Does Globalisation Influence Employment? Empirical Investigation on Individual as well as Panel of South Asian Countries

Abstract

Debate on globalisation versus protectionism was relevant in long back, though prevailing consensus construing protectionism saves job in the short run and slows economic growth in the long run. The objective of the study is to examine empirically whether globalisation affects overall employment generation in the South Asian countries during the period 1991–2016 in individual as well as panel of countries. Having no long-run associations in the majority of the countries, results support that the change in globalisation index makes a cause to change in employment only for Bhutan, while change of growth rate of employment makes a cause to change in the rate of globalisation for Maldives and Nepal. Further, the dynamic panel study fails to establish any long-run relationships between globalisation and employment of the countries of the region. However, in the short run, globalisation makes a cause to employment in the panel format, which is highly unlikely to happen in case of the individual countries. Thus, extent of globalisation and employment generation in the South Asian countries do not have strong inter relationships.