An Estimation of Korea's Import Demand Function for Fisheries Using Cointegration Analysis

공적분분석을 이용한 우리나라 수산물 수입함수 추정

This paper tries to estimate Korea's import demand function for fisheries using cointegration analysis. The estimation function consists of one dependent variable-import quantity of fisheries(FTIW) and two independent variables-relative price(RP) between importable and domestic products and real income(GDP). As it has been empirically found out that almost all of time series of macro-variables such as GDP, price index are nonstationary, existing studies which ignore this fact need to be reexamined. Conventional econometric method can not analyze nonstationary time series in level. To perform the analysis, time series should be differenciated until stationarity is guaranteed. Unfortunately, the difference method removes the long run element of data, and so leads to difficulties of interpretation. But according to new developed econometric theory, cointegration approach could solve these problems. Therefore this paper proceeds the estimation on the basis of cointegration analysis, because the quartly variables from 1988 to 1997 used in the model is found out to be nonstationary. The estimation results show that all of the variables are statistically significant. Therefore Korea's import demand for fisheries has been strongly affected by the variation of real income and the relative price.