Fish Exports and Economic Growth: The Pakistan’s Experience

Abstract

This study attempts to explore first time ever the relationship between fish exports and economic growth of Pakistan by employing annual time series data for the period 1974–2013. Autoregressive distributed lag and Johansen and Juselius cointegration results confirm the existence of a positive long-run relationship among the variables. Further, the error correction model reveals that no immediate or short-run relationship exists between fish exports and economic growth. Different sensitivity analyses indicate that initial results are robust. Rolling window analysis has been applied to identify the yearly behaviour of fish exports, and it remains negative from 1979 to 1982, 1984 to 1988, 1993 to 1999, 2004 and from 2010 to 2013, and it shows positive impact from 1989 to 1992, 2000 to 2003 and from 2005 to 2009. Furthermore, the variance decomposition method and impulse response function suggest the bidirectional causal relationship between fish exports and economic growth. The findings are beneficial for policymakers in the area of export planning. This study also provides some policy implications in the final section.