Endogenous free trade agreements and the multilateral trading system

I evaluate in this paper the impact of free trade areas (FTAs) on the world trading system. I use an oligopolistic-political-economy model where the external tariffs of FTA members, as well as the decision to form FTAs, are endogenously determined. In this context, I show that FTAs are primarily beneficial to the multilateral trading system. This conclusion is based, first, upon the finding that FTAs induce their member governments to lower their external tariffs, and to do so deeply enough to enhance trade even between FTA members and non-members. While this ensures gains for the latter, in general FTA members may not gain. I show, however, that governments will endorse only welfare-improving arrangements, in spite of their political motivations; as a result, FTA members benefit from ratified arrangements as well. Finally, I find that FTAs, by reducing the role of special interests criteria in governments' trade regime decisions, also tend to enhance support for further liberalization at the multilateral level.     

Small Hubs,Large Spokes and Overlapping Free Trade Agreements

The proliferation of overlapping free trade agreements (FTA) in recent years has led to pair‐wise hub‐and‐spokes (HAS) throughout the world. Being avid subscribers to FTAs, many countries in the Asia‐Pacific region, including the United States, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Australia, have become trade hubs to their partners who are in turn relegated to spoke status. In this paper, we question whether being a hub is welfare optimal for a small and open economy such as Singapore compared to membership in a single bilateral FTA or a multi‐member free trade zone. Within this context, we use a computable general equilibrium model to examine the welfare implications of the triangular trade relationship of the United States, Singapore and Japan. This is facilitated by the Japan–Singapore Economic Partnership Agreement, the USA–Singapore Free Trade Agreement, and a hypothetical USA–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. The analysis is extended to incorporate ‘super‐hub’ effects, that is, the spoke countries could be trade hubs in other HAS systems. Our experiment reveals that hub status generates positive welfare gain and is the highest Singapore can get from the trade configurations considered. Meanwhile, Japan loses more than the USA when both are relegated to spoke status. These findings prove to be robust under different market structures and production technologies, deeper economic integration, ‘super‐hub’ effects, as well as uncertainty in the key model parameters and the extent of trade liberalisation shocks.     

Trade-diverting free trade agreements,external tariffs,and feasibility

There has been a proliferation of preferential trade agreements within the last two decades. This paper analyzes the effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) on external tariffs in small economies where protection decisions are made politically. Our model determines tariff rates endogenously instead of assuming they are fixed during or after the formation of FTAs as commonly done in the literature. We show that when an FTA is established, the tariff rates that apply to non-members essentially decline. More importantly, we investigate the interaction between endogenous tariff determination and the feasibility of an FTA. We find that the expectation of tariff reductions under endogenous tariffs could make an otherwise feasible FTA if tariffs were fixed become infeasible. However, if domestic import-competing sectors are relatively smaller and the government places a significant weight on political contributions relative to social welfare, an FTA with endogenous tariffs may be more likely to be feasible than an FTA assumed to fix external tariffs.     

Politics of free trade areas: tariffs versus quotas

In this paper we compare and contrast the political viability of bilateral Free Trade Area (FTA) Agreements in the presence of tariffs and quotas. Assuming that the government maximizes a weighted sum of welfare and producer profits, we show that the political viability of FTAs varies according to whether trade restrictions take the form of tariffs or quotas. A key result is that whereas an FTA is unambiguously rejected by one of the countries under a tariff, it may be endorsed by both trading partners under a voluntary export quota or import quota that provides equal protection as the tariff.     

Free Trade Areas in East Asia: Discriminatory or Non‐discriminatory?

The debates on regional trade arrangements in East Asia focus on whether the RTAs can be net trade creating or diverting, and whether they impede multilateral trade liberalisation or not. This paper attempts to answer these questions by quantitatively estimating the economic impact of possible East Asian free trade areas based on a bilateral gravity model, and evaluating the main characteristics of the proposed FTAs. We find that the trade creation effect expected from the proposed East Asian FTAs such as a China‐Japan‐Korea or an ASEAN plus three (China, Japan, Korea) FTA will be significant enough to overwhelm the trade diversion effect. We also judge that East Asian FTAs will likely be a building block for a global free trade.     

Third-country effects on the formation of free trade agreements

The recent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has resulted in an increasingly complex network of preferential trading relationships. The economics literature has generally examined the formation of FTAs as a function of the participating countries' economic characteristics alone. In this paper, we show both theoretically and empirically that the decision to enter into an FTA is also crucially dependent on the participating countries' existing FTA relationships with third countries. Accounting for the interdependence of FTAs helps to explain a significant fraction of FTA formations that would not otherwise be predicted by countries' economic characteristics.     

