The per-capita demand of fish and fish products, and paired to it, their production and trade, have substantially increased during the last few decades. For many developing countries these developments open a channel for sustainable economic progress. Against this background, this article investigates whether fish exports Granger-cause long-run economic growth of the agricultural sector (“fish export-led growth”) in a panel of eight South and Southeast Asian countries. A dynamic panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is estimated based on data for the years 2000 to 2018. The results indicate that fish exports have a significant positive impact on the growth of the agricultural sector in the long run. These findings apply to both the lower- and the upper-middle-income countries included in the analysis. Long-run Granger causality tests within a panel vector error correction model indicate that agricultural value added per worker reacts to deviations from the long-run equilibrium, whereas fish exports per worker are weakly exogenous. Thus, the paper finds supporting evidence for fish export-led growth. The paper concludes with some thoughts about how this finding can help policymakers in their attempt to induce sustainable agricultural development to eradicate poverty and to enhance living standards.

Fish products comprise more than 20% of total Ecuadorian exports. Ecuador introduced the “National Green Export Review” (NGER) in 2015, which aims at making Ecuador’s fishing industry more sustainable to improve the international market access to Ecuador’s fish products. Has this policy achieved its goal? In order to answer this question, this article applies the local projection approach to explore the dynamic impact of the NGER on Ecuador’s share of fish exports in the world fish market. Contrary to expectations, the results are consistent with the view that the NGER does not enhance Ecuador’s competitiveness. The NGER is also not able to compensate for the fall in Ecuador’s share in the world fish market, which has been induced by a change in consumer preferences for tuna and shrimp, Ecuador’s main fish products. The concluding section of the paper provides policy advice on how to make the NGER more effective in achieving its goal.

This study re‐examines the assumption that agricultural credit and pesticide‐intensive practices consistently stimulate growth across developing Asia. Using data from eight South and Southeast Asian economies (2002–2022), the analysis identifies a developmental threshold: the marginal productivity of financial and chemical inputs declines sharply once countries reach upper‐middle‐income status. Credit elasticity is positive in lower‐middle‐income South Asia (0.13%–0.27%) but becomes negative and statistically insignificant in upper‐middle‐income Southeast Asia. More notably, despite an average annual increase of 7% in pesticide use across the region, returns to chemical inputs become statistically insignificant and sometimes negative in more advanced agricultural systems such as Malaysia and Indonesia. These patterns show that as economies mature, the input‐intensive growth model encounters biological, regulatory, and structural limits. The findings challenge uniform policy prescriptions and support differentiated strategies: expanding credit access in capital‐constrained smallholder environments while shifting toward precision technologies and integrated pest management where chemical inputs face diminishing effectiveness. It is important to note that pesticide use serves only as a proxy for chemical‐intensive technological change and does not capture broader innovations such as mechanization, improved seed varieties, or digital tools. Overall, the results underscore that the effectiveness of credit and technology is closely tied to a country's position within the agricultural development trajectory, a nuance often obscured in aggregate regional analyses.