Trade, Investment and Growth Nexus in Pakistan: An Application of Cointegration and Multivariate Causality Test

Abstract

This paper develops a multivariate model to test the causality between exports and investment and economic growth in Pakistan. Most of the previous studies in this area have not paid any attention to stationarity and co-integration issues. The underlying series are tested and it was found that the series are non-stationary in their levels and not co-integrated. The Hsiao’s version of the Granger Causality method is used, the order in which the variables are entered into the model is also considered by using (SG) criterion, which is very important in the multivariate frame work and it improves the robustness of the causality results. The results show that there exists a strong bi-directional causality between exports growth and investment growth to GDP growth. It was also found that exports growth causes imports growth, investment growth causes exports growth, and imports growth causes GDP growth and investment growth, but not the opposite. These findings support the fact that both exports and investment are considered as an engine of growth in Pakistan. The causal inferences are fairly stable over the sample period.