• Journal of Korea Trade
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.41-60
• /
• 2022

Purpose - The policy implications of free trade agreements have traditionally been a matter of debate among economists. The official signing of the Korea-China Free Trade Agreement provides economists with a quasi-natural experiment to analyze the FTA's policy effects. This article aims to more accurately understand the impact of Korea's FTA accession on the macro economy. Design/methodology - This study adopts the counterfactual method based on panel data to find common factors in the generation process of macro data to fit the counterfactual path, to accurately evaluate the effect of the macro policy. Findings - Our research results show that the signing of the Korea-China FTA has a relatively significant short-term positive effect on Korea's economic growth. On average, Korea's real GDP growth rate has increased by 2.1%. This study finds evidence in support of FTA signing not having a significant impact on Korea's GDP growth in the long run. Additionally, we evaluated the impact of the FTA on Korea's imports and exports and found that it had a significant positive impact in the short term, but the trade effect of the FTA is significantly affected by the external macro-environment. Originality/value - First, this study uses macro panel data at the national level to examine the impact of the Korea-China FTA on Korea, and more accurately describes the policy effect of the FTA. Second, our empirical results show that the Korea-China FTA policy impact is subject to occasional changes in the external environment, such as the geopolitical conflict (crisis) between Korea and China, and the US-China trade war. Finally, the analysis shows that the short-term effect of FTA is significant but the long-term is uncertain, which provides empirical evidence for the debate on whether joining FTA can promote national economic growth.

• International Commerce and Information Review
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.141-170
• /
• 2012

There are a couple of methods to analyze the trade effect of FTA. Some compare bilateral trade amounts, partner's share in total export, or market share in partner's total import. Others set up partial equilibrium models or general equilibrium models for more sophisticated analyses. The purpose of this paper is to analyze bilateral trade between Korea and Chile, Singapore, Switzerland and Norway using the Intensity of Trade and Special Country Bias. The Trade Intensity Analysis focuses on how much the real trade diverges from the expected one which is derived by the Gravity Model, and it enable us to define how much the bilateral trade is closely related with each other compared with the rest of the world. Also by excluding the effects of changes in Trade Complementarity, it enables us to evaluate the trade effect of FTA. The results show that regarding Korea's export, the biggest trade effects are found with Norway, and the effects are evading after a couple of years of outstanding accomplishment with Chile and Singapore. With Switzerland, however, almost no effect is found. Regarding Korea's import, Norway has recorded the biggest advance into Korean market, whereas, other countries do not show significant changes.

• Journal of Korea Trade
• /
• v.24 no.8
• /
• pp.153-170
• /
• 2020

Purpose - As the US-China trade war intensifies and lasts long time, there is growing concern about its potential effects on the global economy. In particular, for the countries like Korea that have a large economic dependence on the economy of the two countries, the US-China trade war may have a great repercussion in many ways. The aim of this paper is to investigate the global productivity and market structure implications of the US-China trade war for Korea, as well as for other surrounding countries and regions. Design/methodology - In this paper, we develop a full multi-country/region multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of global trade incorporating heterogeneous workers and firms in individual skill levels and used technologies. We then calibrate the model using a global Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) dataset extracted from the recently released GTAP 10 Database, and assess the potential effects of the US-China trade war on the aggregate real productivity and the market structure for Korea, as well as for other surrounding countries and regions. Findings - We show that the US-China trade war may largely affect the aggregate productivity in each sector in each country/region, as well as the global market structure through entry and exit of firms, which results finally in considerable changes in the industrial comparative advantage of each country/region. Though the effects are diverse sector by sector, the results show that Korea may also be affected significantly: concerning the real productivity implications, it is shown that the machinery industry may be affected the most negatively; on the other hand, it is shown that the number of exporting firms may decrease the most in the other transports industry. Originality/value - As the US-China trade war intensifies, many studies have tried to estimate the possible implications, and for this usually the CGE models have largely been used as the standard tool for evaluating the impacts of changes in trade policies. Standard CGE models, however, cannot be used to assess the global productivity and market structure implications due to the symmetric and simplified base assumptions. This paper is the first to analyze and quantify the possible impacts of the US-China trade war on the aggregate productivity and global market structure using a CGE model incorporating endogenous skill-technology assignment of heterogeneous workers and firms.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.9
• /
• pp.209-217
• /
• 2020

