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The notion that trade and capital flows drive exchange rates is widespread in the financial press but receives scant attention in economic research. The flow market model of the exchange rate has fallen out of fashion in the 1970s, at a time when stock-oriented approaches, such as monetary and portfolio balance models, gained prominence. However, given the limited empirical success of mainstream exchange rate models over the past decades, it may be time for a reassessment of the flow market approach. The aim of this work is to demonstrate how balance of payments imbalances influence the demands for different currencies in the foreign exchange markets over time. A dynamical system approach is used to assess how international payments evolve for different sets of assumptions regarding the joint dynamic behaviour of various balance of payments components. An important finding is that while the different components of the balance of payments affect international payment flows directly in a given country, they also determine the accumulation of foreign assets and liabilities in that country, or its international investment position. However, the international investment position itself gives rise to international payments, for instance when foreign debt becomes due and is repaid or when interest payments on the existing debt stock are made. The dynamical system approach is further applied to topics such as currency crises and the exchange rate performance of commodity exporters. Two empirical essays on the important case of Japan confirm the above hypotheses. The first essay builds a vector error correction model for the nominal exchange rate and the current account in Japan. The model allows for a Markov-switching stochastic trend in the current account. The model is capable of producing the strong cycles of the current account and the gradual adjustment of the exchange rate, which can both be observed in the Japanese data. Bayesian estimation proceeds using an innovative Gibbs sampling procedure. The second essay estimates the maturity structure of Japan's foreign lending. It constructs an explicit measure of cross-border payment flows across Japanese borders, based on the estimated maturity structure of Japan's foreign lending. The simulated cross-border payment flows are shown to closely follow the movements of the Japanese exchange rate. An additional empirical essay considers the reverse question of how the current account is influenced by exchange rate fluctuations. Based on German and Japanese data, it is shown that strong exchange rate movements have tended to influence the trend of the current account, rather than its level as is typically assumed in the literature.

This thesis analyses interactions between firms and governments in climate change and international trade. First, a theory of international agreements on climate change is presented in which governments negotiate targets and firms bear the cost of emission reductions. It analyses the effect on negotiations of investment, on R&D for instance. The public good nature of the problem implies that investment improves the government’s bargaining position. Anticipating this effect on the Nash-bargained outcome will induce firms, surprisingly, to over-invest with respect to the second best. The second chapter explores a different area in which firms and governments interact: trade policy. This chapter analyses the incentives for trade protection in an electoral college setting by constructing a new multi jurisdictional political agency model. The introduction of a spatial factor shows how the distribution of swing voters across decisive, swing states affects trade policy incentives. The empirical analysis introduces a measure of how industries specialise geographically in swing and decisive states by augmenting a benchmark test of the "Protection for Sale" mechanism. The evidence provides support for the theory. A newly-available firm-level panel dataset for Belgium is described in the third chapter, in a bid to understand the patterns in the trade transaction data. The final chapter considers the determinants of firm exporting behaviour, in particular liquidity constraints. A heterogeneous �firms trade model shows how exporters in general, firms exporting to more destinations and to smaller markets, weighted by distance, are less likely to be credit-constrained. Finally, in the presence of liquidity constraints, the impact of exchange rates on trade flows is decomposed. These equilibrium relations hold in the Belgian data, measuring credit constraints with firm-year-level credit scores. This highlights the potential role of governments in determining, through their policies on credit constraints, the patterns of trade and hence productivity levels and overall welfare.

Le sujet de cette thèse porte sur l’analyse des liens entre la politique étrangère et le commerce international, hormis un chapitre qui est de nature plus méthodologique. Dans le chapitre 1, j’étudie dans quelle mesure les intérêts géopolitiques sont une motivation essentielle pour la formation d’accords d’intégration économique. Les grands pays négocient et signent systématiquement des accords avec des pays plus petits qui offrent plus d’avantages en termes politiques qu’en termes économiques. Le chapitre 2 propose une analyse empirique sur les effets des sanctions sur les pays sanctionnant, et plus particulièrement sur leurs exportations. Dans ce travail en collaboration avec Matthieu Crozet, nous examinons l’impact global du régime de sanctions contre la Fédération de Russie sur les flux d’exportation des pays occidentaux, et l’impact micro sur les entreprises exportatrices françaises. Le chapitre 3 centre son analyse sur l’étude du mécanisme par lequel les relations politiques entre pays influent leurs flux commerciaux. Conjointement avec Elsa Leromain, nous montrons comment les pays adaptent leur mode d’approvisionnement au climat politique avec leur partenaire commercial. Enfin, dans le chapitre 4, j’explore une question méthodologique en établissant la façon dont les coûts commerciaux devraient être agrégés des niveaux inférieurs d’agrégation géographique au plus élevés en prenant l’exemple de la définition des distances moyennes entre pays en utilisant l’imagerie satellite sur l’émission de lumière nocturne pour mesurer l’activité économique locale. / The subject of this doctoral thesis revolves around the analysis of the links between foreign policy and international trade, along with one chapter that is of more methodological nature. In chapter1 I show how geopolitical interests are a key motivation for economic integration agreements. Big countries systematically negotiate and sign these agreements with smaller countries that offer political benefits at the expense of economic ones. Chapter 2 provides an empirical analysis into the effect of sanctions on sanctioning countries—their exports in particular. In this joint work with Matthieu Crozet, we study the macro-impact of the sanctions regime against the Russian Federation on export flows from Western countries and the micro-impact on French exporting firms. Chapter 3 takes a closer look at the mechanism through which political relations between countries impact their trade flows. A collaboration with Elsa Leromain, we show how countries adjust their input sourcing pattern to the political climate with the respective trading partner. Finally, in chapter 4 I explore the methodological issue of how trade costs should be aggregated from lower levels of geographic aggregation to higher ones and I compute theory-consistent country to country distances using nighttime satellite imagery for information on the location of economic activity.