Gravity and pricing to market (PTM) models have been used to elaborate determinants of bilateral trade and export pricing for different countries and branches. Typically, only one of the two methods was chosen. We show in a stepwise approach how a combination of both methods can reveal novel results on the determinants of exports and export pricing behaviour. For the case of German beer exports, we show that structural differences exist between markets on which exporters apply either PTM or non-PTM strategies. German beer exporters apply PTM strategies, in particular local-currency stabilization, on those markets where imports are very sensitive to exchange-rate changes. Non-PTM strategies, i. e. full exchange-rate transmission, occur on export markets with insensitive reactions. Apart from PTM strategies, German beer exports are strongly dependent on policy variables such as the introduction of the Euro and the partner country’s membership in the EU.
Recent developments in trade literature suggest that in the presence of strategic pricing in some markets and an incomplete exchange rate pass-through resulting from it, the standard gravity model has to be augmented with an exchange rate variable. As symmetry of pass-through has been questioned in new pricing-to-market (PTM) studies, we argue that this asymmetric impact of the exchange rate on trade should be explicitly modeled within the gravity framework. This consideration of asymmetric effects of exchange rate appreciations and depreciations on export values and quantities might provide insights into the driving forces of PTM in a particular market (or group of markets) given that the existing literature emphasizes two main hypotheses that explain the occurrence of an asymmetric PTM (market share hypothesis and marketing bottleneck hypothesis). In this paper, we propose a way to integrate individual (asymmetric) long-run effects of currency appreciations and depreciations on trade flows into the gravity model and empirically investigate which of the driving forces is relevant for the case of German beer exports. PTM studies often argue that the market share protection is a reason for local currency price stabilization mechanisms applied in the most important markets. Yet, the results of our analysis reveal that this might no longer be the case when all trading partners are considered. [EconLit citations: C33; F14; L66]. C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.