Exchange Rate Effects on Agricultural Trade

Abstract

With sustained appreciation of the U.S. dollar over the past 4 years, the exchange rate has again taken on importance for agriculture. This overview paper revisits the analysis of exchange rate impacts, reviewing the relevant conceptual arguments, summarizing the evidence economists and agricultural economists have marshaled from the 1970s and the 1980s and from several more recent papers, presenting some illustrative recent empirical analysis of exchange rate effects, and briefly examining the detrimental consequences that sustained appreciation of the dollar is having on U.S. farm policy.