International Trade and Human Development Convergence: The Tale of ASEAN

Regional integration to encourage trade in the Southeast Asian region is one of the steps taken by ASEAN to develop and encourage convergences, both the economic and the human development convergence in the Southeast Asian region. However, the influence of intra-regional and extra-regional trade on the human development convergence is not yet known in these ASEAN countries. By using the data of these ASEAN countries between 2003 and 2021, this study aims to solve this problem. Panel data analysis using the fixed-effect method in this study shows that intra-regional trade has a negative and significant effect, while extra-regional trade has a positive but not significant effect. This indicates a potential slowdown in the convergence speed caused by intra-regional trade in ASEAN.