对新一轮双边FTA的几点认识

新世纪以来,国际双边自由贸易日益成为世界经济领域的热点。与传统双边FTA比较,新一轮双边FTA在形成背景、协议内容、对国际贸易的影响等方面,都存在较大差别;与区域经济组织比较,新一轮双边FTA在运行效率、活动范围、功能发挥等方面,存在较大的优势;与WTO多边自由贸易比较,新一轮双边FTA在缔约国待遇、贸易目标、贸易进程等方面,也存在许多不同。     

对双边FTA的历史考察及中国参与双边FTA的利益分析

20世纪90年代,全球兴起了一股双边自由贸易热,越来越多的国家选择通过签定双边自由贸易协定构建双边自由贸易区来实现自由贸易。在此之前,历史上曾两度出现过双边自由贸易热,各有其产生背景和特点,新一轮双边FTA更以其优越性成为新世纪国际贸易发展的新趋势。中国应顺应历史发展潮流,积极融入新一轮双边FTA,从而获得相应的利益。     

中国参与双边FTA的新进展与策略选择

20世纪90年代末期以来,世界范围内掀起了新的区域经济一体化浪潮,并一直延续至今。这次浪潮的主要特点是自由贸易协定（FTA）的大量涌现,尤以双边FTA数量居多。中国从2004年开始也陆续参与了多个双边FTA。对于中国而言,在多边和区域经济合作的基础上积极参与双边FTA,既是加强对外经济合作的有效措施,同时也是拓展国际政治空间,为自身发展创造更加有利的国际环境的良好契机。     

用好FTA积极走出国门

一项FTA（自由贸易协定）从开始谈判到最终达成协定的整个过程,双方国家、地区或组织都可以拿出去炫耀,媒体也尽可以在这上面大作文章,因为它促使了双边经贸行为的高度融合,也是战略上彼此信任的一大指标。     

中国参与双边FTA:历程与前瞻

进入21世纪,中国通过迅速参与多个双边自由贸易协定(FTA),加快了贸易自由化进程。但是,由于双边FTA盛行造成"亚洲面条碗"效应,FTA利用率较低成为不争的事实。有必要通过接受FTA"最佳实例"规范双边FTA、推动东亚自贸区建设以及简化、统一东亚地区原产地规则等方式,克服双边FTA盛行带来的负面效应。     

关于中日FTA的创建分析

在经济全球化和区域经济一体化加强的背景下,加强本地区经济合作,开展经贸关系正愈来愈成为各国的共识,日本越来越重视双边自由贸易,积极地与世界各国特别是与东亚各国以及美国缔结双边自由贸易协定,但中日FTA一直提不上日本政府的议事日程。本文在回顾中日两国FTA进展情况的基础上,分析中日FTA所带来的经济效应以及难以取得实质进展的原因,并提出了启动中日FTA的对策,有着十分重要的现实意义。     

中国FTA实践中的利益选择及实现

从各国的实践来看,双边FTA(自由贸易协定)的签署可以为成员国带来巨大的经济和政治利益。为最大化在国际贸易中的利益,近年来,中国已经在加快FTA实践的步伐。本文通过对中国FTA实践现状的分析,认为虽然从双边自由贸易协定中获得的直接经济利益相对有限,但是,中国仍然可以从缓解国内面临的资源压力、赢得经济发展的良好外部环境、增强多边谈判中的地位等几个方面实现自己的利益,并对中国的FTA战略提出了一些对策建议。     

关于中日FTA的几点思考

当今国际经济向着一体化的趋势发展,在发展多边合作的同时,世界各国为了更好地加强经济合作,积极参与双边或区域内FTA(自由贸易协议)。据WTO统计,绝大多数的WTO成员都参加了一个或多个     

国际自由贸易协定商签趋势与对策——中国国际问题研究所汪巍先生访谈录

加入WTO后,我国在参加自由贸易协定方面迈出新的步伐。随着中国—东盟自由贸易区启动,内地与香港、澳门更紧密经贸关系安排的顺利进展,以及我国与一些国家商签双边自由贸易协定(双边FTA)的节奏加快,我国已步入区域经济合作的新阶段。不久前,本刊记者就商签双边自由贸易协定的若干问题采访了中国国际问题研究所汪巍先生。     

