• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.201-208
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• 2020

Terms of trade is an important indicator of the welfare gains from international trade to the exporting country. Terms of trade of oil-exporting countries are hypothesized to depend primarily on oil prices. The study assesses the relation between oil prices and the terms of trade of Saudi Arabia. The study uses the Autoregressive Distributed Lag method to determine the cointegration between the country's terms of trade and oil prices for the period 2000-2018. The data for net barter terms of trade is taken from World Development Indicators and oil price is taken from Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. The results show that oil prices and terms of trade are cointegrated and any disequilibrium between the two variables is corrected by 35% in a year. The study also reports a positive relationship between the two items, both in the short run and long run. Diagnostic tests indicate the model to be fit. The results suggest that, for a primarily oil-producing country like Saudi Arabia, the terms of trade depend on oil prices. The study fills the gap in the literature on the study of terms of trade for Saudi Arabia for the last few years, where there has been a high volatility in oil prices.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.141-156
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• 2022

This study intends to examine the regional blocs of the international crude oil futures market by analyzing the dynamic conditional correlation between the international crude oil futures markets using the DCC-GARCH model. For statistical data, from April 2, 2018 to March 31, 2022, international crude oil futures prices such as Europe, the United States, China, and Dubai were used. To summarize the results of the study, first, the phenomenon of regional blocs in the international crude oil futures market is occurring, and it is found that it is gradually strengthening as time goes by. Second, it was found that the dynamic correlation of the international crude oil futures market is temporarily strengthened when a supply-demand imbalance problem occurs due to a global shock. Third, it was found that the volatility of the Chinese crude oil futures market affects the international crude oil futures market. This study confirmed that the regional blocs phenomenon in the international crude oil futures market is strengthened as time goes by. In particular, it suggested that China's influence in the international oil market would increase.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.75-86
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• 2019

This study performs a factor analysis that affects the bunker oil price using the Co-integration model and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). For this purpose, we use data from Clarkson and the analysis results show 17.6% decrease in bunker oil price when the amount of crude oil production increases at 1.0%, 10.3% increase in bunker oil price when the seaborne trade volume increases at 1.0%, 1.0% decrease in bunker oil price when total volume of vessels increases at 1.0%, and 0.003% increase in bunker oil price when 1.0% increase in world GDP, respectively. This study is meaningful in that this study estimates the speed of convergence to long-term equilibrium and identifies the price adjust mechanism which naturally exists in bunker oil market. And it is expected that the future study can provide statistically more meaningful econometric results if it can obtain data during more long-periods and use more various kinds of explanatory variables.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.385-391
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• 2022

In this study, a multivariate time series analysis was conducted to identify various variables that impact ocean freight rates in addition to supply and demand factors. First, we used the ClarkSea Index, Clarksons Average Bulker Earnings, and Clarksons Average Tanker Earnings provided by the Shipping Intelligence as substitute variables for the dependent variable, ocean freight. The following ndependent variables were selected: World Seaborne Trade, World Fleet, Brent Crude Oil Price, World GDP Growth Rate, Industrial Production (IP OECD) Growth Rate, Interest Rate (US$ LIBOR 6 Months), and Inflation (CP I OECD) through previous studies. The time series data comprise annual data (1992-2020), and a regression analysis was conducted. Results of the regression analysis show that the World Seaborne Trade and Brent Crude Oil P rice impacted the ClarkSea Index. Only the World Seaborne Dry Bulk Trade impacted the Clarksons Average Bulker Earnings, World Seaborne Oil Trade, Brent Crude Oil Price, IP, and CP I on the Clarksons Average Tanker Earnings.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.69-86
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• 2018

The paper studies the degree of international price dispersion for 300 individual goods and services between cities of three country groups over 1999 and 2013, focusing on the role of oil prices in generating deviations from the law of one price. We find that while oil prices did not contribute to the trend in cross-country price dispersion, it does account for within-country price dispersion. Once the oil price effect is subtracted out, the remaining price dispersion between U.S. cities no longer exhibits a noticeable upward trend. If oil prices increase transportation costs, they should increase the deviations from the law of one price, raising price dispersion. Our findings indicate that this effect is more pronounced within a country, while factors such as elasticity of substitution and other trade barriers are likely to matter more in price dispersion across borders. We view our results as complementary to those that emphasize the role of time-varying factors in accounting for price dispersion.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.105-118
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• 2019

