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Recent Political Change in Myanmar and Its Impact on her Economic Growth
Author(s) -
Nwe Khin,
Kawata Keisuke,
Yoshida Yuichiro
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
asian economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.345
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-8381
pISSN - 1351-3958
DOI - 10.1111/asej.12141
Subject(s) - referendum , counterfactual thinking , economics , per capita , panel data , per capita income , foreign direct investment , politics , investment (military) , development economics , real gross domestic product , international economics , international trade , macroeconomics , econometrics , political science , population , philosophy , demography , epistemology , sociology , law
The present study estimates the causal effect of a process of political change, namely, a recent constitutional referendum, on economic growth in Myanmar. To analyze the impact of this process, this study compares the trajectories of actual and counterfactual GDP per capita after the referendum using the synthetic control method. We calculate the counterfactual GDP per capita using country‐level panel data from 2002 to 2013, with Myanmar as the treated country and a set of developing countries in East and South Asia, the Pacific and sub‐Saharan Africa as the control group. The results of the synthetic analysis suggest that the recent process of political change in Myanmar had a positive and significant effect on GDP per capita but not on per capita foreign direct investment or trade.