A Multivariate Analysis of the Nexus between Savings and Economic Growth in the ASEAN-5 Economies

The savings–growth nexus is an age-old empirical problem, but the causal relationship between savings and economic growth remains controversial. Establishing a clear causal relationship has signifi cant policymaking implications for economic growth and development. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to re-visit empirically the savings–growth nexus for the fi ve ASEAN founding economies—ASEAN-5—via a multivariate framework. This study covered the annual data from 1970 to 2010. The Bartlett-corrected trace test for cointegration was adopted to examine the presence of a long-run relationship between savings and its determinants. The estimation results suggest that savings and its determinants are cointegrated in the fi ve ASEAN founding countries. urthermore, the bootstrapping approach was used to ascertain the causality direction between savings and economic growth. We found that savings Granger cause economic growth in all ASEAN-5 economies. Therefore, we believe that savings is a prominent source of economicJEL Classifications: C22, E21, O16