Do exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects on the trade balance? Evidence from U.S.–Korea commodity trade

Previous studies of the effects of exchange rate changes on Korea’s trade balance have assumed symmetry between currency depreciation and appreciation. In this paper, we distinguish between the two to show that the effects at the industry level are in fact asymmetrical in most industries for Korea’s bilateral trade with the U.S. We employ an auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach using quarterly data for the period 1989–2014 for the 79 3-digit industries in which trade between Korea and the U.S. took place. Overall, our model incorporating differentiated responses for appreciation versus depreciation reveals a more significant impact of the exchange rate on commodity trade between Korea and the U.S. than a more standard model that imposes symmetry.