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Muhamad Rias K V Zainuddin · Md Shafiin Shukor · Muhamad Solehuddin Zulkifli · Amirul Hamza Abdullah ·Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia ·2021 ·JEL: F10, F14

The recent pandemic outbreak has distorted international trade flows as the global economic activity reaches a nearstandstill due to stricter movement control imposed by most countries worldwide. Despite gaining the researcher’s attention, the impact of Covid-19 on trade performances are still relatively understudied. Hence, this study aims to analyse the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak on the bilateral sectoral export for Malaysia. This study employs Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) regressions to analyse the sectoral impact in gravity models. The findings provide new perspectives on the varying impacts of the current pandemic outbreak on sectoral trade performances. The dummy variables that represent the existence of Covid-19 have significantly reduced bilateral exports for 11 sectors while increased the exports for seven sectors. Meanwhile, the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak (measured by the number of new cases and death cases) in Malaysia has negative impacts on 14 sectors. The reason for this is that when the current pandemic outbreak in Malaysia is more severe, the government has to enforce stricter movement controls that affect productions and reduce exports. On the other hand, the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak in trading partners has positive impacts on the export for 13 sectors in Malaysia. This is because the more severe pandemic outbreak in trading nations causes lower production capacities and thus higher dependence on imported goods. Differences between the impact of Covid-19 existence and severity by sectors should serve as a red flag for Malaysia’s policymakers to take immediate actions to minimise the impact of the ongoing pandemic outbreak and maximise gains from sectors that have higher demand post Covid-19. The net negative impact on the export performance further reiterates the need for government intervention policies to ensure domestic firms can withstand the current tide, which then minimises the social and economic impacts and helps the economy to recover.

Y. Amjad · N.A.M Naseem · W.N.W. Azman-Saini · Tajul Ariffin Masron · K. Kriskkumar ·Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia ·2018

Export has been considered as main contributor to economic growth in which also known as export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis. The purpose of this study is to identify the export-led growth nexus in Malaysia. Specifically, this study focuses on disaggregated level of exports such as export of goods and manufactured sectors. By using ARDL co-integration technique for data that covers from 1980 to 2015, the result discovers that exports have positive impact on economic growth, particularly at disaggregated levels of exports namely exports of goods and export of manufactured sectors. This further supports the validation of the export-led growth hypothesis, especially in small, open and dynamic economy like Malaysia. From policy point of view, Malaysia policy makers should give special focus to search for better catalyst of exports promotion strategy to continuously and effectively promote long-term economic growth.

Muralitharan Paramasua · Evelyn S. Devadason · Pardis Moslemzadeh Tehrani ·Institutions and Economies ·2019 ·JEL: H70; P48; P45

Environmental regulation is a key driver for the growth of environmental goods and services (EGS), while trade facilitates the diffusion of these goods and services. There has been no shortage of initiatives to develop the EGS sector in Malaysia.However, some policy (non-market) failures are already observed in the governance of this sector. This paper identifies the inadequacies in the regulatory framework (environmental institutions and laws) for creating an enabling environment for the EGS sector. The paper also reviews the trade direction for EGS and delineates concerns related to the sectoral approach of policy making for the sector. The findings from the documentary analyses suggest that the laws and policies related to the EGS are fragmented as they come under the purview of different agencies. As a result of this regulatory incoherence, the coordination and enforcement are weak leading to low uptake of EGS. The absence of a national policy for EGS also obscures the trade direction for this sector. The policy priority and generous support accorded to the renewable energy segment, more specifically, are also a concern given the limited and uncertain role that this segment is expected to play in global energy use.

Afiza Idris · Normaz Wana Ismail · Shaufique Fahmi · Ahmad Sidique · Shivee Ranjanee Kaliappan ·International Journal of Economics and Management ·2020 ·JEL: C41, F10, F14

Furthering future growth for the food processing industry in Malaysia faces multiple challenges, an area in which a recent trend shows the competitiveness of the exported processed food industry is declining. The sustainability of export flow is found to be a critical factor for long-term export growth. This paper provides empirical evidence on the survival pattern of Malaysia’s processed food exports. The Kaplan-Meier technique is used in this paper to estimate the export survival time and rate of 128 processed food products at 31 export destinations for the period between 2000 and 2017. The findings show that food exporters face a high risk of failure in the initial years of exporting. At the aggregate level, the median survival time of processed food exports is two years, which means that 50% of export relationships face failure by the second year of exporting. The chances of export survival differ in terms of product groups and export destinations. This study also found that a higher initial export value increases the success rate of export survival.

Beng Ann Tee · Siew Yean Tham · Andrew Jia Yi Kam ·Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies ·2020 ·JEL: F1, F14, L8

ICT intensive services were found to contribute to the service export growth in developed countries. However, empirical work on the role of ICT in ASEAN’s services export is sparse due mainly to the scarcity of bilateral services trade data. This study uses mirror data from the ASEAN-5’s trading partners from 2000 to 2012 for examining the impact of ICT on the ASEAN-5’s services export. A set of constructed ICT indicators are found to have significant positive network effect on the ASEAN-5’s services export. Thus, the higher the ICT development level in both trading partner countries, the higher their bilateral services exports with each other. But, the positive impact of ICT on the ASEAN-5’s trade in services can be offset by the presence of trade costs. Therefore, policies enhancing trade facilitation should be used in tandem with the development of ICT in order to promote the ASEAN-5’s services export.

