Does exchange rate volatility influence import commodities of India-US? Evidence from ARDL approach

Purpose: The aim the study is to explore the impact of real exchange rate volatility and other macroeconomic variable such as price of import, industrial production and real exchange rate on 45 import commodities, considering global financial crisis period on India's import from the US. The empirical analysis at disaggregate level of import indicates the existence of both short-run and long-run effect in one-third importing commodities. The results show both positive and negative effect and causality among variables. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses E-GARCH model to gage the real exchange rate volatility, an autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bound test technique to discover the adequate short- and long-run relationships and Toda-Yamamoto causality method to analyze the causality among variables. The study uses the time period from 2002:M09 to 2019:M06. Findings: The empirical analysis at disaggregate level of import indicates the existence of both short-run and long-run effect in one-third importing commodities. The results show both positive and negative effects and causality among variables. Practical implications: The finding of the study suggests that macroeconomic variables have significant role and could be important to undertake the small and medium scale industries in policymaking. Government may need to make decision for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as their performance can bring change in the trade to compete globally by increasing and controlling the price of the import and defending the domestic competitiveness. Originality/value: The study uses additional variable namely price of import and includes the global financial crisis period to measure dampening effect on each commodity by using robust econometric technique in context of emerging nation like India.