Is The Export-Led Growth Hypothesis Valid For The Central And Eastern European Countries?

Abstract

The export-oriented growth hypothesis has been examined many times, and there has been an extensive literature on this subject, mainly in the Far East Countries, with generally supportive results. In the relevant literature, it is seen that there are very limited researches in the Central and Eastern European countries, which switched to a free market economy in the 1990s and generally followed the policies aimed at export-oriented growth since the 2000s. In this study, export and economic growth data for the period 2010M01-2018M08 for 11 selected Central and Eastern European countries are used and investigated within the export and economic growth relations framework with Emirmahmutoğlu & Köse (2011) and Hatemi-J (2011) panel causality analysis. Our analysis results reveal that the export-based growth or growth-based export phenomena differ between countries depending on the export and growth potential of the countries. In addition to this result, the data obtained indicate that economic growth also has positively affects on exports. The existence of this interactive relationship between exports and economic growth based on a feedback event has been supported by both Emirmahmutoğlu & Köse (2011) and Hatemi-J (2011) causality analyzes.