Title: Dominant Currency Pricing: Evidence from Korean Exports

Author: Minkyu Son(BOK)

 Using product-level data for Korean exports from 2000 to 2021, this paper examines the determinants of invoicing currency in international trade. We obtain robust evidence of the two underlying motives in export currency choice. First is strategic complementarities. Korean exports tend to be invoiced in a currency that is predominantly used by competitors in the market. Second is real hedging. Industries that rely on imported inputs denominated in a certain currency are more likely to invoice their exports in the currency of importing. These two channels would serve to maintain the Dominant Currency Pricing (DCP), in which just few currencies such as the US dollar play an outsized role in global trade. To further document the role of these two motives, we conduct a novel event study on the establishment of a direct foreign exchange market for the Korean won and the Chinese renminbi in 2014. The direct foreign exchange market stimulated renminbi invoicing among Korean exports, particularly more to destinations with high market shares of Chinese exporters, and more from Korean industries relying on renminbi-denominated imported inputs. Finally, as a key implication of invoicing currency, we confirm its close link with the degree of exchange rate pass-through. The destination prices of Korean exports are more sensitive to the dollar-destination currency exchange rate than the exchange rate between trading partners, due to its high reliance on dollars in export invoicing.