Analysis of global economic policy uncertainty and export flows for emerging markets with panel VAR modeling

Purpose - The purpose of this paper to examine how global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU) affects export flows of emerging market economies. Design/methodology/approach - This study examines the effect of GEPU on 28 emerging markets' export performance. GEPU variable used in the authors’ empirical analysis is measured by partial least square (PLS) factor loading model with the help of 24 countries' economic policy uncertainty index. A panel vector autoregression (VAR) model is employed for the estimations and monthly data over the 2006:01–2019:12 period are used. Findings - The empirical findings show that while the real external income is the main factor that affects export flows, the real exchange rate is the least effective variable with regard to the variance decomposition, which is not expected by the related economic theory. Panel VAR estimations results confirm the previous studies and find that GEPU affects export flows negatively and significantly. Originality/value - To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the sole study in terms of focusing on the impacts of GEPU on the export volume of emerging markets. The contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, a large set of countries with monthly frequented data that assist to capture uncertainties better is used. Secondly, the global economic policy index is obtained by employing the PLS method, which provides more robust results that are calculated with respect to the dependent variable.