Research

Sonia Kumari Selvarajan · Rossazana Ab-Rahim · Nor-Ghani Md-Nor ·Institutions and Economies ·2018 ·JEL: F13; O16; O53

East Asia Pacific has catapulted to be the most dynamic region in the world as a result of economic liberalisation and sustainable growth. This study seeks to investigate if selected East Asian countries are able to converge in terms of trade and investment openness. This paper uses the concept of Phillips and Sul to evaluate trade and investment convergence in East Asia Pacific region during the period 1990 to 2016. The overall results do not support the hypothesis that all countries converge on a single equilibrium in trade and investment liberalisation. However, findings point to the existence of club convergence.

Norimah Rambeli · Dayang Affizzah Awang Marikan · Emilda Hashim · Siti Zubaidah Mohd. Ariffin · Asmawi Hashim · Jan M. Podivinsky ·Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia ·2021 ·JEL: C32, O44, P48, Q56

The focal aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between total energy consumption, Gross Domestic Product, urbanization, trade openness and financial development on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The study focuses on two selected ASEAN countries namely, Malaysia and Singapore, due to their major contribution in CO2 emissions among other ASEAN countries, after Brunei. This study adopts the quarterly time series data from Q1:2010 to Q1:2020. By utilizing the linear ARDL method, the presence of a positive and long-term relationship was confirmed between the variables for both countries. The findings also validate the Environment Kuznets hypothesis namely, that CO2 emissions will continue to rise until the national income reaches optimum point and beyond this environment quality will begin to improve. The results established that financial development helps to reduce CO2 emissions in both the short- and long-run. Further, trade openness tends to reduce CO2 in Malaysia. For Singapore however, it reduces CO2 in the short-run but not in the long-run. In general the study reveals that the relationship between emissions of CO2 and economic development is U-shaped, for both countries. For future sustainable environment the study implies that specific financial planning towards green technology is necessary to sustain a better environment. Economic growth of the country is therefore more meaningful if accompanied with a sustainable environment for future generations.

My-Linh Nguyen · Toan Ngoc Bui ·Economies ·2021

This paper focuses on examining the nonlinear impact of trade openness (TO) on economic growth (EG) in the Asean-6 countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, and Vietnam). In order to achieve the set research objectives, the authors estimate the research model through the fixed-effect panel threshold approach. Unlike previous studies, this paper finds that there is a nonlinear impact of TO on EG, whereby TO has two threshold values. Specifically, before the first threshold value, TO plays an important role in boosting EG. However, this impact level decreases gradually when TO exceeds this threshold value. In particular, when exceeding the second threshold value, the impact of TO on EG is still positive but has a relatively low value. The research results show that if TO increases to a high level (beyond the threshold value) without combining with other complementary policies, this does not encourage high-efficiency EG. In addition, this study also shows that EG is positively affected by domestic investment and negatively affected by financial crisis. The findings in this paper are of great importance for the Asean-6 countries as well as researchers.