Title: GARCH-based versus traditional measures of exchange-rate volatility: evidence from Korean industry trade

Authors: Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee; Jungho Baek; Scott W. Hegerty

Addresses: Centre for Research on International Economics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA ' School of Management, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA ' Department of Economics, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL 60625, USA

Abstract: Because economic theory suggests that the effects of exchange-rate volatility on trade flows are not uniformly negative, it is necessary to test them empirically. This literature has grown in recent years to cover numerous country pairs and individual products, proving that these effects are indeed ambiguous. Yet, this has raised another important issue: properly measuring exchange-rate volatility. Previous research used annual data and standard deviation-based measure of exchange-rate volatility. In this paper, we use quarterly data and a GARCH-based measure of volatility to assess sensitivity of trade flows of 70 industries that trade between the USA and Korea. Comparing our findings in this paper to those of previous research, we discover that, indeed, the results are sensitive to different measures of exchange-rate volatility.

Keywords: exchange rate volatility; industry data; South Korea; United States; USA; GARCH; trade flows; volatility measurement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTGM.2016.076320

International Journal of Trade and Global Markets, 2016 Vol.9 No.2, pp.103 - 136

Received: 11 Sep 2015
Accepted: 09 Oct 2015
Published online: 03 May 2016 *

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