The Nexus between Economic Growth and Intra-Industry Trade

Abstract

According to traditional trade theories, foreign trade affects economic growth via several channels such as knowledge and technology spillover, improvement of resources allocation, increasing productivity and competitiveness. Within the framework of new trade theories, the effect of foreign trade on economic growth is ambiguous, and this effect depends on the combination of the different effects specially the market structure. Regarding to the theoretical ambiguity and lack of the empirical studies on the topic, the present paper investigates the relationship between intra-industry trade and economic growth by using the Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) method for selected developed and developing countries. during 2001-2014. The results of the model estimation showed that this relationship is positive for the developed countries, while interestingly we found the negative relationship for the developing countries. Despite the latter result, there are still high potentials for the developing countries to exploit their capability in the new trade to promote their economic growth if the new trade determinants will be considered in their policy making.

Keywords

• economic growth
• intra industry trade
• new trade theories
• developing and developed countries
• panel vector autoregressive (pvar)