Cointegration and causality between trade and growth: evidence from Romania, the CEE countries and EU

A number of time-series studies exist for individual countries in the area of exports led growth but little is known about this area for Romania and some other Central Eastern European countries [CEEC]. Using quarterly data, we employ cointegration and Granger-causality tests on stochastic systems comprising exports, imports and non-exportable GDP. The findings show that only growth-led exports [GLE] hypothesis is vindicated in the case of Romania. We also test the relation between imports and growth, but failed to find any positive causality results. The inclusion of imports as a third variable within a Johansen's multivariate framework does not change the results. For comparison, same tests were applied to Bulgaria, the 10 countries recently joined the EU, the EU 15 and the EU 25. Bi-directional causality has been found for exports and non-exportable GDP only in the case of Slovenia, Czech Republic, Estonia and for the whole EU 15, implying a virtuous cycle of growth and exports