Effects of Exchange Rate Volatility On Non-Traditional Exports In Ghana

Abstract

The government of Ghana has implemented a number of policies to strengthen the production and export of non-traditional products as a way of diversifying exports in Ghana with very little success. Foremost among these policies is the liberalization of exchange rate. Meanwhile, the exchange rate has been very volatile. The study, therefore, examines the effects of exchange rate volatility on non-traditional exports in Ghana.This study employed Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) co-integration estimation technique for the investigation. The results indicate that exchange rate volatility negatively impacts Ghana’s non-traditional exports. Also, the effect is greater in the long- run than it is in the short-run. Other results also show that world income, growth rate of the economy and Treasury bill rate promote non-traditional exports, but real effective exchange rate does not. The value of the paper lies in the discussion of the short-run and long-run effects of exchange rate volatility on non-traditional exports in the Ghanaian context.