The Role of Vehicle Currency in ASEAN-EU Trade: A Double-Aggregation Method

This study is the first to scrutinize how real effective exchange rate, together with the vehicle currency exchange rate, asymmetrically influences the total trade balance between ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the EU (European Union). This research employs quarterly data between 2000Q1 and 2018Q1, which is derived from several sources. We introduce a method for constructing the double-aggregated real effective exchange rate between ASEAN and the EU that captures the roles of all their currencies. Moreover, we propose the formula to compute vehicle currency exchange rate to assess the importance of vehicle currency in ASEAN-EU trade. Additionally, as asymmetrical impacts of exchange rate on trade balance are well documented by current studies, we employ Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model of Shin et al. (2014) to analyze the impacts of currency depreciation as well as appreciation in detail. The findings confirm the prominence of USD as vehicle currency in ASEAN-EU trade. Both depreciation and appreciation of ASEAN's currencies against USD can foster ASEAN's trade balance in the long run. Short-run asymmetrical impacts as well as J-curve effect are found in the vehicle currency models only. The results are robust for the cases of EU-28 and EU-27.