Testing export‐led growth in South Asia

Jim Love and Ramesh Chandra

Journal of Economic Studies, 2005, vol. 32, issue 2, 132-145

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to test the export‐led growth hypothesis for South Asia, a diverse region consisting of one large country, India, surrounded by a number of medium and small countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives. Design/methodology/approach - To test this, the study employs cointegration and error‐correction modelling, using data from the International Financial Statistics of the IMF. Findings - The study produces fairly mixed results, and does not find any conclusive evidence in favour of export‐led growth. While India, Maldives and Nepal exhibit export‐led growth, Bangladesh and Bhutan show the opposite result of growth‐led exports. In Pakistan and Sri Lanka no causality in either direction was found. The mixed nature of the results is further confirmed by taking a common time period since 1980. Practical implications - South Asia is one of the poorest regions of the world; so success or otherwise of export‐led growth is of great interest for policy purposes. For example, the finding of export‐led growth for the largest economy of the region, India, is particularly heartening as, by opening up its markets further to the other countries of the region, it can fuel growth in the entire region. Originality/value - This study tries to fill an important gap in the literature as it is the first comprehensive study of the region as a whole.

Keywords: Exports; Economic growth; Cause and effect analysis; South Asia; Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jespps:01443580510600913

DOI: 10.1108/01443580510600913

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Studies is currently edited by Prof Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee

More articles in Journal of Economic Studies from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().