FTA知识产权国际保护体制探析

FTA知识产权国际保护体制,是知识产权议题挂钩体制的新近发展,它是典型的双边体制,将知识产权与自由贸易挂钩,以协商推进和以点带面的方式循序渐进地改变国际知识产权规则。广大发展中国家可运用"联系权力",在给定的制度结构内寻求最大利益。中国应该重视FTA体制的国际效应,密切关注,积极参与,推动国际知识产权制度的良性发展。     

Bilateral Trade Agreements and the Feasibility of Multilateral Free Trade

We studied how the pursuit of bilateral free‐trade agreements (FTAs) affects the likelihood of achieving multilateral free trade. We derive and compare the stable Nash equilibria of two games of trade liberalization: in the FTA game, each country can either form an FTA with one of its trading partners or both of them or none of them, whereas in the (restricted) No FTA game, purely bilateral FTAs are not permitted. The major result is that there exist circumstances under which the freedom to pursue (discriminatory) bilateral FTAs is necessary for achieving multilateral free trade.     

Bilateral versus Multilateral Free Trade Agreements: A Welfare Analysis

Why is a proliferation of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) between certain types of countries observed instead of progress in attaining global free trade through a multilateral FTA? This paper answers this question by exploring the enforceability of different types of FTAs through comparing minimum discount factors that are necessary to sustain them in an infinitely repeated game framework. The authors search for the globally welfare maximizing trade agreements that are sustainable under different conditions. The results depict that transportation costs, differences in country sizes and comparative advantages are all obstacles for having a multilateral FTA. Accordingly, international development policies conducted for the removal of such obstacles should be the main goal toward achieving a multilateral FTA, which is shown to be the first‐best solution to the maximization problem of global welfare.     

Dynamic formation of preferential trade agreements: The role of flexibility

In practice, free trade agreements (FTAs) vastly outnumber customs unions (CUs). Nevertheless, the literature traditionally views CUs as optimal for members because CU members coordinate external tariffs. I show that a dynamic FTA flexibility benefit can help explain the prevalence of FTAs: individual FTA members have the flexibility to form their own future FTAs whereas CU members must jointly engage in future CU formation. I show how the relative prevalence of FTAs versus CUs depends on the structure of market size asymmetry across countries and use these predictions to shed some light on FTA versus CU formation in Europe and South America.     

Do Customs Union Members Engage in More Bilateral Trade than Free‐Trade Agreement Members?

This paper provides the first empirical analysis directly comparing the effects of customs unions (CUs) and free‐trade agreements (FTAs) on members’ bilateral trade, while addressing the biases arising from log‐linearization of the gravity model and crucial time‐invariant unobservables. Since Fiorentino et al. (2007 ) question the popularity of CUs relative to FTAs, considering the latter to be more practical in the current trading climate, such a comparison seems especially relevant. While Baier and Bergstrand (2007 ) find an FTA to approximately double members’ bilateral trade after 10 years, the results of this paper find CUs to have had a much larger impact than FTAs.     

Dynamic Free Trade Networks: Some Numerical Results

To help predict whether the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) continues until global free trade is effectively attained, this paper investigates dynamic paths of FTAs, generated by numerical simulations of a model of an FTA network formation game with many countries. The characteristics of the final FTA network naturally depend on how the proposer of an FTA is chosen in each period. The paper finds that if the country that has the largest incentive to form an FTA is chosen as a proposer in each period, the network evolution always leads to a unique final FTA network, which may or may not be the complete network of FTAs. FTA networks often evolve to a partition of the world into a small number of groups of asymmetric size owing to the negative network externality caused by preference erosion.     

