‐OU model to extract a sample of subjective cumulative probabilities of 1‐month USD/BRL movements, and used them as explanatory variables in predictive time series models, whose dependent variable was the 1‐month carry trade return. Its predictive power was then tested and confirmed in three trading strategies that over performed the standard carry trade strategy in terms of annualized cumulative returns.     

Exchange Rate Volatility and International Trade Flows in sub-Saharan Africa: Empirical Evidence

In this article, the authors examine the relationship between the volatility in exchange rates and the volume of international trade in sub-Saharan African countries. Using the gravity equation and annual data for the period 1998–2007, they find a statistically significant and negative correlation between the volatility in exchange rates and the volume of trade. The estimated elasticities show that the responsiveness of the flow of international trade to changes in exchange rate volatility is very small. This suggests that eliminating the volatility in the exchange rates will result in only small increments in the volume of trade. Accordingly, pursuing a policy of exchange rate stability would not be sufficient to significantly increase the volume of bilateral trade in the sub-Saharan African region.     

Business cycle synchronisation in East Asia: The role of value‐added trade

We empirically investigate the relationship between business cycle synchronisation and the role of value‐added trade focusing on a panel of 12 Asian countries from 1995 to 2011. In addition, we propose the inclusion of two novel determinants, for example external value‐added trade intensity and exchange rate volatility and also saturate our empirical model with other common determinants found in the literature. Our findings first confirm that value‐added trade intensity, rather than gross trade intensity, has a sizable, positive and statistically significant impact on synchronisation among East Asian countries. Second, the exchange rate volatility has a significant negative effect on the business cycle synchronisation, which verifies that the exchange rate volatility is another important determinant of business cycle synchronisation. Our findings have important implications for the monetary cooperation in the region: strengthening trade linkage could reduce the costs of monetary cooperation by increasing the incidence of symmetric shocks.     

Comparative Advantage and the Gains from Financial Trade: A Reappraisal

Emerging market crises have suggested that a national benefit‐cost assessment of external financial liberalisation could well prove unfavourable. This paper re‐examines the principle of comparative advantage in its application to financial trade to seek guidance on measures that might permit a fuller realisation of the potential benefits involved. Drawing a parallel with Balasubramanyam's work on the gains from FDI and international migration we distinguish between those arising in financial trade from the net transfer of capital, and those deriving from the contemporaneous exchange of financial claims or services of equivalent value. In the first interpretation a country's comparative advantage is manifested by its role in ‘intertemporal’ trade (as a borrower or lender). Our alternative emphasis is on the contractual risk‐return characteristics of the financial claims exchanged. This perspective is applied firstly to portfolio diversification gains arising from further international stock market integration. Secondly, price risk management for developing countries in international primary commodity trade is discussed. Both applications imply the need for significant institutional development but could realise approximately contemporaneous gains reminiscent both of those involved in merchandise trade and in the skills and product (or service) flows that Balasubramanyam has emphasised in relation to FDI and international migration.     

Trade, offshoring, and the invisible handshake

We study the effect of globalization on the volatility of wages and worker welfare in a model in which risk is allocated through long-run employment relationships (the ‘invisible handshake’). Globalization can take two forms: international integration of commodity markets (i.e., free trade) and international integration of factor markets (i.e., offshoring). In a two-country, two-good, two-factor model we show that free trade and offshoring have opposite effects on rich-country workers. Free trade hurts rich-country workers, while reducing the volatility of their wages; by contrast, offshoring benefits them, while raising the volatility of their wages. We thus formalize, but also sharply circumscribe, a common critique of globalization.     

S-Curve at the Commodity Level: Evidence from US-India Trade

The short-run response of the trade balance to changes in the terms of trade or the real exchange rate comes under the heading of the “J-Curve” or the “S-Curve.” While the J-Curve is mostly investigated through regression analysis, the S-Curve is based on the cross-correlation function between the terms of trade and the trade balance. Previous research has shown that in a country where support for any of the two curves is weak, disaggregation of the trade data helps discover more evidence of either curve. This article adds to the literature by considering the experience of India. We demonstrate that once the trade data between India and the United States is disaggregated by commodity, there is evidence of the S-curve in most industries that trade between the two countries. Out of total of 27 industries that constitute about 70% of trade, there are 15 that support the S-Curve.     

Evidence on Orcutt's hypothesis using Turkish–US commodity trade

Many of the studies that have tested the Orcutt's hypothesis in trade have used aggregate trade data between one country and rest of the world. Since these studies suffer from aggregation bias, three recent studies have employed data at commodity level and have found relatively more support for the hypothesis. In this paper we test the hypothesis using commodity level data from 54 industries that trade between Turkey and the US. We find support for the notion that trade flows respond to exchange rate changes faster than to relative price changes in one-third of the industries, supporting Orcutt's conjecture.     

The J-Curve: Evidence from Industry-Level Data Between the U.S. and Indonesia

Empirical studies on the impact of currency devaluation or depreciation on the trade balance still continue to occupy the literature. These studies have evolved from using aggregate to disaggregated data. The findings, however, have been mixed. Previous research using aggregate trade flows of Indonesia with the rest of the world or bilateral data between Indonesia and the U.S. as one of its major trading partners found no significant relation between rupiah-dollar rate and Indonesia’s bilateral trade balances. In this article, we disaggregate the trade flows between Indonesia and the U.S. by commodity and show that the trade balances of at least nine out of 23 industries react to exchange rate changes favorably in the long run.     

Exchange Rate Volatility and Intra‐Asia Trade: Evidence by Type of Goods

This paper examines the impact of intra‐Asia exchange rate volatility on intra‐Asia trade in primary goods, intermediate goods, equipment goods and consumption goods from 1980 to 2009. For Asia, the evidence shows that as intraregional exchange rate volatility increases, intraregional exports in these goods fall. This adverse impact is even more pronounced in the subregion of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)+5 comprising ASEAN member countries plus the People's Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; Japan; the Republic of Korea; and Taipei, China; and especially among intermediate and equipment exports. Again, the impact magnifies in an even smaller subgroup excluding the smaller ASEAN economies. These results underline the significant impact of exchange rate volatility on the region's production networks. For South Asia, however, exchange rate volatility appears to have a positive impact on exports. Still, caution is warranted given that South Asian economies trade relatively little with each other.     

Openness and optimal monetary policy

We show that the composition of international trade has important implications for the optimal volatility of the exchange rate, above and beyond the size of trade flows. Using an analytically tractable small open economy model, we characterize the impact of the trade composition on the policy trade-off and on the role played by the exchange rate in correcting for price misalignments. Contrary to models where openness can be summarized by the degree of home bias, we find that openness can be a poor proxy of the welfare impact of alternative monetary policies. Using input–output data for 25 countries we document substantial differences in the import and non-tradable content of final demand components, and in the role played by imported inputs in domestic production. The estimates are used in a richer small-open-economy DSGE model to quantify the loss from an exchange rate peg relative to the Ramsey policy conditional on the composition of imports. We find that the main determinant of the losses is the share of non-traded goods in final demand.     

Flexible exchange rates and international trade: An empirical investigation of bilateral flows

This paper investigates the alleged adverse effect of floating exchange rates on international trade. A simple model is constructed to test the relationship between exchange rate variability and bilateral trade flows between the United States and three of its major trading partners: Canada, Japan and Germany. Using data from 1960 to 1983 to encompass both “stable” and floating rate regimes, it is shown that while exchange rate variability is considerably higher in the floating period, there is no evidence that this greater variability has had a negative impact on trade flows.