Does financial development and economic growth matter for services export? Cross-country evidence from OECD countries

The unprecedented growth in the export of services and its accompanying economic incentives has invited discussions on service export determinants. Against this background, the present article is an attempt to test whether the contemporary theories on causal links between exports, financial development and growth hold for services export. For realizing the objective, we employed the panel cointegration technique for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over a period of 23 years (2000–22). Findings of both first and second generation cointegration test indicate a long run equilibrium between services export, financial development and growth. However, there are differences in the short and long association, as outcomes of panel auto autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach show financial development to be significant determinant of services export only over long run. Additionally, granger causality test suggests a feedback mechanism prevalent between services export-financial development, services export-growth and financial development-growth. The empirical evidence offered in the study elucidates the significance of continuously developing the financial markets and institutions for achieving sustained growth in export of services. The bi-directional relationship between the variables also presents an opportunity to strengthen economic growth and financial development process through policies aimed at expanding services export.