The purpose of this study is to investigate the development and determinants of China-ASEAN trade relations over the period of 2000-2018. Employing both the qualitative and quantitative approaches, the results show that the trade relations between China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have remarkably developed and rapidly grown over times, with a significantly important concentration on the segments of high technological and medium technological products. We also find that China's economic scale is crucially impacting on the China-ASEAN trade relations under both the aggregate and sub-sector level. It is interesting to notice that there is no evidence to support accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and officially forming of ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) to enhance trade relation between both sides. The findings also quantitatively indicate that there is much significant potential for the expansion of mutual trade between China and some members of ASEAN such as Brunei, Laos and Malaysia, while less potential is predicted for other members of ASEAN. It is strongly suggested that China and ASEAN should find a new proactive approach and make more efforts in improving the mutual political trusts to enhance trading activities in the coming years.

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.44 no.1
• /
• pp.17-30
• /
• 2019

This study is to investigate the effect of real exchange rate on bilateral trade balance between Korea and ASEAN 10 countries. Using quarterly data from 1991 to 2017 the paper analyzes whether or not the real depreciation of Korea's won could improve the trade balance in the short and long term. Based on Autoregressive Distributed Lag(ARDL) model, the empirical results show that trade balance, GDP, and real exchange rate are all cointegrated, representing the long-run relationship among variables. In the consideration of long-run relationship, the increases in ASEAN countries' GDP could have a negative impact and Korea's GDP positive impact on trade balance between Korea and ASEAN countries unexpectedly. For the main variable, the paper did not find the long-term effect of real exchange rate on the trade balance, for the short-term effect of the real exchange rate it was found that there exists the J-curve effect only in the case of Vietnam and Brunei. Therefore, these results imply that the intended policy concerning the exchange rate in the free-floating exchange rate system could be limited to improve the trade balance between Korea and ASEAN countries.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.111-118
• /
• 2021

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of trade openness on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into Vietnam, an emerging country with relatively high trade openness in recent years. The study used the vector autoregression (VAR) model to examine the impact of trade openness on FDI in Vietnam, in the period from 2005 to 2019. The research data are time-series data, with quarterly frequency, from 2005:Q4 to 2019:Q3. The FDI data were collected by International Financial Statistics. The data of trade openness were calculated based on Vietnam's export, import, and GDP data collected by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam. The estimated result shows that the trade openness has a positive effect on FDI. The current FDI is heavily influenced by FDI in the past with an average explanation of 74%. The main findings indicate that trade openness has a positive effect on FDI inflows into Vietnam. The findings also show that FDI in Vietnam is significantly affected by the shocks of the FDI itself in the past. The findings of the study suggest the Vietnamese Government improves the quality of trade openness and FDI, continues and maintains economic relations with other countries to increase trade openness.

• Journal of Korea Trade
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.1-20
• /
• 2022

Purpose - Multiple stakeholders-including politicians, investors, and the wider public-have questioned the value of investing in port infrastructure improvements and the contributions they can make to economic performance. Design/methodology - This paper presents an empirical study of 56 countries with seaports from the year 2006 to 2019 to determine how the quality of port infrastructure affects its contribution in terms of trade openness and economic growth. To this end, this study applies hierarchical multiple regression analysis with panel data to empirically examine the economic impact of port infrastructure quality on the relationship between trade openness and economic growth. After the 56 selected countries were categorized as developed or developing, a multi-group panel data analysis was conducted. Findings - The results of this study show that trade openness has a significant positive effect on the national economy. The findings also indicate that, although developing countries should expect greater economic growth after investing in port infrastructure, this relationship weakens as developing countries become richer. Originality/value - The findings of this study not only elucidate the relationship between trade openness and national economic growth, but they also emphasize the importance of trade openness and port infrastructure in national economic growth, particularly among developing countries.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.289-294
• /
• 2020

