Trade Prices and Volumes in East Asia Through the Crisis

35 Pages Posted: 26 Jun 2000

See all articles by Marvin J. Barth III

Marvin J. Barth III

Bank for International Settlements (BIS)

Trevor Dinmore

Deutche Bank AG, Global Markets Research

Date Written: August 1999

Abstract

This paper presents a break-down of the export and import performance of selected East Asian countries into changes in price and volume. The results show that in aggregate, the decline in export revenue experienced by these countries in 1998 was largely due to a 9.1 percent fall in prices, and that export volume actually rose. Similarly, while the import volume of these countries did fall in 1998, the decline was not as great as in the dollar value of those imports, but reflected a larger slide in import prices of 10.8 percent. The fall in import and export prices in the East Asian region began in 1996, before the crisis, but intensified in the Summer and Fall of 1997 as the currency crisis unfolded and continued through the Spring of 1999. Since the fall in import prices was apparently greater than the corresponding fall in export prices, these countries have collectively seen an improvement in their terms of trade during the crisis, reversing pre-crisis declines. The six countries that form the heart of this study were the source of 12.5 percent of U.S. non-oil imports in 1998, and the accrued benefit to U.S. consumers of the two year price collapse may have been as much as a quarter of the value of those imports over that period.

Keywords: Asian Crisis, Trade Prices

JEL Classification: F14

Suggested Citation

Barth, Marvin J. and Dinmore, Trevor, Trade Prices and Volumes in East Asia Through the Crisis (August 1999). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=231797 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.231797

Marvin J. Barth (Contact Author)

Bank for International Settlements (BIS) ( email )

CH-4002 Basel, Basel-Stadt
Switzerland

Trevor Dinmore

Deutche Bank AG, Global Markets Research ( email )

31 W. 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019
United States
212-46917603 (Phone)

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