• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.27-48
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• 2022

In the past decade, Korea and Japan have increasingly exhibited different strategic priorities in trade in face of China's rising global economic prowess and worsening US-China trade conflict. Japan's trade policy decisions have worked to reinforce its economic and security ties with the US as a means to counter China. Japan has used both bilateral and multilateral means to secure its ties with the US against China. In contrast, Korea's trade policy positions have been one of 'strategic ambiguity'. Korea has been more conciliatory towards China, reluctant to take actions that would counter China's interest. Korea has mainly resorted to bilateral channels to maintain favorable relations with both China and the US. Korea's reluctance to clearly ally with the US against China has been observed across different administrations with opposing political orientations. This paper examines Korea and Japan's diverging strategic priorities in trade through the 2017 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference; the 2017 US imposition of Section 232 on steel; the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Korea-US FTA renegotiation and the Korea-China FTA Phase Two Negotiation; and the 2019 Japan-US Trade Agreement.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.335-353
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• 2022

There are two aspects of digital trade: the digitalisation of goods/services being traded and the digitalisation of the transactional act. Digital data (i.e. machine-readable industrial data and transactional data) is the major driving force for both aspects of digital trade. Digital data is a non-rivalrous input, whether for production or marketing activities, and is thus able to be used by many firms or government agencies without limiting the use of others. Digital platforms provide online infrastructure for the interactions between groups, for instance, consumers and producers. The externality effect refers to the situation in which prosperity in one group on a given platform will improve the returns of other groups on the same platform. In the era of the data-driven economy, strategic trade policy can involve data-related policies. The major objective of these policies is to improve the competitiveness of domestic firms. For instance, firms may be subsidised if they use cloud services provided by specific platforms. This strand of strategic trade policies might be useful for increasing the competitiveness of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) via the digitalisation of production/marketing processes. Alternatively, strategic trade policy may also exploit the externality effect via platform economy-related policies. Further, some countries may form data coalitions to facilitate cross-border data flow. This paper uses cases in Asian countries to illustrate which role these strategic trade policies can play in the digital economy.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.89-114
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• 2023

This paper empirically examines how controlling strategic goods affects productivity by focusing on Korean industries from 2015 to 2019. We hypothesize that strategic goods control positively affects productivity because it promotes international trade by making up for market failures, building up national credibility, and stabilizing market environment; in turn, international trade contributes to productivity growth. The regression results are congruent with our hypothesis. The effects of strategic goods control on productivity were positive and statistically significant in general. These positive effects were more prominent in the group of industries that include strategic goods and, thus, are technologically intensive. The results also support that international trade is a key medium for the effects of strategic goods control on productivity. Consequently, our empirical results support government policy on strategic goods control, ensuring that strategic goods control can contribute to economic growth by reducing diplomatic friction and stabilizing the global market.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.177-197
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• 2023

The rent seeking behavior of monopolistic online platform enterprises against digital contents suppliers is similar to the importing countries transfers the monopoly profit acquired by exporting companies in the imperfectly competitive market through optimal tariffs. If such an optimal tariffs imposing mechanism of importing countries, according to so-called strategic trade policy theories, is applied to the rent-seeking behavior of online platform companies, important insights can be obtained in discussions on regulatory reform. In other words, if an online platform enterprises impose a differentiated fee on each contents-suppliers in a monopolistically competitive markets that pursues contents differentiation through R&D investment, it would reduce the innovation investment by contents suppliers. Nevertheless, profit-maximizing online platform enterprises would not voluntarily give up the discriminatory fee system. Therefore, we would like to propose the introduction of a regulation that can force the introduction of an non-discriminatory fee system for all the contents suppliers.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.53-67
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• 2020

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study strategic trade policies under international process research and development (R&D) competition with or without market leaders for free trade and a subsidy regime and compare the effects of R&D subsidies and export subsidies on the equilibrium levels of firm profit and social welfare. Design/methodology - For the analysis, we use previous work by Haaland and Kind (2008) and construct a differentiated goods duopoly model, wherein two firms compete via quantity in a third-country market for free trade and the subsidy regime. We consider simultaneous-move quantity competition when the two firms choose their quantities simultaneously and sequential-move quantity competition when they choose their quantities sequentially. The results are compared to those of Balboa, Daughety and Reinganum (2004), who studied export subsidies. Findings - The following are the findings. First, the results of firm preference orderings regarding firm position from Dowrick (1986) and Balboa, Daughety and Reinganum (2004) may not hold in our model when the firms' strategies are strategic substitutes under free trade. Second, the preference rankings under Cournot competition for free trade and a subsidy regime are the same as those in the strategic trade policy of export subsidy. Third, except for the cases of too close substitutes and complements, the results of firm and government preferences regarding firm position are different from those of Balboa, Daughety and Reinganum (2004) in that Stackelberg leadership in a subsidy regime is advantageous when the goods are substitutes but is disadvantageous when the goods are complements. Moreover, the equilibrium level of firm profit is the highest in the Cournot-Nash play when the goods are substitutes in a subsidy regime. Fourth, except for the cases of too close substitutes and complements, the results of firms' and their respective governments' trade regime preferences are similar to those of Balboa, Daughety and Reinganum (2004) in that a Stackelberg leader firm and government prefer free trade if the goods are substitutes and prefer a subsidy regime if the goods are complements. Furthermore, a Stackelberg follower firm and government strongly prefer a subsidy regime to free trade. Originality/value - By analyzing the effects of R&D subsidies and export subsidies in international markets, we can find similarities and differences between them in international markets.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.59-86
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• 2011