Bee Hui Soh · Ghee-Thean Lim · Soo Y Chua ·Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies ·2021 ·JEL: B27, F14, O13, Q17, Q22

Malaysia, one of the global major fish producers, has highly traded fisheries products given its many water bodies. Nonetheless, it faces a serious fish trade deficit, implying that the Malaysian fisheries sector might lose its competitiveness in the global market. This paper adopts a modified constant market share (CMS) analysis, which incorporates a net-share approach index and geometric framework, to measure the export competitiveness of the Malaysian fisheries sector. The findings reveal that half of the fisheries products exhibit optimistic export competitiveness. Malaysia reflects the strongest competitiveness in exporting frozen fish and the least competitiveness in the export of crustaceans. Additional effort and attention on those less competitive groups of aquatic invertebrates, live fish and crustaceans are required to improve the export performance. Application of the modified approach is highly proposed as it is not only a simple measurement that gives relatively more accurate results but also succeeds to overcome inconsistency in the traditional approach. The findings provide evidence of unrealised fish export potential regarding product categories, which helps policymakers, traders and marketers to develop their long-term strategic plans and enhance the export competitiveness of the fisheries sector in Malaysia.

Siew Yean Tham · Soo Khoon Goh · Koi Nyen Wong · Ahmad Fadhli ·Emerging Markets Finance and Trade ·2018 ·JEL: F21

In light of a change in the foreign direct investment (FDI) landscape such as the rapid growth of outward FDI from Malaysia since 2007, this article ascertains the possible impact of inward and outward FDI on Malaysia’s bilateral export trade at the sectoral level, using a dynamic gravity approach. The findings reveal that both inward and outward FDI are complementary to bilateral export trade in the services, mining, and manufacturing sectors. Furthermore, the distance elasticity and the real effective exchange rate have a different negative impact on different sectors. Overall, the sectoral bilateral exports could not insulate against external events.

Miao Zhanga · Md Aslam Mia ·Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy ·2020 ·JEL: D22 F23 L60 O14

With cognizance to firms’ heterogeneity in an industry, this paper employs the most recent, unpublished and large-scale firm-level data of 14,687 manufacturing firms in Malaysia in 2015 to revisit the drivers of manufacturing exports. Applying the OLS and logistic regressions, we observed a strong positive relationship between a firm’s labor productivity and export intensity. Firms’ foreign ownership, size and age are positively connected to their export competitiveness. The incorporation of location variables into the regression reveals that firms in the Southern peninsula of Malaysia (e.g., Johor) have a positive effect and demonstrate the highest probability to engage in export activities. Our study is informative to trade policymakers on the key drivers of manufacturing exports, providing references to not only Malaysia, but other economies in Eastern Asia and developing nations.

Xuefeng Qian · Kalsoom Rafi Que · Yingna Wu ·China and World Economy ·2020 ·JEL: F14, F16, J23, O10

As a large trading nation, China competes with importing countries’ domestic and thirdcountry markets but also creates growth opportunities for exporters. Most studies on China trade shocks or “China shocks” focuse on the impacts of import competition on developed economies. The present paper complements research on China shocks by exploring the other side of the trade exposure to China – China as the largest importer, rather than as an exporter. We analyze the effects of export expansion into China on the local labor markets of the exporting developing countries for the years 1992 to 2018. Using detailed export and employment data, we estimate employment pattern variations in manufacturing industries with exports from other developing countries as instruments for export exposure. We fi nd that the increase in trade exposure to China in the world economy has caused extensive job gains in manufacturing industries in developing countries that were exporters. On average, our estimations show that this trade exposure created approximately 1.5 million additional jobs from 1992 to 2018, which made an important contribution to manufacturing industries in developing countries. Our empirical analysis also shows that trade had stabilizing effects on employment in the countries in our sample generally

Arif Imam Suroso ·Economies ·2022

Palm oil is one of the most traded vegetable oils in the global market due to its versatile usage and having a lower price than competitor products. Trade is related to logistics performance as it connects the exporter and importer countries; thus, improving the indicators of logistics also improves the performance of trade, especially in agricultural export. Currently, no study has revealed the effect of logistics performance on palm oil export by considering all the indicators. This study investigates the impact of all the indicators of the logistics performance index on palm oil and palm-based products. Using a panel data regression approach, the extended gravity model is applied in this study to examine Indonesia and Malaysia as the leading exporters of palm oil and palmbased products. The results reveal that all the Logistics Performance Index indicators affect palm oil and palm-based products export in Indonesia and Malaysia. The critical indicators of the Logistics Performance Index in Indonesia are timeliness and tracking and tracing. However, competence and quality of trade infrastructure are the main indicators of Malaysia’s palm oil and palm-based products. The future direction of this research is to explore other agricultural commodities and extend the period of the analysis.