Third-country effects on the formation of free trade agreements

The recent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has resulted in an increasingly complex network of preferential trading relationships. The economics literature has generally examined the formation of FTAs as a function of the participating countries' economic characteristics alone. In this paper, we show both theoretically and empirically that the decision to enter into an FTA is also crucially dependent on the participating countries' existing FTA relationships with third countries. Accounting for the interdependence of FTAs helps to explain a significant fraction of FTA formations that would not otherwise be predicted by countries' economic characteristics.     

中国自由贸易区建设的战略——基于面板数据的实证分析

运输成本所体现的地理距离对国际贸易的阻碍作用随着产业内贸易的发展重新被重视。"相似需求理论"认为经济发展水平相近的国家的贸易量会更大。边界的存在使国际贸易受到关税的阻碍,各国希望通过FTA甚至更高形式的经济一体化组织来抹平边界的作用。文章从实证的角度解析我国自由贸易区建设的影响因素,重点考察地理因素、经济发展水平对中国自由贸易区建设的影响的显著性,以从中窥探中国自由贸易区建设的特点及战略选择。     

Trade policy of a free trade agreement in the presence of foreign lobbying

This paper studies the effect of foreign lobbies on trade policy of a country which is a member of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). It uses a monopolistically competitive political economy model in which the government determines external tariffs endogenously. The effect of foreign lobbying under the FTA is examined empirically using Canadian industry-level trade data that allow differentiating of lobby groups by the country of origin. The analysis suggests that the presence of foreign lobbying has a significant effect on the domestic trade policy. The heterogeneity of foreign lobbies is also important: the presence of an organized lobbying group in an FTA partner country tends to raise trade barriers while an organized lobbying group of exporters from outside of the FTA is associated with less protection.     

中国-新加坡自由贸易协定的背景、内容及影响

在十七大报告中,中国把自由贸易区建设提高到战略高度。中国-新加坡协定为中国实施自由贸易区战略提供了一种新的战略推进模式。协定对加强中新双边经贸关系,新加坡参与中国区域经济发展和中国企业"走出去"战略的实施产生积极影响。     

Trade Policy and Export Diversification: What Should Colombia Expect from the FTA with the United States?

Sectoral concentration of exports has been a longstanding matter of concern for policymakers in developing countries. According to economic theory and recent empirical evidence, improved market access through trade agreements is likely to favor export diversification. In this article, it is assessed whether this has been the case for Colombian exports to the United States and whether an FTA with the United States would help Colombia diversify their exports. We find that lower tariffs have indeed favored exports of new products from Colombia. Predictions suggest that the FTA is likely to induce further diversification, but only up to a certain point.     

Overlapping free trade agreements and international trade: A network approach

In our work, we have analysed the effect of the hub‐and‐spoke nature of free trade agreements (FTA s) on trade. Contrary to previous analyses, we have considered the effects of the country's position in the FTA network on the bilateral trade of the hub country. We have conducted an in‐depth analysis of the global network of FTA s, focusing particularly on its evolution in the last 15 years. We have utilised a panel data set covering the period 1960–2010 to investigate the effects of the hub‐and‐spoke on trade. Our results show that the countries that are more connected to FTA s export more than those that are less involved, although not all the partner countries you can connect with are the same. An increase in the number of spokes that have no link between them has, on average, a negative effect on the trade of the hub, which indicates that signing FTA s with every country is not the optimal strategy for increasing trade. However, if we consider the way new FTA s change the relative position of a country, we can see that if new FTA s make the country more central or less constrained in the network, these new agreements have a strongly positive and significant pro‐trade effect.     

China, Japan and South Korea：Trade Integration under Economic Globalization

Economic globalization and regional economic integration are the two majot trends of world economic development. In the practice of regional economic integration, the EU and NAFTA as two successful models, has had a significant impact on world economic pattern. Until July 2007, the global effective free trade agreement （FTA） reached 143. In recent years, FTA among developed and developing countries and regions are on the rise. Within regions, such as ASEAN and Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, there have been 14 FTA （including early harvest plan） in operation. To achieve regional economic cooperation in East Asia, the key is to build economic integration among China, Japan and South Korea. Therefore, economic integration among the three is their inevitable choice in the backdrop of economic globalization. While trade integration is the foundation and prerequisite of economic integration, and the former can promote the formation and development of the latter.     

