• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.27-53
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• 2013

In this paper, we look at the relationship between international trade and the rule of law, using the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, which include index figures on human rights, limits on government powers, transparency and regulatory efficiency. Based on regression analyses using the rule of law index figures and international trade figures (merchandise trade, service trade, exports and imports as percentage of GDP,) international trade and basic human rights seem to have little relationship; but trade has a close positive relationship with strong order and security. Somewhat surprisingly, regulatory transparency and effective implementation seems to have little or no effect on international trade and vice versa. International trade shows a clear positive relationship with the country's criminal justice system, but the relationship with the civil justice system is not as clear as such. For regulatory implementation and civil justice, services trade positively affect these institutions, but these institutions in turn affect exports more strongly than services trade. Finally, the effect of trade on rule of law is stronger on a medium to long term (10-20 year) time horizon.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.1-17
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• 2020

Purpose - Since China has been South Korea's biggest export destination, uncertainty shocks originating from it would influence South Korea's exports. This paper evaluates the effects of China's economic policy uncertainty on Korea's exports to explore the transmission channels. Design/methodology - Incorporating endogeneities and nonlinearities, this study employs a quarterly time-varying parameters vector autoregressive model to investigate the relationships between China's economic policy uncertainty and Korea's exports, where the overparameterization due to time-varying specifications is overcome by a novel stochastic model specification search framework. According to previous theoretical studies, this paper assesses two channels, demand shock channel and exchange rate channel, through which foreign uncertainty affects Korea's exports. This paper identifies the primary drivers of Korea's aggregate exports and analyzes the rationales for the time-variant impacts of China's economic policy uncertainty on Korea's exports to China. Findings - Our empirical results reveal that Korea's aggregate exports are less responsive to China's economic policy uncertainty shocks and significantly move together with global demand. In contrast, its bilateral exports to China are highly responsive in a negative and time-variant way. Moreover, Chinese investment is an important channel through which China's economic policy uncertainty affects Korea's exports to China after 2010. Further, the time-variant effects of China's economic policy uncertainty on Korea's exports to China are related to changes in China's foreign trade policies, global economic conditions, and China's degree of economic freedom. Originality/value - Few previous studies touch the effects of external uncertainty shocks on South Korea's exports. This paper attempts to fill this gap and explicitly investigate the impacts of China's economic policy uncertainty on Korea's exports from a time-varying perspective. As Korea is an export-oriented economy, this study provides insights for the Korean government to understand the transmissions of external uncertainty better.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.7-17
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• 2019

Purpose - In recent years, the bilateral political relationship between Vietnam and India was upgraded to strategic and comprehensive partnership. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze current relations and prospects of the Vietnam-India trade. Research design, data and methodology - The data was mainly based on World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) and Foreign Investment Agency of Vietnam Ministry of Planning and Investment (FIA) from 2010-2018. The relationship of the two countries has showed growth in all sectors, including trade cooperation. This paper focused on assessing the current relations of trade cooperation of the two countries and then andlyzed the prospects of trade cooperation in the next period. Result - The Indian Government's strategy shifted from "Look East" policy to "Look East" action by the end of 2015. Vietnam is a partner and a pillar of India's Look East policy (Muni, 2011). The governments of both countries should further strengthen exchanges and trade connections in order to provide cooperation opportunities for investors and businesses of the two countries. Conclusion - The paper discusses and gives an overview of the current status of the trade relations of Vietnam and India as well as lucidating the opportunities and challenges for two countries in the future.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.25-47
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• 2024

Although there are many news articles of tariff dodging via the rerouting of made-in-China goods through third countries, relabeling these goods as made in Mexico or made in Vietnam, there have been no scientific studies on this issue. This paper provides statistical evidence regarding whether such practices are taking place. Using monthly trade statistics at the most disaggregated level and analyzing data up to 2019, the year before the COVID-19 shock, little evidence of roundabout trade is found. With an extended dataset up to 2023, overall there is little sign of roundabout trade, although some slight signs of roundabout trade are found for Mexico and Vietnam.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.146-170
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• 2020

Purpose - This paper addresses the concepts of FDI-Trade-Growth nexus in Myanmar's economy and empirically investigates the interrelationships of trade, investment and economic growth to reveal the growth model of Myanmar's economy. Additionally, this paper also addresses the cooperative strategies between Myanmar and South Korea through a case study related to South Korea's economic growth. Design/methodology - Our empirical model considers the interrelationship among FDI, trade, growth, labor force and inflation in Myanmar. This study employs ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) to conduct an analysis of the FDI-Trade-Growth relationships using the time series data from 1970 to 2016 and a conducted case study of South Korea provided for practical implication on cooperative strategies between Myanmar and Korea. Findings - Export equation was chosen through the diagnostic tests. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: Export in Myanmar is positively influenced by labor force, FDI, capital formation and negatively impacted by import and instable inflation rate in the long run. In the short run, GDP and import positively influence export. The Granger causality test proves that Myanmar is an FDI/labor force-led Growth economy, where FDI and labor force are main drivers of export followed by GDP in Myanmar. The case study of South Korea provided that Korea's tax and credit system for promoting export-led FDI industries and cooperative units for joint ventures between Korea and Myanmar in export-led FDI industries are recommended. Originality/value - No study has yet to be conducted on the interrelationships of macroeconomic factors from the perspectives of FDI-Trade-Growth Nexus in Myanmar under the assumption of labor force and inflation rate as fundamental conditions. The current study also covered a relatively longer period of time series data from 1970 to 2016. This paper also conducts a case study of South Korea's experience in order to evaluate the findings and provide better policy implications.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.319-330
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• 2023

