The Relationship between Exports and Economic Growth in East Asian Countries: a Multivariate Threshold Autoregressive Approach

During the process of economic development, different economic policies are adopted in accordance with particular circumstances. Therefore, conventional methods of time-series analysis may give misleading results if the problems associated with regime switches are not considered. The relationship between export growth and output growth is explored using a multivariate threshold model with regimes defined by the export -import ratio. In the cases of five countries that are recognized as being outward-oriented, we find that, except for Hong Kong, the relationship whereby exports lead output prevails in at least one regime for each of four of the countries being studied. The regime-based threshold autoregressive model thus appears to possess certain advantages over the more conventional linear autoregressive model.