An Econometric Analysis of Exigent Determinants of Trade Balance in Finland: An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Approach

Abstract

A number of research papers analyzed the factors that may have impacts on the balance of trade for the effective macroeconomic policies but the results of these studies have created ambiguity which implies that further research is needed as the worsening trade balance can limit the economic growth of any country. Hence the current paper is an effort to study the short-run and long-run relationships among trade balance, real effective exchange rate, GDP per capita, urbanization, unemployment and inflation rate for the Finnish economy. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing methodology to co-integration along with error correction mechanism is applied by using time series data from 1990 to 2019 for checking the existence of long-run equilibrium between explained variable and its various determinants. Empirical findings of ARDL show that the long-run relationship among the factors of the estimated model holds. The results indicate that real effective exchange rate, urbanization and inflation are having a significant but negative impact on Finland’s trade balance for both the short-run and long-run while the impacts of GDP per capita and unemployment are significant and positive on the Finish balance of trade. In addition to above, the structural stability of mean and variance of the error term for the estimated ARDL model is verified with the help of CUSUM and CUSUM square graphs. Therefore, a reliable policy measure to improve the balance of trade by encouraging the domestic production and curtailing the imports is suggested in Finland.