• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.41 no.1
• /
• pp.187-213
• /
• 2016

Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Partnership Agreement introduce "regulatory coherence." Regulatory coherence refers to "the use of good regulatory practices in the process of planning, designing, issuing, implementing and reviewing regulatory measures in order to facilitate achievement of domestic policy objectives, and in efforts across governments to enhance regulatory cooperation in order to further those objectives and promote international trade and investment, economic growth and employment." This paper traces ideas dealing with regulatory reform and regulatory transparency as discussed in OECD, APEC and selected WTO agreements, examines the text of the regulatory coherence chapter of TPP and TTIP, then examines the regulatory reform system of Korea to see whether Korea satisfies the conditions set forth in the regulatory coherence chapter of TPP. The paper concludes that the Korean regulatory reform system mostly satisfies the requirements of the TPP chapter on regulatory coherence, but some additional procedural reforms are needed for laws proposed by National Assemblymen, and regional laws proposed by regional governments. Finally, the paper notes that the Korean government has been mis-translating regulatory coherence as regulatory convergence, which is a separate idea, and the government should correct its error as soon as possible.

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.42 no.4
• /
• pp.185-215
• /
• 2017

While the future of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is uncertain, TPP did succeed in convincing certain developing countries, which had been reluctant to open its government procurement market in the past, to open their markets. In this paper, we compare the government procurement chapter of TPP with WTO Government Procurement Agreement to see what factors may have convinced these countries to open their government procurement markets. The key factors seem to be an initially very high levels of threshold, coupled with an extended transition period (up to 20 years) to lower the threshold to figures comparable to other countries; and reduction of legal and regulatory burdens dealing with some transparency and procedural requirements. Korea should use these strategies in their future FTA negotiations to try to open foreign government procurement markets. If Korea wants to accede to TPP, it should have very few problems since Korea has similar threshold levels as current TPP members, and legal and regulatory requirements are more strict under GPA, of which Korea is a member.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.123-129
• /
• 2020

Intra-industry trade (IIT) has played an important role in international trade of Vietnam as a result of rapid growth of the country. This article investigates the level of IIT between Vietnam and 11 trading partners in Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) over the period 2000-2014. Although there have been a large number of empirical researches contributed to the determinants of IIT, most of them only pay attention on developed countries where the trade flows are similar due to similar demand structure and production technology. Until now, there is no study on intra-industry trade between Vietnam and countries in TPP that Vietnam recently signed a trade agreement in early 2016. IIT is measured by the Grubel-Lloyd index. The index shows that the extent of intra-industry trade between Vietnam and the trading countries is not high due to the level of economic development and the market size. The determinants of IIT are examined using a panel regression model. In the empirical analysis, the results indicate that Vietnam's intra-industry trade is positively correlated with country size, while it is negatively correlated with income dissimilarity, the trade openness, and geographical distance. This study contributes to the new theoretical trade theory on the evidence of developing country's IIT.