This paper examines a country's strategic optimal tariff policy against a foreign firm with market power. That is, the purpose of the paper is, under asymmetric information, to reexamine the problem of optimal tariff policy against a foreign monopolist from another country's welfare standpoint. This is to extend the analysis of Brander and Spencer(1984) which is both analytic and elaborate. The incentive compatible tariff schedule is derived, and then policy implications are investigated. The main result is that, under incomplete information, the optimal tariff is elevated above its full-information counterpart in order to capture foreign rents. Moreover, it suggests that trade policies motivated by rent extraction are unlikely to be robust to the introduction of incomplete information. This research complements an existing literature on the strategic trade policy in terms of asymmetric information.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.21-33
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• 2016

This paper examines the effect of strategic trade policy on port ownership structures (nationalization or privatization) when two firms compete with each other in reciprocal markets. Furthermore, we analyze firms profits, port charges, ports profits and social welfare when ports are privatized or nationalized under tariff regime and under free trade regime respectively. Thus, we find that (i) under tariff regime, port nationalization is a dominant strategy regardless of transport costs. (ii) the effect of high port charges brings higher port profits than the effect of high trade volume. (iii) irrespective of trade regime, when transport cost is relatively low, port nationalization increases social welfare, while two government prefer free trade agreement to tariff regime when transport cost is sufficiently high regardless of port ownership structures.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.277-298
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• 2008

This study develops the market attractiveness assessment model and draws the strategic target markets and their corresponding exporting strategies through identifying the market positions in the dimensions of market attractiveness scores and market positional strength to achieve the innovative export promotion of Korean heavy electric industry and the resulting improvement and reversal of comparative-disadvantage position. In chapter 2, we analyze the stages of selecting target markets, the constructs and their measure variables of market attractiveness models, and the components and strategic policy implications of directional policy matrix. And in chapter 3, we identify the comparative advantage positions of Korean heavy electric industry in the global market through analyzing its trade structure, trends, balance, ratio-balance, and specialization index by the item and the region respectively. We find that the Asia/Pacific region is the most attractive export market of the Korean heavy electric equipment industry, the following important strategic target markets are the America, MENA, CIS/East Europe Regions in the order of their attractiveness and competitive position dimensions. In the mean time, the sub-Sahara Africa and West Europe region is shown to be the long-run-viewpoint target market requiring the innovation or divest strategies owing to their low attractiveness and the low market share of Korean exports.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.143-175
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• 2016

In this study, we have analyzed the impact of firm, innovation and industry characteristics on firm's appropriation strategy focusing of the relative preference of patents and trade secrets by using the Korea Corporate Innovation Survey 2005, 2010 and 2014 data. According to the analysis results, companies with characteristics such as venture, high-technology industry, receipt of public R&D subsidies, performing product innovation, high R&D expenditure, prefer patents to trade secrets relatively. However, firm size and R&D cooperation did not have a statistically significant effect on the relative preference. This shows that policy on appropriation system considering the industry characteristics may be more effective. Companies in the industries with a high market concentration showed that trade secrets are preferred, especially these characteristic was distinctly in small and venture companies. This means that the increase in strategic patent applications of the incumbent firms is able to restrict the patent activities in small and venture companies. Because the excessive increase in strategic patents is likely to constrain the innovation activities of small and venture firms ultimately, policy initiatives to limit the abuse of strategic patent applications is required.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.333-353
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• 2007

This paper is to explore that there are structural problems in the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agrement negotiation by examining the Korean FTA policy and to introduce some alternatives to overcome them. The structural problem stems in part from the inefficient system in FTA policy making and its implementation. Most importantly, there is a lack of ex-ante consensus building among stake-holders. As an alternative to the current FTA policy, we suggest two things. First, we argue that an FTA negotiation strategy should correspond to Korea's overall industrial development strategy. Second, the National Assembly should play an important part for enforce of trade policies as a tool for advancing a comprehensive strategic measures.