Investigating the J Curve in the Trade relations of Iran using the Aggregate Trade Balance Approach

The impact of exchange rate on the trade balance is one of the basic and controversial topics in the field of international economics. Changes in the exchange rates can cause different effects on a country's trade volume in the short term and long term, whose time-path is shown by the J curve. In this study, the aggregate trade balance approach and the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and error correction model (ECM) are used to analyze the J-curve in Iran. The results show that Iran’s current account time path is not consistent with J-curve. Specifically, the response of the trade balance to increasing exchange rates is positive and significant in both short run and the long run.