Trade Intensity Spillover Effects on East Asian Sustainable Economic Growth

Abstract

This paper has included the exports and imports per unit of labour (trade intensity) in the intensive growth model beside the traditional factors of production such as capital deepening to find out the contribution of total factor productivity per unit of labour (TFP intensity) to the economic growth of the most significant East Asian countries [China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea (Republic of Korea), Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand]. This paper finds out that the impact of trade intensity is positive with little contribution to TFP intensity growth with light contribution of labour productivity to these countries economic growth. These findings showed that most of East Asian productivity is input driven without technological progress to display the spillover effects of the interaction of foreign technology and human capital that should be translated into technology transfer to local firms and advanced skills, with the exception of Japan and South Korea.