Firm level assessment of Pakistan and Malaysia Free Trade Agreement

Abstract

The core idea of this paper is to assess before and after effect of Pakistan and Malaysia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on firm level financial factors. The empirical analysis covers the balanced panel data for the period from 2003 to 2014 and uses regression analysis. This study finds that due to change in trade policy, profits decrease, increase in leverage and decline dividend payouts of the firms, which are facing import and export competition. Nonetheless, the firms, which are export oriented and other firms, which enhance their competency by importing latest technology leads toward surge in profits, lower leverage and increase in dividend payments. The contribution of this study is to assist the trade policy makers in formulating the agreements with other ASEAN member countries as well as the corporate managers to make the international trade strategy for the firm to compete in the South East Asian region. To the best of the knowledge, this topic has not been addressed in the literature before.