Trade Liberalisation and Economic Growth in Macedonia

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to explore the effects of trade on Macedonian economic growth. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is applied on yearly data over the period of 1993-2014. Empirical investigation reveals that an increase of population and openness demonstrate a positive and significant effect on Macedonian economic growth. Given other diverging findings, this suggests that the relationship between trade reforms and growth through the productivity function may vary across transition economies. Nevertheless, the findings of this paper indicate that policies focusing on market liberalisation and opening the economy to trade have a positive effect on Macedonian economic growth, both in the short run and the long run.