Exports,investments and economic development of pre-accession countries of the European Union: an empirical investigation of Bulgaria and Romania

This paper attempts to analyse the relationship between exports, investments and economic development in two pre-accession countries of the European Union, Bulgaria and Romania. For investigation of this relationship a multivariate autoregressive VAR model is used. The results of cointegration analysis showed that there is one cointegrated vector among exports, investments and economic growth for the two countries. Granger causality tests based on error correction models (ECM) indicated that there is a ‘strong Granger causal’ relation between economic growth and exports as well as between investments and exports for the two countries. In addition, economic development and capital accumulation in an economy seem to have just as much of an influence on exports as exports have on capital accumulation and economic development.