Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Testing Twin Deficits Hypothesis Using Vars And Variance Decomposition, Ahmad Zubaidi Baharumshah, Evan Lau, Ahmed M. Khalid

Ahmed Khalid

This paper examines the twin deficits hypothesis in the ASEAN countries. The major findings of this paper are the following. (1) Long run relationships are detected between budget and current account deficits. (2) The Keynesian view fits well for Thailand since the causality runs from budget deficit to current account deficit. For Indonesia, the causality runs in an opposite direction while the empirical results indicate that a bidirectional pattern of causality exists for Malaysia and the Philippines. (3) We also found support for an indirect causal relationship that runs from budget deficit to higher interest rates, and higher interest rates …