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the connectedness between categorical economic policy uncertainty (monetary, fiscal, trade and foreign exchange policy uncertainty) indexes and option-implied volatility index in Korea, Japan and the US. Design/methodology/approach - This paper employs the Diebold-Ylmaz (2012) model based on a VAR and generalized forecast error variance decomposition. This paper also conducts regression analyses to investigate whether the volatility indexes are explained by categorical policy uncertainty indexes. Findings - First, we find the total connectedness is stronger in Korea and Japan relative to the US. Second, monetary, fiscal, and foreign exchange policy uncertainty indexes are connected to each other but trade policy uncertainty index is not. Third, the volatility index in Japan and the US is mainly associated with monetary policy uncertainty while the volatility index in Korea is explained by fiscal policy uncertainty index. Research implications or Originality - To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the connectedness among categorical policy uncertainty indexes and the volatility index in Korea, Japan, and the US. The empirical results on the connectedness suggest that transparent policy and communication with the market in one type of policy would reduce the uncertainty in other policies.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.115-134
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• 2020

Purpose - International trade leads to the international division of labor, improving the efficiency of the global economic system. Transport costs are a more serious barrier to international trade than customs tariffs. An increase in competition in the transport sector may thus lead to a reduction in transport costs. However, if a carrier's nationality significantly influences transport costs, simply adding more competing carriers of different nationalities would be ineffective. Therefore, it is necessary to establish national or regional carriers to influence competition and reduce transport costs. This study investigates this "nationality effect" by treating Hanjin Shipping's collapse as a natural experiment. Design/methodology - The theoretical basis of this study is the 3rd-degree price discrimination in container shipping market. By using the monthly data of container freight rates of Korea, China and Japan, this study shows the so-called Korea Premiums, which are the empirical counterparts of nationality effect in Korea container shipping market. For this empirical investigation, the structural model with state-space form is used and the dummy models are also estimated. In addition, because China has been also affected by the Hanjin's collapse, the China premiums are considered too. Findings - Compared with Japan's case, it is shown that there had been the so-called Korea premiums since the collapse of Hanjin Shipping. These results are robust from both the state-space model and dummy models. The time pattern of Korea premiums was consistent with the market evolution, especially the pattern of substitutability in container shipping markets. In addition, this paper shows the magnitude of Korea premiums. Originality/value - The argument of this study that the nationality effect can be interpreted as an extended concept of the home market effect is original, which is expected to evoke future research efforts. Further, the discussion on the shipping industrial policy from both horizontal and vertical aspects will provide the relevant policy makers with solid information, especially for the policy coordination in a global scale.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.81-97
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the revitalization of the green logistics of Korean companies by presenting the current status and problems of Korean logistics as influenced by government policies. This paper analyzes green logistics from a legal and institutional perspective. Analysis focuses on low-carbon green growth measures and government policy, especially for CO₂ reduction. It considers how policies can be enacted to promote green logistics. This study reports several findings on green logistics in Korea. First, it reports the theoretical considerations of the Republic's green logistics. Second, the study details the current status and problems of green logistics. Third, it considers ways to implement a green economy, green technology, and green transportation, while also considering arguments for avoiding these eco-friendly solutions. Fourth, it argues that revitalization measures are needed to establish an advanced logistics system for eco-friendly green logistics facilities. To achieve this revitalization, Korean logistics should be competitive in the global logistics market. This study may contribute to the expansion of the industrial cooperation of Korean logistics companies by presenting necessary review tasks for governmental green logistics policies, although the issue has long been important to Korean logistics.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.71-101
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• 2017

Since late 2016, protectionism has been a major trend in world trade with the Great Britain exiting the European Union and the United States electing Donald Trump as the 45th president. Consequently, there has been a huge public outcry regarding the negative prospects of heavy industry firms in Korea, which are highly dependent upon international trade with Western countries including the United States. In light of such trend and concerns, we have tried to predict business performance of heavy industry firms in Korea with data regarding trade policy of the United States. United States International Trade Commission (USITC) levies countervailing duties and anti-dumping duties to firms that violate its fair-trade regulations. In this study, we have performed data analysis with past records of countervailing duties and anti-dumping duties. With results from clustering analysis, it could be concluded that trade policy trends of the Unites States significantly affects the business performance of heavy industry firms in Korea. Furthermore, we have attempted to quantify such effects by employing long short-term memory (LSTM), a popular neural networks model that is well-suited to deal with sequential data. Our major contribution is that we have succeeded in empirically validating the intuitive argument and also predicting the future trend with rigorous data mining techniques. With some improvements, our results are expected to be highly relevant to designing regulations regarding heavy industry in Korea.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.385-415
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• 2013

Inter-regional free trade agreements (FTAs) - notably between Asia and Latin America - are growing in numbers and complexity. There is an absence of an agreed methodology for empirical assessments on the content of FTAs and little research. This paper proposes a framework to assess liberalization in FTAs in goods and services and new trade policy issues relating to regulatory barriers. Next, it applies this framework to studying the 22 Asia-Latin America FTAs in existence. The findings suggest that Asia-Latin American FTAs have laid the foundations for inter-regional integration by liberalizing the trade in goods and services and reducing some regulatory barriers. Deepening FTAs and adopting structural reforms will enhance Asia-Latin American integration in the future.