The study of environmental pollution plays an important role in controlling emissions in the production activities of FDI enterprises as well as export goods. Vietnam is a country with a large proportion of FDI contribution and high export value. Therefore, there should be studies to assess the actual effects of FDI and the openness of the economy (trade) on the environment. Therefore, the authors conduct research on the role of FDI and trade on environmental quality in Vietnam. With data collected from 1990 to 2018 (from the period of Vietnam's economy opening up) through the ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) model, the results show that FDI has a positive impact on CO2 emissions in the short term but has no impact on the long-term (In this study, CO2 is considered to represent environmental quality). The trade has a positive impact on CO2 emissions in both the short term and long term. The results of the study show the actual shortcomings of FDI as well as production activities in the export enterprises in Vietnam. From the results of this research, the author also provides the causes and remedies to control of CO2 emissions from two activities of foreign direct investment and trade.

• International Commerce and Information Review
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.107-127
• /
• 2004

The rapid development of internet information technology has increased interest in e-Trade these days, but it is not activated greatly up to now. In order to promote e-Trade, it is essential to construct cooperative process such as connecting systems among trade related parties. Building e-Trade platform which is based on the infrastructure of the past trade automatic system is key point of promoting e-Trade. To do this, a study on the basic concept and specific components of e-Trade platform is needed absolutely. At this point of view, after this paper has examined domestic and foreign studies on the fundamental technologies about electronic commerce, it drew several key technologies that could be applied to e-Trade considering the current IT trend. Then it evaluates these technologies according to Technology Reference Model(TRM) of the National Computerization Agency. This will help us to show the operation strategy as well as the concept of future e-Trade platform and its composition. On the basis of the theoretical background, this paper classified NCA's technology model into 6 fields, which are application. data, platform, communication, security and management. Considering the key technologies, e-Trade platform has to be mutually connected and accept international standards such as XML. In the aspect of business side, trade relative agencies' business process as well as trading company's process has to be considered. Therefore, e-Trade platform can be classified into 3 parts which are service, infrastructure and connection. Infrastructure part is compared of circulating and managing system of electronic document, interface and service framework. Connecting service (application service) and additional service (application service) consist of service part. Connecting part is a linking mutual parts and can be divided into B2B service and B20 service. The organization operating this e-trade platform must have few responsibilities and requirements. It needs to positively accept existing infrastructure of trade automatic system and improving the system to complete e-trade platform. It also have to continuously develop new services and possess ability to operate the system for providing proper services to demanders. As a result, private sector that can play a role as TTP(Third Trust Party) is adequate for operating the system. In this case, revising law is necessary to support the responsibility and requirement of private sector.

• Journal of Korea Trade
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.131-145
• /
• 2020

Purpose - The recent growth of South Korean products in the international market is the benchmark for both developed as well as developing countries. According to the development index, the role of international trade is indeed crucial for the development of the national economy. However, the visualization of the international trade profile of the country is the prerequisite of governmental policy decision-makers and guidance for forecasting of foreign trade. Design/methodology - We have utilized data visualization techniques in order to visualize the import & export product space and trade partners of South Korea. Economic Complexity Index (ECI) and Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) were used to identify the Korean international trade diversification, whereas the time series approach is used to forecast the economy and foreign trade variables. Findings - Our results show that Chine, U.S, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan are the leading trade partners of Korea. Overall, the ECI of South Korea is growing significantly as compared to China, Hong Kong, and other developed countries of the world. The expected values of total import and export volume of South Korea are approximately US$535.21 and US$ 781.23B, with the balance of trade US$ 254.02B in 2025. It was also observed from our analysis that imports & exports are equally substantial to the GDP of Korea and have a significant correlation with GDP, GDP per capita, and ECI. Originality/value - To maintain the growth rate of international trade and efficient competitor for the trade partners, we have visualized the South Korea trade profile, which provides the information of significant export and import products as well as main trade partners and forecasting.