IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reveco/v82y2022icp120-134.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exchange rate volatility and import of intermediate inputs: Evidence from Chinese firms

Author

Listed:
  • Li, Yifan
  • Miao, Zhuang
  • Tuuli, Maxwell

Abstract

An extensive amount of literature suggests that exchange rate volatility has a negative impact on international trade. However, very few research consider the distinct effect of exchange rate volatility on intermediate input trade. This paper studies the effects of exchange rate volatility on the import of intermediate inputs and evaluates how the effects are shaped by a series of firm characteristics. Using a comprehensive dataset of Chinese importing firms from 2000 to 2006, our empirical analysis indicates that exchange rate volatility negatively impacts the import of intermediate inputs both on the extensive and intensive margin. Further, we find that this negative effect is more pronounced for firms with higher financial vulnerability. We use a simple schematic diagram to explain the transmission mechanism and emphasize the role of financial vulnerability in amplifying the effects of exchange rate volatility.

Suggested Citation

  • Li, Yifan & Miao, Zhuang & Tuuli, Maxwell, 2022. "Exchange rate volatility and import of intermediate inputs: Evidence from Chinese firms," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 120-134.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reveco:v:82:y:2022:i:c:p:120-134
    DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2022.06.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056022001721
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.iref.2022.06.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ricardo A. López & Huong D. Nguyen, 2015. "Real Exchange Rate Volatility and Imports of Intermediate Inputs: A Microeconometric Analysis of Manufacturing Plants," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(5), pages 972-995, November.
    2. Feng, Ling & Li, Zhiyuan & Swenson, Deborah L., 2016. "The connection between imported intermediate inputs and exports: Evidence from Chinese firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 86-101.
    3. Christopher F. Baum & Mustafa Caglayan & Neslihan Ozkan, 2004. "Nonlinear effects of exchange rate volatility on the volume of bilateral exports," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(1), pages 1-23.
    4. Dai, Mi & Xu, Jianwei, 2017. "Firm-specific exchange rate shocks and employment adjustment: Evidence from China," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 54-66.
    5. Jérôme Héricourt & Sandra Poncet, 2015. "Exchange Rate Volatility, Financial Constraints, and Trade: Empirical Evidence from Chinese Firms," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(3), pages 550-578.
    6. Manova, Kalina & Yu, Zhihong, 2016. "How firms export: Processing vs. ordinary trade with financial frictions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 120-137.
    7. Annalisa Ferrando & Alessandro Ruggieri, 2018. "Financial constraints and productivity: Evidence from euro area companies," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 257-282, July.
    8. Antoine Berthou & Lionel Fontagné, 2013. "How do Multiproduct Exporters React to a Change in Trade Costs?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 115(2), pages 326-353, April.
    9. Daly, Kevin, 1998. "Does exchange rate volatility impede the volume of Japan's bilateral trade?," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 333-348, July.
    10. Mary Amiti & Jozef Konings, 2007. "Trade Liberalization, Intermediate Inputs, and Productivity: Evidence from Indonesia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1611-1638, December.
    11. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00960664 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Greenaway, David & Kneller, Richard, 2010. "Exchange Rate Uncertainty and Export Decisions in the UK," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 25, pages 734-753.
    13. Kasahara, Hiroyuki & Liang, Yawen & Rodrigue, Joel, 2016. "Does importing intermediates increase the demand for skilled workers? Plant-level evidence from Indonesia," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 242-261.
    14. Gita Gopinath & Brent Neiman, 2014. "Trade Adjustment and Productivity in Large Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(3), pages 793-831, March.
    15. Kasahara, Hiroyuki & Rodrigue, Joel, 2008. "Does the use of imported intermediates increase productivity? Plant-level evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 106-118, August.
    16. Mary Amiti & Amit K. Khandelwal, 2013. "Import Competition and Quality Upgrading," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 476-490, May.
    17. Gagnon, Joseph E., 1993. "Exchange rate variability and the level of international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3-4), pages 269-287, May.
    18. Christian Arndt & Claudia M. Buch & Anselm Mattes, 2012. "Disentangling barriers to internationalization," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(1), pages 41-63, February.
    19. László Halpern & Miklós Koren & Adam Szeidl, 2015. "Imported Inputs and Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(12), pages 3660-3703, December.
    20. Haichao Fan & Yao Amber Li & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2015. "Trade Liberalization, Quality, and Export Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1033-1051, December.
    21. Mohsen Bahmani‐Oskooee & Scott W. Hegerty, 2007. "Exchange rate volatility and trade flows: a review article," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 34(3), pages 211-255, August.
    22. Nicolas Berman & Antoine Berthou, 2009. "Financial Market Imperfections and the Impact of Exchange Rate Movements on Exports," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 103-120, February.
    23. Li, Yifan & Miao, Zhuang, 2018. "Trade costs, import penetration, and markups," MPRA Paper 85668, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    24. Mehmet Nihat Solakoglu & Ebru Guven Solakoglu & Tunc Demirağ, 2008. "Exchange rate volatility and exports: a firm-level analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(7), pages 921-929.
    25. Wang, Kai-Li & Barrett, Christopher B., 2002. "A New Look At The Trade Volume Effects Of Real Exchange Rate Risk," Working Papers 14751, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    26. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg & Amit Kumar Khandelwal & Nina Pavcnik & Petia Topalova, 2010. "Imported Intermediate Inputs and Domestic Product Growth: Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1727-1767.
    27. Miao, Zhuang & Li, Yifan, 2017. "Trade Scopes across Destinations: Evidence from Chinese Firm," MPRA Paper 80863, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Aug 2017.
    28. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2016. "Quality, trade, and exchange rate pass-through," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 61-80.
    29. Christine Sauer & Alok K. Bohara, 2001. "Exchange Rate Volatility and Exports: Regional Differences between Developing and Industrialized Countries," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 133-152, February.
    30. Haichao Fan & Yao Amber Li & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2015. "Trade Liberalization, Quality, and Export Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1033-1051, December.
    31. Cushman, David O., 1983. "The effects of real exchange rate risk on international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1-2), pages 45-63, August.
    32. Tenreyro, Silvana, 2007. "On the trade impact of nominal exchange rate volatility," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 485-508, March.
    33. Kandilov, Ivan T. & Leblebicioglu, AslI, 2011. "The impact of exchange rate volatility on plant-level investment: Evidence from Colombia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 220-230, March.
    34. Yanhong Zhang & Hui Chang & Jean Gauger, 2006. "The Threshold Effect of Exchange Rate Volatility on Trade Volume: Evidence from G-7 Countries," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 461-476.
    35. repec:hal:pseose:hal-00975562 is not listed on IDEAS
    36. Claudia Buch & Iris Kesternich & Alexander Lipponer & Monika Schnitzer, 2014. "Financial constraints and foreign direct investment: firm-level evidence," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 150(2), pages 393-420, May.
    37. repec:bla:reviec:v:9:y:2001:i:1:p:133-52 is not listed on IDEAS
    38. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    39. Sercu, Piet & Vanhulle, Cynthia, 1992. "Exchange rate volatility, international trade, and the value of exporting firms," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 155-182, February.
    40. Manova, Kalina, 2008. "Credit constraints, equity market liberalizations and international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 33-47, September.
    41. repec:wsr:wpaper:y:2013:i:112 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adedeji Daniel Gbadebo, 2023. "Does Exchange Rates Swings Affect Trade? Evidence from an Emerging Open Economy," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 13(1), pages 132-143, January.

