Hedging and invoicing strategies to reduce exchange rate exposure: a euro-area perspective

Domestic-currency invoicing and hedging allow internationally active firms to reduce their exposure to exchange rate variations. This paper discusses exchange rate exposure in terms of transaction risk (the risk of variations of the value of committed future cash flows), translation risk (the risk of variations of the value of assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currency) and broader economic risk (which takes into account the impact of exchange rate variations on competitiveness). The paper argues that domestic-currency invoicing and hedging with exchange rate derivatives allow a fairly straightforward management of transaction and translation risk and discusses under which circumstances their use is optimal. Economic risk is by its very nature harder to manage, but the paper argues that natural hedging provides possibilities for doing so. The discussion of management techniques for exchange rate exposure is complemented with an analysis of their actual use. This draws on data on the invoicing currencies of euro-area exports and on previous empirical work on
hedging, which has, however, focussed largely on firms in the US and a small number of EU Member States. A novelty of this paper is a survey of actual hedging strategies and techniques of large corporations from a euro-area perspective. The paper finds that euro-area exporters
have instruments at hand to limit the adverse impact of euro appreciation and that they make ample use of them.