Exchange Rate Volatility and Trade among the Asia Pacific Countries

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of exchange rate volatility on exports among 14 Asia Pacific countries, where various measures to raise the intra-region trade are being implemented. The empirical tests using annual data for the period from 1980 to 2002 detect a significant negative impact of exchange rate volatility on the volume of exports. In addition, the test results indicate that the GDP of the importing country, the depreciation of the exporting country’s currency value, the use of the same language and the membership of APEC have positive impacts on exports, while the distance between trading countries have negative impacts.