Impact of trade openness on food security: evidence from ASEAN-5 countries

Trade openness refers to the extent to which a country engages in international trade of food products, covering both imports and exports of food items. The link between trade openness and food security is complex and multifaceted. Hence, the aim of this paper was to analyse the impact of trade openness on the level of food security in ASEAN-5 countries, captured using food production. Using geographical characteristics as an instrument within a panel estimation approach, consideration is given to time-invariant unobserved characteristics as well as simultaneous causality between trade openness and food security. The effect of trade openness on food security is heterogeneous across the food production categories. The increased negative effect of trade openness for meat, livestock and overall agriculture suggests countries having high productions in these food categories are also more likely to have greater trade openness, indicating ASEAN-5 countries specialise according to their comparative advantages in these categories of food. The result indicates the ASEAN-5 exporting food categories with comparative advantages while relying on imports to meet categories with comparative disadvantages. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, very few studies have studied the effect of trade openness across various food production sectors in the ASEAN-5 countries and linked it with the issue of food security. These empirical findings also draw substantive policy implications for policymakers.