The Impact of Unilateral and Regional Trade Liberalisation on the Intra-ASEAN 5 Founding Nations’ Exports and Export-GDP Nexus

This paper is differentiated from most previous studies in that it uses intra-ASEAN’s (of the 5 founding counties) historical data and it assesses both exports and the export-GDP nexus by isolating the following three different historical policy interventions: the introduction of Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) in 1977, the unilateral liberalisation following the severe recession of the mid-1980s and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) formation in 1992. Our findings indicate that the ASEAN-5 countries’ economies are moving together through time and emerged as a powerful integrated area as a consequence of all of the above three interventions. Unilateral liberalisation and ASEAN regionalism are complementary with each other. The ASEAN’s story is unique and relies on both outward orientation and positive aspects of regionalism.