• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.1-19
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• 2021

Purpose - This paper aims at analyzing the functions and effectiveness of the cooperation agenda in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), focusing on the cases of Asian countries. This paper estimates the contribution of this agenda to the sustainable development in Asia by providing the 'side payment' of the economic integration that encourages foreign investment and change in global value chains (GVC). Design/methodology - This study analyzes the functions of the cooperation chapter in FTAs by applying the cooperative game theory and reviewing the structures of the related FTAs. Also, as an empirical study, the existing FTA provisions and related development assistant programs in Asia are reviewed in this paper, especially focusing on the FTAs signed by Korea. Findings - Our main findings can be summarized as follows: The drawback of the economic integration, which would be the imbalanced economic benefit, can be redressed by the cooperation chapter in FTAs functioning as a 'side payment'. Indeed, as the examples of Korean FTAs show, more foreign investment and the GVC expansion in Asian countries have been encouraged thanks to the implementation of the cooperation chapters. Originality/value - This paper attempts to find how a legally binding agreement would influence the cooperation agenda in Asia which has never been analyzed despite the increasing number of so-called 'cooperation' chapters in the FTAs.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.662-671
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• 2012

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) will be widely used in future transportation systems to reduce oil fuel consumption. Therefore, the electrical energy demand will be increased due to the charging of a large number of vehicles. Without intelligent control strategies, the charging process can easily overload the electricity grid at peak hours. In this paper, we consider a smart charging and discharging process for multiple PHEVs in a building's garage to optimize the energy consumption profile of the building. We formulate a centralized optimization problem in which the building controller or planner aims to minimize the square Euclidean distance between the instantaneous energy demand and the average demand of the building by controlling the charging and discharging schedules of PHEVs (or 'users'). The PHEVs' batteries will be charged during low-demand periods and discharged during high-demand periods in order to reduce the peak load of the building. In a decentralized system, we design an energy cost-sharing model and apply a non-cooperative approach to formulate an energy charging and discharging scheduling game, in which the players are the users, their strategies are the battery charging and discharging schedules, and the utility function of each user is defined as the negative total energy payment to the building. Based on the game theory setup, we also propose a distributed algorithm in which each PHEV independently selects its best strategy to maximize the utility function. The PHEVs update the building planner with their energy charging and discharging schedules. We also show that the PHEV owners will have an incentive to participate in the energy charging and discharging game. Simulation results verify that the proposed distributed algorithm will minimize the peak load and the total energy cost simultaneously.