Economic Determinants of Free Trade Agreements Revisited: Distinguishing Sources of Interdependence

One of the most notable international economic events since 1990 has been the enormous increase in the number of free trade agreements (FTAs). While Baier and Bergstrand were the first to show empirically the impact of a country‐pair's economic characteristics on the likelihood of the pair having an FTA, the literature has been extended to demonstrate the importance empirically of FTA “interdependence”—the effect of other FTAs on the probability of a pair having an FTA. In the context of the Baier–Bergstrand framework, this paper delves deeper into the sources of interdependence—an “own‐FTA” effect and a “cross‐FTA” effect. The authors argue that the own‐FTA effect (the impact on the net welfare gains of an FTA between two countries owing to either already having other FTAs) likely dwarfs the cross‐FTA effect (the impact on the net welfare gains of an FTA between the pair owing to other FTAs existing in the rest of the world, or ROW). Augmenting a parsimonious logit model with simple “multilateral FTA” and “ROW FTA” terms to differentiate the own and cross effects empirically, it is shown that the marginal impact on the probability of a country‐pair having an agreement of either country having one more FTA with a third country is 50 times that of one more FTA between another pair in ROW. The results suggest that “domino (own‐FTA) effects” have far exceeded “competitive liberalization (cross‐FTA) effects” in the proliferation of FTAs.     

Exempted sectors in free trade agreements

Almost all participants in free trade agreements (FTAs) exclude at least a few products or sectors from complete tariff removal on the exports of their FTA partners. The positive tariffs that remain within an FTA are often the highest tariffs that the countries apply on an MFN basis. It seems plausible that such exclusions may be chosen because the domestic producers of these products are viewed as especially vulnerable to competition from imports from the partner country. In brief, they are especially “sensitive sectors.” We develop this idea theoretically and then test it empirically on data from 37 countries in 240 importer–exporter pairs within FTAs. We find support for the sensitive‐sector hypothesis only in the high‐income countries. We find that low‐income countries, in contrast, exempt sectors where bilateral tariff removal would be more likely trade‐diverting and therefore harmful. Our explanation for this, supported empirically, is not that they are following the advice of trade economists, but rather that they are avoiding loss of tariff revenue and may also perhaps be influenced by the greater bargaining power of richer and/or larger partners in their FTAs.     

FREE TRADE NETWORKS WITH TRANSFERS*

We investigate the network of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) in the context of a network formation game with transfers. In a previous paper we showed that without international transfers countries with different industrialization levels cannot sign an FTA, so that the global free trade network, in which every pair of countries signs an FTA, is not in general pairwise‐stable. In this paper we show that, even if the world consists of fairly asymmetric countries, the global free trade network is pairwise‐stable when transfers between FTA signatories are allowed. Moreover, it is a unique pairwise‐stable network unless industrial commodities are highly substitutable.     

Costs of a missing FTA: the case of Turkey and Algeria

Turkey has been deeply integrated with the EU, its largest trading partner, particularly following the Customs Union agreement in 1996. However, the free trade agreements (FTAs) signed by the EU with third party countries may create some unfair competitive pressures, market share and welfare losses for Turkey. This study investigates the impact of the FTA signed by Algeria and the EU in 2005 on Turkey’s trade flows. Covering 181 countries, a difference-in-differences analysis embedded in an extended gravity framework is employed to quantify the trade effects of the EU-Algeria FTA for the period of 1996–2013. Our findings suggest that bilateral trade between Turkey and Algeria is affected adversely due to the FTA. The counterfactual analysis shows that Turkish exports and imports to/from Algeria could have been 12 and 17% higher, respectively, had there been no FTA between the EU and Algeria.     

Rules of origin and gains from trade

Free trade areas (FTAs) involve unharmonized tariffs and rules of origin that have prevented proving the formal general equilibrium existence of a welfare-enhancing FTA. This paper identifies the most restrictive limit that rules of origin can enforce and still continue to guarantee gains from trade for FTA formation. We note that many commonly used rules of origin exceed this condition in practice. We apply the identified welfare-supporting rules of origin and prove the existence of a FTA general equilibrium involving only within-FTA transfers that is at least as satisfactory for every consumer as an arbitrary original world trade allocation. The analysis also helps to explain why hub-and-spoke extensions of FTAs cannot be expected to guarantee gains from trade for all participants in general.