Exchange Rate Misalignment and Economic Growth: Recent Evidence in Malaysia

The present study aims at investigating the growth effects of real exchange rate misalignments in Malaysia over the period 1991:1-2009:4. The RER misalignment is built through the estimation of the NATREX equilibrium model. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration framework, the results indicate the presence of positive and significant relationship between the RER misalignment and economic growth. This finding obtained is consistent with the notion that the RER misalignment through the distortion in relative price has systematic influence on the pattern of economic development

Exchange Rate Misalignment, Volatility and Import Flows in Malaysia

This paper investigates the effect of real exchange rate misalignment and volatility on Malaysian import flows during 1991:Q1 to 2003:Q4. A measure of the quantitative proxy of the real exchange rate misalignment is constructed using the Natural Real Exchange Rate (NATREX) equilibrium model, whereas the volatility of real exchange rate is generated from the GARCH model. This paper differs from existing literature as the effects of exchange rate misalignment significantly hastened the level of Malaysian imports for period of the study. The empirical results also show that the exchange rate volatility has merely promoted the Malaysian imports during the crisis period. This suggests that the exchange rate misalignment and volatility are important determinants in inspiring Malaysian import flows, especially during the 1997 Asian financial crisis

Outward foreign direct investment and domestic output: evidence from East Asian economies

This study evaluates the impact of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic output of East Asian economies. It focuses on FDI from eight East Asian economies to Japan, the United States and United Kingdom. The analyses are carried out using annual data at both aggregate and disaggregate level for the 1981-2010 period. The result using aggregate data reveal that there is no evidence to support the idea that outward FDI is growth-enhancing. However, the results based on disaggregate data shows that only outward FDI to the United States are found to benefit East Asian economies. Meanwhile, investments in Japan and the United Kingdom do not appear to have any positive impact. These findings suggest that locational decision for outward FDI is critically important as not all destinations will bring positive benefits for the source countries

The impact of energy consumption on environmental quality: empirical evidence from the MINT countries

Rapid increases in energy consumption and economic growth over the past three decades are considered the driving force behind rising environmental degradation, which remain a threat to people and healthy environment. This study investigates the impact of energy consumption on environmental quality in the MINT countries using a panel PMG/ARDL modelling technique, and the Granger causality test spanning from 1971 to 2017. The empirical results confirm the existence of long-run nexus among the variables employed. The results also reveal that economic growth, energy consumption and bio-capacity have a positive and statistically significant effect on environmental degradation during the long run period. We find that a 1% increase in primary energy consumption leads to 0.4172% increase in environmental deterioration in the long-run period, but it is insignificant in the short run. This implies that energy consumption deteriorates environmental quality through a negative effect of ecological footprint. The result also suggests that as MINT countries increase the use of energy to accelerate pace of economic growth, environmental quality would deteriorate through increased ecological footprints. The coefficient of the error correction term (ect) is negative and significant (− 0.2306), suggesting that ecological footprint, a measure of environmental degradation would converge to its long-run equilibrium in the MINT region by 23.06% speed of adjustment every year due to contribution of economic growth, energy consumption, urbanization and biocapacity. The Granger non-causality test results reveal a unidirectional causal relationship from economic growth, energy consumption, and urbanization to ecological footprint and from economic growth to biocapacity. The results further show bi-directional causality between biocapacity and ecological footprint as well as between biocapacity and economic growth. Moreover, urbanization causes economic growth and biocapacity Granger-causes urbanization. Based on these findings, policy implications are adequately discussed

Exports and Exchange Rate Movements: The Role of Credit Market Imperfections

Focusing on a threshold regression analysis, the result provides new evidence that the negative effect of exchange rate depreciation on exports takes place as certain threshold level of credit market imperfection has been attained

Exchange rate regime, exchange rate variability and flows of Malaysia’s foreign trade

This article empirically evaluates Malaysian foreign trade effects through two types of exchange rate variability; misalignments and volatility across different exchange rate regimes from 1991:Q1 to 2003:Q4. The Natural Real Exchange Rate (NATREX) equilibrium model is employed to generate the real exchange rate misalignment while the GARCH (1, 1) model is used to measure the real exchange rate volatility, which is then tested in a model of Malaysian imports and exports. This paper differs from existing literature as the effects of exchange rate misalignment significantly hastened the level of Malaysian exports and imports for the periods, managed floating and pegged rate. On the other hand, the exchange rate volatility has merely promoted the Malaysian exports and imports during the implementation of pegged rate. This proposes that the variability of exchange rate and exchange rate regimes are important determinants in inspiring Malaysian foreign trade, especially during the 1997 financial crisis when the economic is distressed