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A Short-Run Analysis of Exchange Rates and International Trade with an Application to Australia, New Zealand, and Japan

Author

Listed:
  • José Anson

    (Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI))

  • Mauro Boffa
  • Matthias Helble

Abstract

The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution of the past 3 decades has transformed the world into an integrated marketplace. Today, producers and consumers alike are able to compare the prices of local businesses and worldwide sellers. For an increasing number of tradable goods, they can take advantage of arbitrage opportunities between online and offline transactions. One of the key exogenous elements behind this arbitrage is exchange rate movements. The existing literature on exchange rates has concluded that nominal prices can be assumed to be rigid, which thus opens the door to short-term international arbitrage. However, empirical evidence of international short-term arbitrage has so far been lacking due to data constraints. In this paper, we first present a new dataset that holds records on daily international exchanges of goods, namely those sent through the international postal logistics network. We then combine this data set with daily data on international exchange rate movements to test the hypothesis of international arbitrage. Applying different econometric techniques, we show that in an environment of floating exchange rates, almost instantaneous short-term international arbitrage is indeed occurring and that it has a persistent effect. The effect seems to be particularly pronounced in the developed countries of Asia and the Pacific.

Suggested Citation

  • José Anson & Mauro Boffa & Matthias Helble, 2014. "A Short-Run Analysis of Exchange Rates and International Trade with an Application to Australia, New Zealand, and Japan," Finance Working Papers 24048, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:eab:financ:24048
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Renzo Alvarez & Amin Shoja & Syed Uddin & Hakan Yilmazkuday, 2019. "Daily exchange rate pass-through into micro prices," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(6), pages 440-445, March.
    2. Utsav Kumar & Ben Shepherd & Roselle Dime, 2018. "Trade Costs, Time, and Supply Chain Reliability," Working Papers id:12826, eSocialSciences.
    3. José Ansón & Jean‐François Arvis & Mauro Boffa & Matthias Helble & Ben Shepherd, 2020. "Time, uncertainty and trade flows," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(9), pages 2375-2392, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    exchange rate; international trade; Australia; New Zealand; Japan; international arbitrage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange

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