Real Exchange Rate Volatility and US Exports: An ARDL Bounds Testing Approach

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of exchange rate volatility on US exports to the rest of the world, and to each of its five main markets of destination by means of the recently developed ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration, which is applicable irrespective of whether the regressors are I(1) or I(0). Using a long-term measure of volatility that captures persistence and mean-reversion in the movements of the real exchange rate, we find that in most of the cases considered export volume is significantly affected by volatility, although the sign and magnitude of this effect varies across markets of destination.