A Theoretical Analysis of Economic Impacts of Export Credit Insurance and Guarantees

This paper developed an economic framework to analyze the economic impacts of an ECP on trade flows within the context of a partial equilibrium approach which assumes that non-payment risks are distinct between selling at home and abroad based on difficulties and expense in recovering non-payments are different in the two markets. A two-country partial equilibrium trade model is developed to analyze the economic impact of the export credit insurance and/or guarantees on trade flows. The results also show that to minimize or recover the efficiency loss, an export credit program can be employed to increase the exported quantity and reduce the excessively high equilibrium price as a result of non-payment risk. The overall net welfare loss of the two countries is smaller than the recovered efficiency loss. From the perspective of recovering efficiency loss, the use of an export credit program is justifiable.