• The Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.1-12
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• 2024

Purpose: As a major economy attracting foreign investment, China is currently facing significant international economic pressure due to the appreciation of the RMB. Additionally, China is at a critical period of socio-economic development, where foreign direct investment (FDI) plays an indispensable role in stabilizing economic growth, adjusting industrial structure, and promoting economic transformation. Research design, data and methodology: This paper focuses on the relationship between RMB exchange rate expectations and FDI. It examines the magnitude of their relationship through empirical research using cointegration tests, Granger causality tests, and BVAR (Bayesian Vector Autoregression) analysis. Results: The comprehensive study of the empirical results in this paper concludes that there is a long-term cointegrated relationship between China's RMB exchange rate expectations and foreign direct investment, indicating that their relationship is stable in the long run. It is also found that RMB exchange rate expectations have a significantly positive impact in the short term, but this impact is not significant in the long term. Conclusions: The paper also considers the possibility of establishing a China-EU Free Trade Area in the future and offers policy recommendations regarding RMB exchange rate expectations and foreign direct investment.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.167-176
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• 2021

Incheon Port urgently requires designation of a free trade zone to pursue development linked with the port hinterland while promoting continuous growth of the port. This study aims to evaluate the optimal location and derive policy implications for the designation of a free trade zone and analyzed factors property divided by groups. This study used the Consistent Fuzzy Preference Relation (CFPR) analysis technique to derive a practical construction direction by quantifying and evaluating linguistic measures. As a result, the Incheon New Port hinterland showed the highest location competitiveness among the four candidate areas of Incheon New Port hinterland, Aam Logistics Complex 2, North Port hinterland, and Gyeongin Port hinterland. Among the eight evaluation factors consisting of qualitative and quantitative factors, the Incheon New Port hinterland ranked no. 1 in all the four qualitative factors and one quantitative factor and received the highest total score. Also, Group 1 presented 'possibility to attract tenant companies' as first. Group 2 was 'complex size' and Group 3 was also 'possibility to attract tenant companies'. This study has the implication for suggesting the factors and evaluation structure of Free Trade Zone. Future research requires detailed empirical studies, such as expanding the subject of study or selecting factors that reflect the interests of each group.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.251-272
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• 2010

This study was done through Panel Gravity Model to analyze the trade pattern of Korean motor industry and empirical analysis was also performed on the effect of regional economies joining to the Korean trade is to draw out some implications. Compared with per capita pattern regarding the income levels of both the countries, the results indicated that trade of Korean motor industry followed GDP pattern in accordance with the overall market. The results of effect on regional economic integration to Korean motor industry reflected 179% and 198% increase in motor trade industry and motor parts trade, respectively. To expand the trade of Korean motor industry at the international competitiveness level, focus should be made on smaller, smarter and greener car with lesser impact on the environment. Hence, the present investigation suggested that government should not delay in retaining the core technology as well as private sector should also aggressively invest in the market.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.293-313
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• 2016

In the East Asian region, the advancement of trade networks is being facilitated, which turns out that economic integration across borders is being advanced due to FTA expansion, freedom of business activity growing through the reform of regulatory system in each country, and the processing of division of labor between processes across borders. Trans-Pacific Partnership(TPP), which is a U.S. led multilateral FTA, was signed on February 4 2016 in Auckland, New Zealand by 12 countries, by which changes in the East Asia Trade Network are also expected. For this reason, this study examined the impact that TPP would have on East Asia Trade Network. According to the result of this study, it was determined that TPP, as the regulation and system which will lead globalization of the supply chain, will change Supply Chain structure and result in a positive effect on Value Chain. This will have a significant impact on the East Asian trade network, and connect to enhanced competitiveness of participating enterprises. In addition, TPP seems to be the basis for realization of FTAAP(Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific) in the future, Therefore, Korea who has high Degree of Dependence upon Foreign Trade will have to pay make political effort to effectively deal with this changing trading environment in East Asia.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.43-63
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• 2013

