Free Trade Agreements In the Americas: Are the Trade Effects Larger than Anticipated?

This paper argues that the ‘competitive liberalisation’ of national governments of the past several decades reflects national governments’ expectations of larger trade impacts from regional economic integration agreements (EIAs) than typical ex ante economic models have suggested. Moreover, we show that previous (typically cross‐section) ex post empirical evaluations of the effects of EIAs on trade have seriously over‐ or underestimated the effects, partly due to ignoring the (endogenous) self‐selection bias of country pairs into EIAs. Accounting for this bias, we find that economic integration agreements in the Americas have had much larger impacts on trade over the period 1960–2000 than previously found and the ex post estimates are less fragile than those in earlier cross‐section analyses. The results shed further light on understanding the causes and consequences of the growth of regionalism in the world.     

基于引力模型的产业内贸易与区域经济一体化研究

产业内贸易和区域经济一体化是当今国际贸易领域关注的重大理论和实践问题,在新贸易理论中,两者在共同因素的作用下被有机地联系起来。本文结合产业内贸易与新区域经济一体化理论,运用贸易引力模型,对两者之间的关系做计量检验,进而为我国区域经济一体化进程和产业内贸易发展提供相关的政策建议。     

东亚区域生产网络发展与东亚区域经济合作的深化

随着产品内分工的发展,东亚区域生产网络的日益深化已成为东亚区域经济发展不可逆的趋势。本文梳理了东亚区域生产网络的表现和特征,对东亚区域生产网络引起的东亚贸易结构变化进行了探讨,分析了东亚区域生产网络对东亚各经济体的影响,揭示了东亚区域生产网络存在的缺点和潜在问题,并提出在东亚区域经济合作不断深化的背景下,促进东亚区域生产网络进一步发展的策略。     

Do Economic Integration Agreements Actually Work? Issues in Understanding the Causes and Consequences of the Growth of Regionalism

This paper argues that the ‘competitive liberalisation’ of national governments of the past several decades has created a ‘market’ for regional economic integration agreements (EIAs). Evidence shows that countries that have selected into EIAs – such as free trade agreements – have ‘chosen well’ in the sense that the same economic characteristics that explain and predict bilateral EIAs also explain and predict bilateral trade flows. We show that previous ex post empirical evaluations of the effects of EIAs on trade have tended to underestimate the effects due to ignoring the (endogenous) self‐selection bias of country pairs into EIAs. Accounting for this bias, we find that European economic integration had a much larger impact on trade over the period 1960–2000 than previously found, and other more recent EIAs have had economically and statistically significant effects on members’ trade. The results shed further light on understanding the causes and consequences of the growth of regionalism.     

ASEAN between globalization and regionalization

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to test the hypothesis that the ‘ASEAN way’ is different from other regional integration schemes, as measured by the relative importance of its de facto regionalization patterns, the importance of its ASEAN+ frameworks, and its globalization-regionalization nexus. A set of indicators using intra- and extra-regional flow data of various sorts are explored and used to compare the ASEAN integration experience with some benchmark cases worldwide. Four aspects are thereby considered: (1) globalization and economic openness, (2) trade liberalization, (3) regional production sharing, and (4) foreign investment promotion.     

Financial Integration and Economic Growth in the COMESA and SADC Regions

Abstract

This study used panel data methods to examine the relationship between financial integration and economic growth in the COMESA and SADC regions. Using Foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio flows as a share of GDP, Chinn-Ito index of financial openness and debt flows as measures of financial integration, the study found that the relationship between financial integration and growth is largely insignificant in the combined sample of COMESA and SADC regions. However, the relationship changes when the two regions are separated. Whereas two of the indicators of financial integration are significant in the COMESA region, only one indicator of financial integration is significant in the SADC region implying that financial integration is more important in the COMESA region than in the SADC region. The results support the growth retarding theories of financial globalization and the convergence hypothesis in the COMESA region while the neoclassical trade theories find strong support in the SADC region. These results imply, first, that financial integration has different growth effects for different regional groupings and thus integration policies should not be universally applied. Second, these results imply that further enhancement of trade integration policies offer more promising outcomes for economic growth in the SADC region than financial integration policies while the converse is true for the COMESA region.     

Regionalisation of Trade and Regionalism in Trade Policy – Patterns, Strategies and Impact

Against the backdrop of the stalled Doha Round the emphasis in the trade policies of nations and country groupings is widely expected to shift further away from multilateral trade negotiations and towards the conclusion of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). This article sketches the network of international trade flows and shows how it has increasingly been matched by a worldwide web of PTAs, the nature of which has changed over time. PTAs are discussed in their regional context and assessed with a view to their economic impact and their implications for the multilateral trading system.     

