CONDITIONAL EXCHANGE-RATE VOLATILITY AND THE VOLUME OF INTERNATIONAL-TRADE - EVIDENCE FROM THE EARLY 1900S

Exports from Britain to the United States from 1900 to 1940 are examined to ascertain the effect of exchange-rate volatility on the volume of trade. In addition to using a rolling standard deviation measure of exchange rate uncertainty, the conditional variance of the exchange-rate series modelled as a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH) process is used to generate an alternative measure of exchange-rate uncertainty. The results of estimation using the two measures of exchange-rate volatility suggest that increases in the volatility of the real exchange rate reduce the volume of trade.