The Impact of Exchange Rate Uncertainty on Import in Iran

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Abstract

Foreign trade of any country is considered as one of the major economic sectors of that society as far as some refer to trade as the “engine of growth”. Foreign exchange rate and its volatilities is one of the effective factors determining foreign trade. The present paper deals with the impact of real exchange rate uncertainty on imports in Iran during 1979-2009. In this respect, first, among various criteria of real exchange rate uncertainty, the study condiders the so-called auto-regressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) model to calculate the real exchange rate uncertainty; and the real exchange rate uncertainty variable along with other variables such as GDP were put into imports regression model by performing co-integration test among existing variables in import model and certainty of existence of minimum one long-term relation among them, the vector error correction model was assessed by imposing a long-term vector auto-regression model. Based on the results, it was specified that the real exchange rate uncertainty during the concerned period had negative impact on imports.

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