The Impact of Leading Economic Indicators on the Export of ASEAN Countries

The article applies the ECM – ARDL model to examine the relationship between economic indicators and the existence of the disease in the long run of 10 ASEAN countries from 2000 to 2019. There are two models: The first model investigates the impact of GDP per capita, net inflow FDI, unemployment rate, and inflation rate on the proportion of export to GDP of ASEAN countries, the second model is similar to the first one but adds one more variable to the independent variable list – ‘the variable for disease’. The results prove the long-run effect of GDP per capita, FDI, unemployment and inflation rate on export of the selected countries, though individual country shows differences in the sign and magnitude of these impacts. Surprisingly, the number of people suffering from disease does not affect the export of all selected countries as expected. The results of the two models also indicate that the disequilibrium in the short run converges to the equilibrium in the long run with a high proportion, especially in the case of Cambodia and the Philippines, with the rate of 95.65% and 151.94%, respectively. The findings can be useful for policymakers in promulgating efficient policies to enhance the trading activities of the selected countries.