International trade, exchange rate regimes, and financial crises

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to study the impact of different exchange rate regimes on international trade and to analyze their performance during crises. To this end, a gravity equation for bilateral trade is estimated for a sample of 191 countries over the period 1970–2016 by adding a set of regressors built from a de factoclassification of exchange rate arrangements and the dates of recognized financial crises. Moreover, we differentiate between anchor currencies and direct and indirect exchange rate arrangements. The gravity model is consistently estimated by including three different types of high-dimensional fixed effects and using PPML estimates. The main empirical findings are: (i) other intermediate exchange rate regimes, between completely fixed and completely flexible, promote flows of goods between countries; (ii) results depend on the anchor currency and indirect arrangements do not have any significant impact on international trade; (iii) systemic banking crises negatively affect trade flows between countries; and (iv) the impact of the exchange rate regimes on trade during crisis depends on the anchor currency and whether the crisis takes place in the exporting or the importing country.