Description:
A long empirical literature has examined
the idea that, in the absence of hedging mechanisms,
currency risk should have an adverse effect on the export
volumes of risk averse exporters. But there are no clear
conclusions from this literature, and the current consensus
seems to be that there is at most a weak negative effect of
exchange rate volatility on aggregate trade flows. However,
most of this literature examines the impact of exchange rate
volatility on aggregate trade flows, implicitly assuming a
uniform impact of this volatility on exporters across
sectors. This paper explots the fact that, if exchange rate
volatility is detrimental for trade, firms exporting goods
that offer a natural hedge against exchange rate
fluctuations -- i.e. those whose international price is
negatively correlated with the nominal exchange rate of the
country where they operate -- should be relatively benefited
in environments of high exchange rate volatility, and
capture a larger share of the country's export basket.
This hypothesis is tested using detailed data on the
composition of trade of 132 countries at 4-digit SITC level.
The results show that the commodities that offer natural
hedge capture a larger share of a country's export
basket when the exchange rate is volatile, but there is only
weak evidence that the availability of financial derivatives
to hedge currency risk reduces the importance of a
sector's natural hedge.