Summary of General Discussion on “Shifting Drivers of Growth: Policy Implications for ASEAN-5”

This paper assesses the impact of the United States, the EU, Japan, China, and India on ASEAN-5 economies’ and other Asian countries’ economic growth. The first part of the general discussion focused on the estimation technique, growth multipliers, used by the authors. Warwick McKibbin noted that the authors’ analysis was an accounting exercise that did not allow for the identification of causal relationships between the variables. An alternative technique to use may be global vector autoregressive (GVAR) modeling. A GVAR model links individual countries and solves the model for the world as a whole by imposing structural restrictions that are consistent with economic theory and data. Moreover, he suggested that it would be useful to have impulse responses to better understand the interactions between countries and the variables in the model. McKibbin also pointed out that the structure of trade can matter. Bhanupong Nidhiprabha agreed with this comment and noted...