Possible Dynamic Effects of AFTA for the New Member Countries

We discuss the possible dynamic benefits of economic integration for the new members of ASEAN. Direct evidence on regional integration and growth is weak, but three indirect channels are possible. Openness increases access to foreign knowledge, which could help productivity growth. Trade liberalisation is likely to stimulate investment and might promote the integration of the regional production network. Binding liberalisation under AFTA would help ‘lock‐in’ and accelerate liberal economic reforms. These gains are not automatic, however. Discriminatory liberalisation will switch imports from sources with high stocks of knowledge towards ASEAN countries, which have lower stocks, and so may lower productivity growth. We term this ‘dynamic’ trade diversion. In addition, local absorptive capabilities must be developed to benefit fully from technology transfer. Finally, we recommend extending AFTA commitments on an MFN basis in order to avoid static and dynamic trade diversions.     

FDI对东亚区域经济一体化的影响研究

文章通过使用1990～2008年度的数据,利用时间序列分析方法对东亚国家的FDI与区域内投资和贸易一体化的关系进行了详细的实证研究。研究结果表明:长期而言,在区域生产网络机制的作用下,FDI的流入将促进东亚区域内国家(地区)之间的贸易和投资流动,有利于推动东亚区域经济一体化。在当前东亚区域经济一体化进展缓慢的背景下,通过一系列激励措施吸引外资,是促进东亚区域经济一体化发展的不错选择。     

Economic Effects of the Syrian War and the Spread of the Islamic State on the Levant

This paper uses a global computable general equilibrium framework with new detail on six Levant countries – the Arab Republic of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and Turkey – to quantify the direct and indirect economic effects of the Syrian war and the advance of the Islamic State on the Levant. Syria and Iraq bear the brunt of the direct economic costs, while the other Levant countries lose in per capita but not in aggregate terms as the inflows of refugees increase the size of their populations. The war has undermined progress towards deeper regional trade integration, thus adding to varying degrees to the direct costs sustained by the Levant economies and, in the cases of Syria and Iraq, doubling their welfare losses. All Levant countries are foregoing opportunities to expand intra‐Levant trade and the associated gains in economic efficiency. The average welfare effects are not indicative of the distributional effects of war within countries.     

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.     

Putting Canada in the penalty box: Trade and welfare effects of eliminating North American Free Trade Agreement

Three years ago, very few economists would have imagined that one of the newest and fastest growing research areas in international trade is the use of quantitative trade models to estimate the economic welfare losses from dissolutions of major countries' economic integration agreements (EIAs). In 2016, "Brexit" was passed in a UK referendum. Moreover, in 2019, the existence of the entire North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is at risk if the US withdraws—a threat President Trump has made if the proposed US–Mexico–Canada Agreement is not passed by the US Congress. We use state‐of‐the‐art econometric methodology to estimate the partial (average treatment) effects on international trade flows of the six major types of EIAs. Armed with precise estimates of the average treatment effect for a free trade agreement, we examine the general equilibrium trade and welfare effects of the elimination of NAFTA (and for robustness US withdrawal only). Although all the member countries' standards of living fall, surprisingly the smallest economy, Mexico, is not the biggest loser; Canada is the biggest loser. Canada's welfare (per capita income) loss of 2.11% is nearly two times that of Mexico's loss of 1.15% and is nearly eight times the US' loss of 0.27%. The simulations will illustrate the important influence of trade costs—international and intranational—in contributing to the gains (or losses) from an EIA's formation (or elimination).     

对中国—智利自由贸易区贸易效应的引力模型分析

近年来,区域经济一体化的进程不断加快,这是世界经济发展的必然结果。随着中国与拉丁美洲经贸关系的不断发展,中国已和智利、秘鲁和哥斯达黎加三个拉美国家签订了自由贸易协定,为双方的贸易带来了可观的收益,极大地推动了中国参与区域经济一体化的进程。本文在综述国内外相关文献的基础上,以中国与智利的自由贸易协定为例,采用引力模型,定量研究两国的经济一体化程度以及区域经济一体化所创造的贸易效应。     

Alliances and Networks: Creating Success in the UK Fair Trade Market

Data from a longitudinal study into the key management success factors in the fair trade industry provide insights into the essential nature of inter-organizational alliances and networks in creating the profitable and growing fair trade market in the UK. Drawing on three case studies and extensive industry interviews, we provide an interpretive perspective on the organizational relationships and business networks and the way in which these have engendered success for UK fair trade companies. Three types of benefit are derived from the networks: competitive developments through virtual integration in which the organizations remain flexible and small while projecting size to the market; intellectual developments through the sharing of intellectual capital with a diverse network of organizations in many fields; and ideological developments through an ideological network of like-minded individuals by which the companies can prevent the co-opting of the original purpose of fair trade. However, relative success at leveraging these benefits is influenced by three managerial factors: partner choice, partner use and partner management.     

