PAKISTAN SOCIETY OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMISTS

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PAKISTAN SOCIETY OF DEVELOPMENT

ECONOMISTS

        FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT, EXPORTS AND DOMESTIC OUTPUT IN PAKISTAN

MOHSIN HASNAIN AHMAD

Project Economist

SHAISTA ALAM

Project Economist

                                                          And

MOHAMMAD SABIHUDDIN BUTT

SRE/Associate Professor

Applied Economics Research Centre

University of Karachi

Karachi-75270, Pakistan

NITNETEEN ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

January 13-15, 2004

PIDE, Quaid-e-Azam University Campus

Islamabad


FOREIGN DIERCT INVESTMENT, EXPORTS AND DOMESTIC OUTPUT IN PAKISTAN

MOHSIN HASNAIN AHMAD, SHAISTA ALAM and MOHAMMAD SABIHUDDIN BUTT

ABSTRACT

Most empirical work on the effects of outward-oriented policies in developing countries has identified openness with trade.However; openness involves much more than just trade. This paper analysis the relationship among foreign direct investment, trade and domestic output by employing Granger non-causality recently developed by Toda and Yamamota over the period 1972 to 2001.The results show the long run relationship among the variables. The results support the export-led growth hypothesis. The finding indicates that FDI-domestic output nexus. This suggests that domestic firms through spillover effect mechanism have got benefit from FDI.The findings do not show FDI-export growth nexus. The results indicate that the integration of the Pakistan economy with the world economy should be enhanced with the policies to attract more FDI in order to gain the spill over effects of FDI to output and particularly FDI-led export growth.


FOREIGN DIERCT INVESTMENT, EXPORTS AND DOMESTIC OUTPUT IN PAKISTAN

MOHSIN HASNAIN AHMAD, SHAISTA ALAM and MOHAMMAD SABIHUDDIN BUTT

1. INTRODUCTION

The impact of the policy reform on economic performance has been one of the stifling issues in development economics in the recent years. Since the middle 1970s, there has been considerable progress in the trade reform in the most developing countries, turning from an import substation strategy to export-oriented approach. Pakistan also follows export-oriented policies. Pakistan’s trade pattern and trade policy been moving towards fewer and fewer controls, tariffs rates have come tumbling down and more openness. Export-led-growth hypothesis (ELG) suggests that due to positive correlation between export and growth those export-oriented policies contribute to economic growth. Thus, international trade and development theory suggests both export growth contributes positively to economic growth and also output can affect export. On the basis of this framework, most empirical work on the effects of export promoting strategy followed in developing countries evaluated openness with trade. Empirical research about the effect of this liberalization process has treated export as principal channels for growth. The relationship with exports and growth, grounded in endogenous growth theory, has been tested for Pakistan [(Khan (1995); Ahmad, et al. (2000); Akbar (2000)].

The rapid growth in foreign direct investment over the last few decades, 5 percent of world GDP in 1980 to 10% percent in 1995 (World Investment Report, 1997), has spurred a large body of literature examine to the determinants of and its effects on growth. The effects of FDI can be wide reaching, with evidence suggesting that FDI impacts significantly on trade, employment and factor cost.The source of the fragility of trade and growth results may stem from the omission of relevant mechanisms through which openness can promote growth. In particular, the liberalization process is expected to increase not only trade but also foreign direct investment. In this context, intrinsic importance of foreign direct investment (FDI), focusing only on trade as a proxy for openness may be misleading (Goldberg and Klien, 1999).Sun (1998) summaries the argument about nexus between economic growth and inward FDI as follows: foreign capital inflow augment the supply of funds for investment thus promoting capital formation in the host country. Inward FDI can stimulate local investment by increasing domestic investment through links in the production chain when foreign firms buy locally made inputs or when foreign firms supply source intermediate inputs to local firms. Furthermore, inward FDI can increase the host country’s export capacity causing the developing country to increase its foreign exchange earning.

The best of our knowledge, no study has been done to examine existence and nature of any causal relationship between FDI, export and output by employing Granger non-causality procedure recently developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) and Dolado and Lutkepohl (1996) over the period 1972 to 2001 in Pakistan.

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The plan of the paper is as follows: Section 2 examines FDI influence on the export-growth relationship, Methodology and Data source presents in Section 3 and 4 respectively, Section 4 analysis the empirical results and Section 5 presents a concluding summary.


2. FDI INFULENCE ON THE EXPORT-GROWTH RELATIONSHIP

The export-led growth hypothesis postulates that exports are a main determinant of overall economic growth. There are quite a few arguments that can be used to provide the theoretical rationale for this hypothesis. Firstly, export sector may generate positive externalities on non-export sectors through more efficient management styles and improved ...

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