Exports, Imports and Income in Taiwan: An Examination of the Export Led Growth Hypothesis

Cointegration and vector autoregression are used to examine relationships among exports, imports, and income in Taiwan from 1971 to 1995. These three series are cointegrated. There is bidirectional Granger causality between exports and imports, and between imports and income. Impulse responses and variance decompositions uncover only weak links from exports to income. The export led growth hypothesis is not supported for Taiwan during this period of rapid growth. [F1, F4, O0]