IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijfss/v11y2023i4p128-d1272261.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Economic Policy Uncertainty Explain Exchange Rate Movements in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS): A Panel ARDL Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Maud Korley

    (Faculty of Business and Law, Department of Accounting Finance and Economics, De Montfort University, Hugh Aston Building, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK)

  • Evangelos Giouvris

    (School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK)

Abstract

Research proposes that economic policy uncertainty (EPU) leads to exchange rate fluctuations. Given that African countries experience higher levels of uncertainty in developed/emerging markets, we examine the extent to which domestic and foreign EPU affect exchange rates for a panel of 12 ECOWAS countries covering the period 1996–2018. In order to account for non-stationarity, cross-sectional dependence, and heterogeneity, the paper employs the dynamic heterogeneous panel approach. The ECOWAS has a dual currency arrangement ranging from a common currency union (CFA) to floating exchange rates (Non-CFA). To account for this, this study splits the sample data into CFA and Non-CFA areas. In addition, this study considers the role of the global financial crisis in the exchange rate-EPU nexus. Our results show that domestic EPU has a positive effect on exchange rates in the long run for Non-CFA areas. Different from the existing literature, our results suggest that domestic EPU does not explain exchange rate fluctuations in the short run. For all countries, foreign EPU leads to appreciation in the long run and depreciation in the short run. Interestingly, foreign EPU has a more dominant effect on exchange rate fluctuations in the selected countries than domestic EPU. This may reflect the weak institutional framework in these countries, which allows external fluctuations to have a greater impact. Moreover, this could be attributed to the increase in foreign capital flows during the sample period. Thus, these countries must develop effective policies to effectively absorb these external shocks. Results are robust to different proxies of EPU.

