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Previous studies that examined the impact of exchange rate misalignment on economic growth were based on the symmetric approach where both overvalued and undervalued exchange rates were supposed to affect the economic growth in a similar way. However, in recent years, a number of studies have established that exchange rate changes affect the trade flows in an asymmetric way. Hence, this study investigates the asymmetric effect of exchange rate misalignment on the economic growth of Pakistan. The findings of the study indicate that in the case of the symmetric approach, exchange rate misalignment has a negative impact on economic growth. However, after applying the nonlinear ARDL approach, the study finds significant evidence in favor of the asymmetric effect of exchange rate misalignment on economic growth. Interestingly, the results indicate that undervaluation spurs while over-valuation hampers the economic growth in Pakistan. The study recommends that though under-valued exchange rate may have temporary relief for the economy, yet in the long run, a market-based equilibrium exchanger rate is imperative for a developing economy like Pakistan.

The study examines the asymmetric influence of exports on economic growth in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia using an augmented neoclassical production function incorporating export earnings and oil rent. It uses time-series yearly data from 1985 to 2019 published by the World Bank, employs the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach and Toda–Yamamoto (T–Y) Granger causality test. The outcomes reveal a long-run cointegration among economic growth, exports, oil rents and other variables. Both the exports and oil rents have unveiled asymmetric impacts on economic growth. The overall impact of exports on economic growth remains robust; its positive shock maintains neutrality, while negative shock yields affirmative influence on economic growth in the long run. Similarly, the positive components of oil rents remain neutral, while the negative shocks negatively affect economic growth, with an overall adverse impact. The T–Y causality unleashes that economic growth causes exports negative shocks, and negative shocks cause positive shocks of exports and a feedback relationship between economic growth and positive shock of exports, and thus, validates the NARDL outcomes and verifies their robustness. The outcomes imply that the Kingdom should expand its exports and enhance its nonoil output through product and market diversification measures.

As the world’s second-largest crude oil consumer, China depends on imports for approximately 60% and domestic production for approximately 40%, of its oil demand. Therefore, it is very interesting to assess the pass-through effects of both domestic and international crude oil prices to gasoline and diesel prices. After the short- and long-run investigations using the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology of Shin et al. [Shin, Y, BC Yu and M Greenwood-Nimmo (2014). Modelling asymmetric cointegration and dynamic multipliers in a nonlinear ARDL framework” Festschrift in Honor of Peter Schmidt: Econometric Methods and Applications, R Sickels and W Horrace (eds.), pp. 281–314. Springer.], we find overwhelming evidence supporting the asymmetric price transmission mechanism between crude oil prices and gasoline prices in both the short- and long-run. In the case of diesel prices, on the other hand, the asymmetry effects seem likely to be a long-run phenomenon.

Keeping in view the idea of the third-country effect by Cushman, the analysis attempts to capture the asymmetric impact of third-country exchange rate volatility on Pakistan–China commodity trade. The empirical analysis is based on the annual data for 14 industries that export from Pakistan to China and 34 industries that import to Pakistan from China. The findings of the study confirm that nonlinear models generate more significant results both in the short and long runs. Moreover, the empirical findings suggest that the asymmetric assumption alone is not enough, and instead, we should use it along with the third economy effect.

The lack of comprehensive empirical narratives about the effects of income and price differentials, as well as possible distributional asymmetries on consumption in G7 countries, compelled this study by using both ARDL and Quantile ARDL models. NARDL results indicate that positive shocks in income have significant and positive effects on consumption in all countries. Moreover, evidence from the Quantile ARDL model indicates that positive and significant impacts were momentary except at the 95th quantile of consumption distributions in Canada. Furthermore, price variations negatively affected consumption in all G7 countries and across all distributions, with evidence of panic buying in Italy, the US and at the 5th quantile in Japan. Meanwhile, there is evidence of asymmetric effects from income and price variations on consumption in all G7 countries, whereas the influence of income variations on consumption is heterogeneous in Canada. Moreover, the asymmetric effects of price differentials were consistent across all the distributions in all the countries. Overall, to ensure consumption optimization and by extension, economic growth, differentiated policies to respond to income and price variations at all times are of the essence.

This paper investigates whether exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects on international trade integration, using quarterly time series data from 1980: Q1 till 2018: Q2. The recent innovation in cointegration techniques allows us to estimate nonlinear effects. We apply both linear autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) and nonlinear ARDL models. The empirical results indicate that asymmetric relationship exists between exchange rate (REER) and international trade integration (ITI) in the short-run as well as in the long-run, meaning that real effective exchange rate has negative and statistically significant effects on international trade integration. Robustness checks indicate no role of various crisis including GFC on the relationship between ITI and REER, however, regime change has significantly negative impact in short-run and positive in long-run on ITI. The results are important because when we separate currency appreciation from the depreciation, it has the significant and different effects on international trade integration.

Various empirical studies have been conducted. However, these studies fail to examine the asymmetric effect of income and price across different quantiles of consumption in the emerging 7 countries. This study extends the existing literature using a novel approach called the quantile ARDL model along with the standard nonlinear ARDL model. Findings based on the nonlinear ARDL model indicate that positive shocks in income positively and significantly affect consumption in the short- and long-run. On the other hand, negative shocks in income do not significantly affect consumption which, therefore, suggests an asymmetric effect of income on consumption. In addition, the quantile ARDL estimates indicate that income positively affects consumption across all quantiles of the consumption except the 95th quantile. Moreover, the quantile ARDL estimates indicate that price variations negatively affect consumption across all emerging 7 countries. These estimates suggest that devising policies without considering the asymmetric effect may lead to unfavorable consequences.