This paper investigates the impact of free trade agreement (FTA) on the performance of Korea's foreign direct investment (FDI) firms. We use plant- and firm-level data to examine the trends of FDI patterns of Korean firms between 2002 and 2010 by dividing firms based on their sizes - large and small firms. Analyzing firms' FDI activities worldwide, we find that small firms account for large share of investment cases especially in countries where FTA became effective with Korea during our sample period. Using these facts, we estimate the changes of productivity and performance of large and small firms and their foreign affiliates before and after FTA became effective. Our results show that FTA increases productivity of small firms and their foreign affiliates after its formation. In particular, we provide evidence that productivity improvement by small firms and their foreign affiliates may result from an increase in production and capital during FTA period.

• 한국디지털정책학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.33-40
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• 2007

The Customs Administration, unlike other administrative service, should respond to constantly changing external environment. The Customs has to actively adapt itself to government policy changes, economic changes and international environment changes to facilitate the flow of trade logistics and maintain trading relations wi th other countries. The purpose of this paper is to explain policy directions of the Korea Customs Service which enforces various policies related to tariff and non-tariff barrier elimination for the trade liberalization while the Korean government is pursuing FTAs on a multi-track basis. This paper aims to seek ways to apply FTA policies to the Korean society and economy in a smooth manner. First of all, this paper examines changes in Customs administration brought by the proliferation of FTAs to such areas as FTA negotiations, import/export management, duties and taxes collection, drawback reduction/exempt ion of duty application area of preferential tariff rate and country of origin management. Then, the paper sets FTA missions of "supporting Customs Administration to lead the new trend of free trade environment" after analyzing the environment changes. To achieve the FTA mission mentioned above, the KCS designated 4 strategies and 40 implementation tasks. The 4 strategies are named "4C Strategies" taking initial letters from Client-oriented, Customized procedures, Cooperation and Constitution. "4C" also refers to Foresee(strategies to foresee the successful establishment of FTA policies) or For C(Customer or Customs). The KCS will continue to create new tasks through various channels and monitor their implementation process, and to help FTA regime successfully take root in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.819-830
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• 2003

Korea is facing great threat from other countries as a major global sourcing site for textile and apparel products. The threat has been augmented by changes in external environment such as advents of Trading Blocs and Free Trade Area(FTA) as well as internal environment such as hikes in labor cost and lack of flexibility in accommodating international buyers' needs. This study analyzed international buyers' sourcing activities in Korea for the purpose of developing strategies to enhance competitiveness of the Korean textile and apparel industries in the global market. The data used in this study were gathered by surveying 52 non-Korean textile and apparel product buyers with cooperation of the Korea Federation of Textile Industries (KOFOTI). The data were analyzed by mean, frequency, Pearson correlation coefficient, and ｘ$^2$ analysis. The results indicated that Korea is still attractive to many international buyers especially to those who have been engaged in global sourcing for longer periods of time with bigger purchasing budgets. However, in order to expand and solidify their customer bases, Korean companies should focus more on developing competitively priced value added products a step ahead of their foreign competitors, diversifying their marketing channels including internet.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.3-21
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• 2018

The WTO was established in 1995 as an organization which protects and promotes free trade among its members. However, since about this time they have signed many bilateral and multilateral FTAs and joined many other new international agreements and organizations, the purpose of which at times overlaps with that of the WTO. Some existing works on international organizations contend that these FTAs and many other IOs could weaken the role of the WTO as a promoter of free trade. However, the results of regression analyses on the use of the WTO do not support this argument, but show that the experiences of WTO members in these FTAs and many other IOs help them to use its dispute settlement mechanism more frequently

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.21-42
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• 2023