    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. Li, Yifan & Miao, Zhuang, 2019. "Effect of Exchange Rate Volatility on Imports: Evidences from Chinese Firms," MPRA Paper 95088, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Feng, Ling & Li, Zhiyuan & Swenson, Deborah L., 2016. "The connection between imported intermediate inputs and exports: Evidence from Chinese firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 86-101.
    3. Fan, Haichao & Li, Yao Amber & Yeaple, Stephen R., 2018. "On the relationship between quality and productivity: Evidence from China's accession to the WTO," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 28-49.
    4. Ricardo Lopez, 2015. "Long Real Exchange Rate Volatility and Imports of Intermediate Inputs: A Microeconometric Analysis of Manufacturing Plants," Working Papers 86, Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School.
    5. Maria Bas & Caroline Paunov, 2019. "What gains and distributional implications result from trade liberalization," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 19003, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    6. Ricardo A. López & Huong D. Nguyen, 2015. "Real Exchange Rate Volatility and Imports of Intermediate Inputs: A Microeconometric Analysis of Manufacturing Plants," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(5), pages 972-995, November.
    7. Manova, Kalina & Yu, Zhihong, 2017. "Multi-product firms and product quality," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 116-137.
    8. Torres Mazzi, Caio & Foster-McGregor, Neil, 2021. "Imported intermediates, technological capabilities and exports: Evidence from Brazilian firm-level data," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(1).
    9. Bai, Xue & Hong, Shengjie & Wang, Yaqi, 2021. "Learning from processing trade: Firm evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 579-602.
    10. Tunc, Cengiz & Solakoglu, M. Nihat, 2017. "Not all firms react the same to exchange rate volatility? A firm level study," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 417-430.
    11. Haichao Fan & Tuan Anh Luong & Edwin L‐C. Lai & Lina Zhang, 2022. "Import liberalization and export product mix," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(1), pages 419-457, February.
    12. Lawrence Edwards & Marco Sanfilippo & Asha Sundaram, 2016. "Importing and firm performance: New evidence from South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-39, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Liu, Mengdi & Zhang, Bing & Liao, Xianchun, 2022. "Can trade liberalization promote green production? Evidence from China's manufacturing enterprises," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. Lawrence Edwards & Marco Sanfilippo & Asha Sundaram, 2016. "Importing and firm performance: New evidence from South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 039, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Miao, Zhuang & Li, Yifan, 2017. "Trade Scopes across Destinations: Evidence from Chinese Firm," MPRA Paper 80863, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Aug 2017.
    16. Lawrence Edwards & Marco Sanfilippo & Asha Sundaram, 2020. "Importing and Productivity: An Analysis of South African Manufacturing Firms," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 57(2), pages 411-432, September.
    17. Zhengwen Liu & Hong Ma, 2021. "Input Trade Liberalization And Markup Distribution: Evidence From China," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 344-360, January.
    18. Fan, Haichao & Gao, Xiang & Li, Yao Amber & Luong, Tuan Anh, 2018. "Trade liberalization and markups: Micro evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 103-130.
    19. Haichao Fan & Edwin L.-C. Lai & Han Steffan Qi, 2016. "Imported-input Trade Liberalization and Firms' Export Performance in China: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 5828, CESifo.
    20. Fan, Haichao & Lai, Edwin L.-C. & (Steffan) Qi, Han, 2019. "Trade liberalization and Firms’ export performance in China: Theory and evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 640-668.

    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:eee:reveco:v:82:y:2022:i:c:p:120-134. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620165 .

    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.