Suggested Citation

  • Maud Korley & Evangelos Giouvris, 2023. "Does Economic Policy Uncertainty Explain Exchange Rate Movements in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS): A Panel ARDL Approach," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-22, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijfss:v:11:y:2023:i:4:p:128-:d:1272261
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/11/4/128/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/11/4/128/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    2. Bacchetta, Philippe & van Wincoop, Eric, 2013. "On the unstable relationship between exchange rates and macroeconomic fundamentals," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 18-26.
    3. Jiang, Yonghong & Zhu, Zixuan & Tian, Gengyu & Nie, He, 2019. "Determinants of within and cross-country economic policy uncertainty spillovers: Evidence from US and China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    4. Christina Christou & Rangan Gupta & Christis Hassapis & Tahir Suleman, 2018. "The role of economic uncertainty in forecasting exchange rate returns and realized volatility: Evidence from quantile predictive regressions," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(7), pages 705-719, November.
    5. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 1996. "Foundations of International Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262150476, December.
    6. Lubos Pástor & Pietro Veronesi, 2012. "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(4), pages 1219-1264, August.
    7. M. Hashem Pesaran, 2007. "A simple panel unit root test in the presence of cross-section dependence," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(2), pages 265-312.
    8. Colombo, Valentina, 2013. "Economic policy uncertainty in the US: Does it matter for the Euro area?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 39-42.
    9. repec:dgr:rugccs:199902 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Robert Lensink & Hong Bo & Elmer Sterken, 1999. "Does uncertainty affect economic growth? An empirical analysis," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 135(3), pages 379-396, September.
    11. Barbara Rossi & Tatevik Sekhposyan, 2015. "Macroeconomic Uncertainty Indices Based on Nowcast and Forecast Error Distributions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 650-655, May.
    12. Westerlund, Joakim & Sharma, Susan Sunila, 2019. "Panel evidence on the ability of oil returns to predict stock returns in the G7 area," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 3-12.
    13. Solikin M. Juhro & Dinh Hoang Bach Phan, 2018. "Can Economic Policy Uncertainty Predict Exchange Rate And Its Volatility? Evidence From Asean Countries," Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking, Bank Indonesia, vol. 21(2), pages 1-18, October.
    14. Salisu, Afees A. & Mobolaji, Hakeem, 2013. "Modeling returns and volatility transmission between oil price and US–Nigeria exchange rate," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 169-176.
    15. Levin, Andrew & Lin, Chien-Fu & James Chu, Chia-Shang, 2002. "Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-24, May.
    16. repec:dgr:rugsom:99e23 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abir Abid & Christophe Rault, 2021. "On the Exchange Rates Volatility and Economic Policy Uncertainty Nexus: A Panel VAR Approach for Emerging Markets," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 19(3), pages 403-425, September.
    2. Abid, Abir & Rault, Christophe, 2020. "On the Exchange Rate and Economic Policy Uncertainty Nexus: A Panel VAR Approach for Emerging Markets," IZA Discussion Papers 13365, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Abir ABID & Christophe RAULT, 2020. "On the Exchange Rates Volatility and Economic Policy Uncertainty Nexus: A Panel VAR Approach for Emerging Markets," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2816, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    4. Guo, Junjie & Li, Youshu & Shao, Qinglong, 2022. "Cross-category spillover effects of economic policy uncertainty between China and the US: Time and frequency evidence," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    5. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Menelaos Karanasos & Stavroula Yfanti, 2019. "Macro-Financial Linkages in the High-Frequency Domain: The Effects of Uncertainty on Realized Volatility," CESifo Working Paper Series 8000, CESifo.
    6. Costantini, Mauro & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2022. "What uncertainty does to euro area sovereign bond markets: Flight to safety and flight to quality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    7. Terver T. Kumeka & Olabusuyi R. Falayi & Adeniyi J. Adedokun & Francis O. Adeyemi, 2022. "An econometric analysis of economic policy uncertainty and exchange market pressure of the three largest economies in West Africa," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(11), pages 1-33, November.
    8. Karanasos, M. & Yfanti, S., 2021. "On the Economic fundamentals behind the Dynamic Equicorrelations among Asset classes: Global evidence from Equities, Real estate, and Commodities," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    9. Dongwon Lee & Yu-chin Chen, 2014. "What Makes a Commodity Currency?," Working Papers 201420, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    10. Himounet, Nicolas, 2022. "Searching the nature of uncertainty: Macroeconomic and financial risks VS geopolitical and pandemic risks," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 1-31.
    11. Chow Sheung-Chi & Cunado Juncal & Gupta Rangan & Wong Wing-Keung, 2018. "Causal relationships between economic policy uncertainty and housing market returns in China and India: evidence from linear and nonlinear panel and time series models," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(2), pages 1-15, April.
    12. Giovanni Caggiano & Efrem Castelnuovo & Gabriela Nodari, 2014. "Uncertainty and Monetary Policy in Good and Bad Times," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0188, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    13. Christina Christou & Rangan Gupta & Christis Hassapis & Tahir Suleman, 2018. "The role of economic uncertainty in forecasting exchange rate returns and realized volatility: Evidence from quantile predictive regressions," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(7), pages 705-719, November.
    14. Nguyen Phuc Canh & Nguyen Thanh Binh & Su Dinh Thanh & Christophe Schinckus, 2020. "Determinants of foreign direct investment inflows: The role of economic policy uncertainty," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 161, pages 159-172.
    15. Shabir Mohsin Hashmi & Muhammad Akram Gilal & Wing-Keung Wong, 2021. "Sustainability of Global Economic Policy and Stock Market Returns in Indonesia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-18, May.
    16. Hai Long Vo & Duc Hong Vo, 2023. "The purchasing power parity and exchange‐rate economics half a century on," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 446-479, April.
    17. Graziano Moramarco, 2022. "Measuring Global Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Cross-Country Uncertainty Spillovers," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-29, December.
    18. Shahnazi, Rouhollah & Dehghan Shabani, Zahra, 2021. "The effects of renewable energy, spatial spillover of CO2 emissions and economic freedom on CO2 emissions in the EU," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 293-307.
    19. Amélie Charles & Olivier Darné & Fabien Tripier, 2017. "Uncertainty and the Macroeconomy," Post-Print hal-01549625, HAL.
    20. Zhou, Zhongbao & Fu, Zhangyan & Jiang, Yong & Zeng, Ximei & Lin, Ling, 2020. "Can economic policy uncertainty predict exchange rate volatility? New evidence from the GARCH-MIDAS model," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic policy uncertainty (EPU); exchange rate; ECOWAS; panel ARDL; VIX; GDP; JEL Classification: C23; F31;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijfss:v:11:y:2023:i:4:p:128-:d:1272261. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.