Purpose - This paper investigates the trade effect of the Korea-China Free Trade Agreement (KCFTA) which coincides with political conflicts between the two countries due to the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in Korea. The two events occurred in the same year and both are likely to affect trade between two countries but in opposite directions. Therefore, it is crucial to distinguish between the trade effects from the KCFTA event and those from the THAAD event to evaluate the true FTA effects. However, this would be difficult when using only annual data. Accordingly, ex post studies to examine the trade effects of KCFTA are lacking in trustworthiness while many ex ante studies that conjecture the positive trade effects neglect the THAAD deployment impact. This paper aims to fill that gap. Design/methodology - Given that the KCFTA and THAAD events occurred in the same year but in different months, we use the monthly data from 2000 to 2019 of Korea's exports to bracket this period. We employ the difference-in-difference (DID) method within a gravity equation specification that uses hi-dimensional fixed effects to address various endogeneity issues and seasonal effects. We identify the net impact of KCFTA ratification from these two near-simultaneous events to quantify the effects of trade liberalization between these two countries. Findings - After isolating the THAAD effects on trade, the analysis creates a positive and statistically significant coefficient estimate of the KCFTA impact. In contrast, failing to isolate the THAAD effect produced a negative and statistically significant coefficient estimate of the KCFTA impact. Our results indicate that KCFTA independently increased Korea's exports to China by 10.2%, but that this increase was fully mitigated by the THAAD event. Further, our results verify that unobserved heterogeneity and multilateral resistance are technically difficult to account for in those estimations as that rely solely upon annual data, as this type of data are inadequate to control for the potential for endogeneity. Originality/value - This paper is one of the first studies to carefully evaluate the net trade effects of the KCFTA on Korea's largest trading partner while isolating the impact of simultaneously occurred political events that may influence trade in opposing directions. Our findings indicate that the lack of prior evidence of positive trade effects of the KCFTA when using annual data may be attributed to a failure to identify the impact of each event separately. This analysis supports using the correct modeling specification to avoid misleading conclusions when evaluating any important international trade policy.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.139-158
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• 2023

Purpose - The study of co-movements between stock markets is a crucial area of finance and has recently received much interest in a variety of studies, especially in international finance. Stock market co-movements are a major phenomenon in financial markets, but they are not necessarily independent of the real market. Several studies support the idea that bilateral trade linkages significantly impact stock market correlations. Motivated by this perspective, this study investigates whether real market integration due to trade agreements brings about financial market integration in terms of stock market co-movement. Design/methodology - Over the 10 free trade agreements (FTAs) signed by the United States, using a dynamic conditional correlations (DCC) multivariate GARCH (MGRACH) model, we empirically measure the degree of integration by finding DCCs between the US market and the partner country's market. We then track how these correlations evolve over time and compare the results before and after trade agreements. Findings - According to the empirical results, there are positive return spillover effects from the US market to eight counterpart equity markets, except Jordan, Morocco, and Singapore. Especially Mexico, Canada, and Chile have large return spillover effects at the 1% significance level. All partner countries of FTAs generally have positive correlations with the US over the entire period, but the size and variance are somewhat different by country. Meanwhile, not all countries that signed trade agreements with the United States showed the same pattern of stock market co-movement after the agreement. Korea, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Singapore show increasing DCC patterns after trade agreements with the US. However, Canada, Australia, Bahrain, Jordan, and Morocco do not show different patterns before and after trade agreements in DCCs. These countries generally have the characteristic of relatively lower or higher co-movements in stock markets with the US before the signing of the FTAs. Originality/value - To our knowledge, few studies have directly examined the linkages between trade agreements and stock markets. Our approach is novel as it considers the problem of conditional heteroscedasticity and visualizes the change of correlations with time variations. Moreover, analyzing several trade agreements based on the United States enables the results of cross-country pairs to be compared. Hence, this study provides information on the degree of stock market integration with countries with which the United States has trade agreements, while simultaneously allowing us to track whether there have been changes in stock market integration patterns before and after trade agreements.