SUFFICIENCY HUMAN CAPITAL IS BEAUTIFUL FOR THE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE THAI ECONOMY

摘要

Sufficiency Economy is a middle-path philosophy serving as a guide for the way of many economies. His Majesty's philosophy of "Sufficiency Economy" lies at the heart of Thailand's development thinking, and indeed it can serve as guidance for the country's economic and social developments. We investigate the causal links between human capital, openness through trade and FDI, and economic growth using quarterly data for Thailand over the period 1973:2-2006:4. A number of hypotheses are investigated including, in particular, FDI - led growth and export - led growth, as well as the reverse linkages from growth to FDI and exports. The importance of human capital is highlighted as complementary to FDI inflows, as well as a determinant of growth in its own right. We find that, after controlling for domestic investment, the support for FDI - led growth is not as strong as export - led growth. Using multivariate causality tests conducted within a vector error correction framework, we also find that domestic growth in Thailand has influenced domestic investment and trade openness, but support for growth - led FDI is weak. An explanation for this finding might be that the upsurge in FDI inflow to Thailand is more recent in the data for the effect to be significant over the period of investigation.