affect governments' decisions regarding other policies, especially those affecting international trade.
Most of the studies on this matter focus on contingent protection. For example, Bown and Crowley(2013)
find evidence of a response to an overvalued exchange rate in the form of antidumping investigations
applied by five industrialized economies in a period of about 20 years and in particular over the period
characterized by the Great Recession(2008–2010). Most studies also support the general hypothesis that trade policy may be used to compensate for some of the effects of an overvalued currency(Knitter
and Prusa,2003;Irwin,2005;Oatley,2010). Domestic firms that lose competitiveness as a result of
appreciation of the exchange rate may lobby for restrictive trade policies. In practice, disputes over
exchange rate policies among trading partners could foster an increase in domestic political pressures and
unilateral action on trade(CopelovitchandPevehouse,2011).
This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between the exchange rate
and international trade by empirically investigating all three aspects detailed above. In doing so
the analysis utilizes a fixed effects estimating strategy applied on a detailed dataset comprising
yearly data for about 100 countries for a period of 10years (2000–2009). A novel contribution of this
paper is to investigate whether exchange rates have an impact not only on temporary protection
(antidumping) but also on tariffs. The main findings of this paper can be summarized as follows. First,
the analysis indicates that the short-term effects of exchange rate volatility on trade are a concern
only for developing countries. Generally, the relationship between the volatility and trade variables is
most likely driven by the underlining long term policy credibility provided by currency unions and
pegged exchange rates rather than short term volatility itself. The paper's second finding is that
exchange rate misalignments do affect international trade flows in a substantial manner. Currency
under valuation is found to promote exports and restrict imports. In magnitudes misalignments across
currencies result in trade diversion quantifiable in about one percent of world trade. Finally, this paper
finds some evidence supporting the argument that trade policy is used to compensate for some of the
repercussions of an overvalued currency. However, the policy response seems to be largely restricted
to antidumping interventions. The evidence of a response in terms of a slower overall tariff liberalization in periods of currency overvaluation is small.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the empirical approach
While Section 3 presents some descriptive statistics and the econometric results. Section 4 concludes.