Strategic and organisational determinants of sophistication in deployed sales force automation systems within three industry sectors in the UK

Abstract

This paper investigates strategic and organisational context determinants of the sophistication of adopted sales force automation (SFA) systems in three UK industries: financial services, pharmaceuticals, and building/construction. Sophistication of adopted systems is associated with the organisation placing greater emphasis on information orientation, which is itself driven by an increased integration of IT and sales coupled with increased organisational slack. Increased integration of IT and sales is itself driven by increased strategic importance of sales coupled with increased use of internal communication networks. Importantly, a firm's marketing orientation, although also driven by the strategic importance of sales, has no impact on either information orientation or SFA sophistication. We discuss the implications of our findings to aid understanding of SFA implementation failure.     

Capability and need: A framework for understanding why states create sovereign wealth funds

Over the past half‐century, roughly one‐quarter of states in the international system have created sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). As a case of sovereign states investing public wealth mostly in private markets across borders, it is not altogether clear why SWFs have proliferated to this extent. What explains their spread in recent decades? In this paper, I build on a multidisciplinary literature that conceives of SWFs as a type of insurance against external risk and argue that middle economic powers that are highly exposed in global trade and capital markets are the states most likely to establish these institutions. Such states possess both the capability to create an SWF of a size sufficient to insure against risk and the need for the insurance function of a SWF by virtue of their relatively vulnerable position in the global economy. To evaluate my argument, I rely on a data set consisting of all states in the international system from 1950 to 2012 including the 48 SWFs created during that period. I find that middle economic powers with high degrees of trade and capital openness are the states most likely to create SWFs.     

Regional Integration and Trade: Controlling for Varying Degrees of Heterogeneity in the Gravity Model

The proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) in the 1990s prompted a renewal of interest in studying the effect of regional integration on trade. Using a panel dataset of bilateral export flows from 12 EU countries to 20 OECD trading partners over the period 1992–2003, the trade effect of European regional integration, denoted by an EU dummy, is examined across a number of fixed effects (FE) specifications, each of which has been claimed as the correct econometric specification of the gravity model. Typically parsimonious in (time‐varying) economic variables and abundant in fixed effects, the FE specifications allow for varying degrees of heterogeneity in the gravity model. Two gravity models are estimated: a gravity model of traditional trade determinants and a gravity model of new trade theory (NTT) determinants. Both gravity models provide reasonable coefficient estimates, although they vary somewhat across the FE specifications for the traditional gravity model. Both gravity models are congruent in suggesting that the coefficient of the EU dummy declines in magnitude and becomes insignificant as an increasing degree of heterogeneity is admitted into the model. This suggests the fundamental importance of the econometric specification when evaluating trade policy effects within a gravity framework.     

东亚区域内贸易的发展趋势及面临的问题

东亚区域内贸易飞速发展是当今世界经济两大潮流——经济全球化和区域经济一体化趋势下的一个独特现象,已经引起学者们的广泛关注,纷纷对其作出大量研究。东亚区域内贸易未来发展面临的主要问题是东亚经济体间存在多种冲突;贸易摩擦问题不断;区域货币金融合作进展缓慢。     

Embedded <Emphasis Type="Italic">guanxi</Emphasis> networks,market <Emphasis Type="Italic">guanxi</Emphasis> networks and entrepreneurial growth in the Chinese context

Entrepreneurial networks create an important entrepreneurial opportunity and facilitate resource acquisition. However, there has been little research on the correlation between the types of guanxi networks and entrepreneurial growth. This paper divides entrepreneurial/managerial networks into embedded guanxi networks based on social relationship and non-economic trade contracts, and market guanxi networks based on market negotiation. Hypotheses are proposed on how the embedded/market guanxi networks evolve with enterprise age and size. Data from 270 Chinese enterprises are used to empirically test the above classification and hypotheses. The results justify the new dichotomy for guanxi networks. It is also shown that, as an enterprise grows in age and size, its utilization of embedded guanxi network tends to decrease while its reliance on market guanxi network increases. In addition, as an enterprise grows in size and age, the impact of embedded guanxi network on enterprise performance remains significant, while the impact of market guanxi network keeps increasing.