In the past two decades, due to the rapid fluctuations in the oil supply and demand in Northeast Asia as well as a surge in oil prices in the early 2000s, Korea has been developing the Northeast Asia Oil Hub project as a national project. This project was promoted based on the policy consideration that the nation's energy security and regional development can be promoted by establishing an oil hub in Northeast Asia that can eventually replace Singapore as East Asia's oil logistics hub. Following the construction of a large-scale oil storage facility in Yeosu in 2013, the main project in Ulsan has suffered many difficulties due to environmental changes such as the supply and demand of oil and political factors. The survey, which investigated the performance, problems, and prospects of the oil hub project, illustrates that scores of all sectors are of average level. In terms of performance and prospects, policies such as facility investment, law, and system improvement were determined to be rather high while operational areas such as value-added activities, profitability, and marketing activities were perceived as having more serious problems by respondents. In conclusion, despite the strong potential of Korea's oil hub based on its geographical location, facilities, and oil product capacity, there are problems related to policies, institutions, and investment. In the future, the oil hub business should be reviewed by considering environmental factors, and a drastic improvement plan for attracting foreign investors and oil traders should be established.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.165-172
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• 1985

Since energy consumption of developing countries is expected to grow rapidly over the coming decades, the oil-importing developing countries are likely to encounter chronic balance-of-payments difficulties. To analyze the quantitative impacts of this problem, we develop a computable model of international trade. This paper presents four alternative cases - varying the assumptions with respect to energy supplies. This shows that relatively small difference in supplies can lead to 100% differences in the energy prices projected for 1990.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.8
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• pp.1-26
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• 2019

Purpose - This paper investigates the recent trade collapse, recovery, and prolonged slowdown to shed light on the discussions about whether the current slowdown is structural or cyclical. I examine structural, cyclical, and heterogeneous aspects of the recent trade trends using detailed statistics of a small open economy, South Korea, whose economic success and growth have been heavily dependent on exports. Design/methodology - I use both aggregated and disaggregated trade statistics of South Korea. I apply the following methodologies: 1) I decompose the trade growth into the extensive and the intensive margin and observe the effect of prices over time. 2) I estimate the trade-income elasticities focusing on the world's import demand, separately for goods from the world and from Korea. 3) I compare the drop in goods exports in slowdown and trade collapse, which are the two unusual periods in the recent history when world trade has substantially dropped altogether. Findings - I show that while the last drop of trade after 2015 has cyclical aspects, there is evidence that the continued slowdown from 2012 is structural: 1) the so-called 'China factor' is found in the analysis of trade-income elasticity of the world and China for imports from Korea. 2) The bilateral trade barriers between Korea and its principal trading partners are universally tightening. 3) Firm sizes, destination countries, and the mode of transactions affect disaggregated trade flows during the slowdown periods. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the debate regarding whether the current trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. I provide two concrete evidence that the export drop in 2015 stems from low oil prices: one is the divergence of Korean export value index from its export quantity index, which started in late 2014 when oil prices plunged. I also contribute to the literature by providing evidence that Korea's trade barriers with important trading partners are steadily increasing since 2012 as the protectionist measures toward Korea's export products are steeply increasing after the global financial crisis.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.33-69
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• 2010

This paper examines the causes of the terms of trade decline in Korea since the mid-1990s, using the decomposition methodology suggested by Baxter and Kouparitsas (2000) as well as regression analysis. The main empirical results are summarized as follows. The decomposition exercise of changes in terms of trade showed that Korea's terms of trade decline for the past decade or so is attributable to goods price effect which were driven by the rise of oil prices relative to manufactures. The decomposition of terms of trade change for 55 countries showed that terms of trade decline due to goods price effect is a phenomenon that was commonly observed for exporters of manufactures since mid-1990s. These results suggest that external factors such as China's trade expansion, rather than internal factors, are mostly responsible for the decline in terms of trade. In accordance with these results, the regression results suggest that China's trade expansion contributed to Korea's terms of trade decline, especially in 2000s, by raising the import prices of oil and raw materials and lowering the export prices of manufacturing products.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.19-38
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• 2021

This study aims to analyze the foreign asset leverage effect on Korean oil & gas companies' foreign profits and to maintain the appropriate foreign asset volume for reducing exchange risk. For a long time, large Korean companies, including oil companies, overheld foreign currency liabilities. For this reason, most large companies have been burdened to hedge exchange risk and this excess limit holding deteriorated total profit and reduced foreign currency asset management efficiency. Our paper proceeds in presenting a three-stage analysis considering diversified exchange risk factors through estimation on transformation of foreign transactions a/c including annual trends of foreign asset and industry specifics. We also supplement incomplete the estimation method through a practical hedging case investigation. Our research parts are differentiated on the analyzing four periods considering period-specifics The FER value of the oil firms ranged from -0.3 to +2.3 over the entire period. The results of the FER Value are volatile and irregular; those results do not represent the industry standard comparative index. The Korean oil firms are over the credit limit without accurate prediction and finance high interest rate funds from foreign-owned banks on the basis on a biased relationship. Since the IMF crisis, liabilities of global firms have decreased. Above all, oil firms need to finance a minimum limit without opportunity losses on the demand forecast and prepare for uncertainty in the market. To reduce exchange risk from the over-the-limit position, we must consider factors that affect the corporate exchange risk on the entire business process, including the contract phase.