美韩自由贸易协定的形成、运行机制及启示:竞争性自由化视角

本文主要从美国竞争性自由化贸易战略发展演化与实施的视角探讨美韩自由贸易协定的形成与其运行机制,并在此基础上提出构建中韩自由贸易区双赢合作机制的启示。     

Free-trade areas and special protection

This paper investigates the impact of free-trade-area (FTA) agreements on the ability of countries to multilaterally cooperate within an economic environment characterized by trade-flow volatility. We show that the parallel formation of different FTAs leads to a gradual but permanent easing of multilateral trade tensions. In particular, we demonstrate that the emergence of the FTAs will be accompanied by a decline in global ‘special’-protection activity, such as safeguard or anti-dumping initiations, but will have less significant implications for most-favored-nation tariffs, or ‘normal’ trade protection.     

Bilateral Free Trade Agreements and Customs Unions: The Impact of the EU Republic of South Africa Free Trade Agreement on Botswana

The EU has indicated that after 2008 its trade relationships with developing countries will be dominated by the development of preferential trade agreements. Although not a consequence of the Cotonou Agreement, the free trade agreement between the EU and the Republic of South Africa (EU RSA FTA) was clearly one of the first fruits of this approach to trade relationships. However, there is no evidence that the design of the EU RSA FTA incorporated a comprehensive general equilibrium evaluation of the agreement for either the signatories or the other southern African nations. The analyses reported here indicate that while the EU RSA FTA may substantially benefit the signatories, there are appreciable negative impacts for other states, especially the Republic of South Africa's immediate neighbours. Moreover, the analyses indicate that the structural adjustments for African economies signalled by the FTA are substantial, which implies that there will be substantial economic costs associated with the FTA.     

中韩两国自贸区战略对比及双边自贸区谈判展望

作为东亚重要的经济体,中韩两国近年来都走在积极推进对外自贸区建设,并取得了较大进展。尽管两国对外贸易依存度都处于较高的水平,但由于经济规模、贸易规模的差异,两国的自贸区战略也存在很大的差异。通过分析中韩两国的自贸区战略,可以发现中韩之间构建自贸区将是下一步双方战略的交汇点。尽管自贸区的达成会造成双方国内行业利益的分配不均,但双方政府可以通过在自贸区谈判中采取必要的例外或过渡期安排来完成双边的自贸区构建。     

中国自贸区战略实施的现状、效果、趋势及未来策略

随着全球经贸规则的加速重构,我国自贸协定的谈判和签署步伐明显加快,且签署协定的开放水平不断提升,协定实施对双边贸易也产生了显著的促进效果。未来,中国的自贸协定谈判将呈现出覆盖范围更广、开放层次更高、协定对象向重点国家和地区突破的态势。为了实现"形成覆盖全球的高标准自贸区网络"的目标,我国应通过积极参与构建超大型自贸区、将自贸区网络建设与"一带一路"倡议相结合、深化自身改革提供制度支撑、综合考量宏观收益开展自贸谈判、设计兼具稳定性和灵活性的自贸协定"范式"等策略来推进自贸区建设。     

Is FTA/EPA effective for a developing country to attract FDI? The knowledge‐capital model revisited

To prepare an answer to the question of how a developing country can attract foreign direct investment (FDI), this paper explored the factors and policies that may help bring FDI into a developing country by utilising an extended version of the knowledge‐capital model. With a special focus on the effects of a free trade agreement (FTA) or an economic partnership agreement (EPA) between a pair of market and non‐market countries, simulations with the model revealed the following: (i) although FTA/EPA generally tends to increase FDI to a developing country, the possibility of improving welfare through increased demand for skilled and unskilled labour decreases as the size of the country grows; (ii) a developing country may suffer severe welfare losses through FTA/EPA if the availability of skilled labour is extremely limited; and (iii) a developing country can enhance welfare gains from a FTA, and it is even possible to recover the welfare effects from negative to positive, by making the arrangement an EPA.     

The effects of cross-regional free trade agreements under a vertical industry structure

This paper examines the effects of a cross-regional free trade agreement (FTA) on tariffs, welfare, and the incentives for multilateral free trade in a three-country model with a vertical industry structure. We show that the FTA induces member countries to reduce their tariffs on nonmember countries. On the other hand, a nonmember country lowers its tariff on final-good imports, but raises its tariff on intermediate-good imports. Also, the FTA makes member and nonmember countries better off. After the FTA is enacted, member and nonmember countries have an incentive to support multilateral free trade, so an FTA acts as a building block for multilateral trade liberalization.