Fish Exports and the Growth of the Agricultural Sector: The Case of South and Southeast Asian Countries

Abstract

The per-capita demand of fish and fish products, and paired to it, their production and trade, have substantially increased during the last few decades. For many developing countries these developments open a channel for sustainable economic progress. Against this background, this article investigates whether fish exports Granger-cause long-run economic growth of the agricultural sector (“fish export-led growth”) in a panel of eight South and Southeast Asian countries. A dynamic panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is estimated based on data for the years 2000 to 2018. The results indicate that fish exports have a significant positive impact on the growth of the agricultural sector in the long run. These findings apply to both the lower- and the upper-middle-income countries included in the analysis. Long-run Granger causality tests within a panel vector error correction model indicate that agricultural value added per worker reacts to deviations from the long-run equilibrium, whereas fish exports per worker are weakly exogenous. Thus, the paper finds supporting evidence for fish export-led growth. The paper concludes with some thoughts about how this finding can help policymakers in their attempt to induce sustainable agricultural development to eradicate poverty and to enhance living standards.

Analysis of Trade, Investment, and Global Value Chain on the Gross Domestic Product of Fisheries Sector in Indonesia

“…These results indicate that when the net exports of the Indonesian fisheries and marine sector increase, it will have an impact on increasing the GDP of the Indonesian fisheries and marine sector, but not significantly. Emam et al (2021)also found analytical evidence that fish exports have a significant positive effect on the growth of the agricultural sector in the long term.…”

“…The specifications for this research model refer to several empirical studies related to the research objectives, such as research from (Alshubiri et al, 2019), (Abe et al, 2017;Eegunjobi & Ngepah, 2022;Emam et al, 2021;Miar et al, 2020;Seung, 2022).…”

“…This study focuses on fisheries and the marine sector, particularly those that are connected to economic activity. This is based on prior empirical gaps such as Alshubiri et al (2019) explaining that marine fish production has a positive and significant effect on the sea trade balance and Emam et al (2021) finding analytical evidence that fish exports have a significant positive impact on the long-term growth of the agricultural sector. On the other hand, research in Indonesia Sitompul et al (2018) explains that improving trade infrastructures can enhance exports of fisheries in Indonesia (port infrastructure, quality of electricity supply, governance and increasing the efficiency of cross-border trade).…”

The Study of trade, investment, and global value chain on the fisheries gross domestic product in Indonesia: panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model approach

“…Jaringan inovasi ekonomi kelautan merupakan proyek yang bertujuan untuk menyatukan banyak peserta (lembaga penelitian publik, usaha besar, usaha kecil dan menengah, universitas, dan lembaga publik lainnya) ke dalam jaringan dengan regulasi yang fleksibel (Colgan, 2016;OECD, 2019;UNCTAD, 2014). Alshubiri et al (2019) explained in his study that marine fish production had a positive and significant effect on the marine trade balance, in addition Emam et al (2021) also found analytical evidence that fish exports had a significant positive effect on the growth of the agricultural sector in the long term. In a study in Indonesia, Sitompul et al (2018) explained that Indonesian fishery exports can be increased by increasing trade facilities (port infrastructure, quality of electricity supply, governance and increasing efficiency of cross-border trade).…”

Toward Sustainability: Dynamics of Total Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Aggregate Income, Non-Renewable Energy, and Renewable Power

“…The mechanism of the short-run adjustment was probed by the method of PVECM, which is a capable and reliable econometric technique to estimate the dynamic linkages among variables and which has widely been applied in empirical data studies [66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85]. Granger causality can be adopted in the PVECM method by incorporating a vector of autoregressive model with lagged variables and the residuals of long term balance regressions.…”