• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.11 no.9
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• pp.7-16
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• 2020

Purpose: Many studies show that promoting the development of trade facilitation has a positive role in stimulating the country's foreign trade. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study the development level of trade facilitation for China's export trade. Research design, data and methodology:This study analyzes the growth trend of China's export trade volume in 2009-2019, the characteristics of China's export trade market according to the top 18 major exporting countries in 2017-2018, the structure of export commodities to understand China's economic development level, and compares the total amount of trade exported to all uses this to measure the level of trade development. On this basis, this paper selects the 2011-2018 Trade Facilitation Index and C continents to study the development trend. Based on the theory of trade facilitation, this paper constructs the Trade Facilitation Index, and hina's export trade volume for empirical research. Results: The results show that trade facilitation has a positive and significant impact on the development of China's export trade. Conclusions: Based on the analysis of the actual situations and empirical results, this paper puts forward some suggestions to promote the level of trade facilitation in order to promote the development of import and export trade.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.25-43
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• 2020

This study mainly measures the level of trade facilitation in member countries along the "the Belt and Road" and discusses the impact of trade facilitation on bilateral trade. Based on the research results of domestic and foreign scholars, this study made a new systematic measuring system which covering 4 indicators and 15 subordinate indicators, to obtain the trade facilitation index. Based on the extended gravity model, this paper conducts a panel data, for more than 50 major trading members along the "the Belt and Road" during 2010~2017 as an example to empirically study the relationship between the trade facilitation level of major trading members and the volume of China's import and export trade. The results show that the level of trade facilitation among member countries is not high and the trade facilitation variable has positive value, indicating that the trade facilitation variable has positive effect on increasing bilateral trade. If the trade facilitation increases by 1% respectively, the bilateral trade level will increase by 0.98% separately. Finally, according to the regression results of four aspects of the trade facilitation index system, e-business development plays the most significant role in promoting trade facilitation.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.109-126
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• 2022

Purpose - Based on the relevant panel data for China and 13 of the RCEP countries from 2008-2019, this paper conducts an in-depth study on the impact of trade facilitation levels on China's cross-border e-commerce exports using the expanded trade gravity model. Design/methodology - This study constructs a trade facilitation index (TFI) system, and uses the principal component analysis method to measure the trade facilitation levels of RCEP countries in 2008-2019. This result is then introduced into the extended gravity model to explore the effect of trade facilitation in RCEP countries on China's cross-border e-commerce export. Findings - It is found that the overall trade facilitation level has a significant effect on China's cross-border e-commerce exports. Among the primary indicators, with the exception of infrastructure, the other four indicators demonstrate a significant impact. The findings show that China should strengthen its cooperation with RCEP countries in trade facilitation and cross-border e-commerce to better achieve complementary regional economic development. Originality/value - This paper has three contributions: first, this paper builds a TFI system that includes five primary indicators based on the characteristics of cross-border e-commerce. Second, we explore the impact of trade facilitation levels of RCEP countries on China's cross-border e-commerce exports, which helps to fill the gap in existing studies of the impact of cross-border e-commerce exports. Third, this paper further analyzes the impact of five primary indicators on cross-border e-commerce exports; this thus provides more targeted measures to improve trade facilitation levels.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.1-20
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• 2023

Purpose - Using trade data from 2008 to 2019, this study analyzes the impact of trade facilitation on China's agricultural exports under the RCEP framework using a gravity model based on the level of trade facilitation in 13 RCEP countries. Design/methodology - This study constructs a complete set of trade facilitation index systems, comprehensively measures the trade facilitation level of RCEP member countries, and uses a gravity model to verify the critical role of trade facilitation level in enhancing the trade volumes of RCEP member countries. Findings - We found that trade facilitation has a significant impact on China's agricultural exports as a whole. The effect of each primary indicator varies in magnitude, with finance and e-commerce (F) having the most significant impact, followed by customs efficiency (C) and infrastructure development (1); the institutional environment has no significant effect. Originality/value - This study analyzes the impact of trade facilitation on China's agricultural exports from the perspective of exports, and uses the latest data to study the degree of the impact of trade facilitation in importing countries. Measures to jointly enhance trade facilitation among member countries under the RCEP framework are proposed.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.447-467
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• 2016

The RTAs with trade facilitation provisions have been expected to generate a larger net trade-creating effect and complement the discriminatory feature of RTAs but have yet to be empirically proven. Recognizing the limitations of existing studies, we conducted a quantitative analysis on the effects of RTAs with and without trade facilitation provisions on both intra- and extra-bloc trade by using a modified gravity equation. We applied the Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimation with time varying exporter and importer fixed effect method to panel data consisting of 45,770 country pairs covering 170 countries for 2000-2010. We found that the trade facilitation provisions in existing RTAs are non-discriminatory by generating more intra- and extra-bloc trade in general. In particular, we found that the trade effects of RTAs in the APEC region are much stronger than the general case covering all RTAs in the world. In addition, as we control the trade effect of a country's trade facilitation, which is ranked by the World Bank's logistic performance index, RTAs consisting of trade facilitation provisions are discriminatory for trade in final goods and non-discriminatory for trade in intermediate goods. Overall, we endeavor to "explain," instead of "hypothesizing," why most of the recent RTAs contain trade facilitation provisions, especially in light of the deepening regional interdependence through trade in parts and components under global value chains and support the necessity of multilateralizing RTAs by implementing non-discriminatory trade facilitation provisions.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.67-96
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• 2012

Previous literature has looked merely into the effect of trade facilitation on aggregate trade, or analyzed trade growth using the extensive and intensive margins. This paper blends these two lines of research for a detailed analysis of the impact of trade facilitation on trade by using highly disaggregated trade data and a more composite index for measuring trade facilitation, also taking into account the export sectors and income levels of countries. As a result, this paper finds that developing countries with higher trade facilitation levels export a wider range of products, especially primary goods. While trade facilitation levels do not have a statistically significant association with trade at the intensive margin in general, further analysis shows that the impact of advanced trade facilitation is the largest for lower middle-income countries in primary goods trade at the intensive margin, and the largest for upper middle-income countries in manufactured goods trade at the intensive margin. More importantly, our policy simulation results suggest that trade facilitation-related policy reforms enable developing countries to benefit from increased trade in manufactured goods at the extensive margin.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.177-189
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• 2020

The OECD has assessed Korea as the third highest in trade facilitation worldwide. The paperless trade of Korea is world class based on uTradeHub : national e-trade service's infrastructure for trade community. Over 800 trade-related document standards provide interoperability of message exchange and trade process automation among exporters, importers, banks, customs, airlines, shippers, forwarders and trade authorities. Most one-to-one unit processes are perfectly paperless & online; however, from the perspective of process flow, there is a lack of streamlining end-to-end trade processes spread over many different parties. This situation causes the trade community to endure repetitive-redundant load for handling trade documents. The trade community has a strong demand for seamless trade flow. For streamlining the trade process, processes with data should flow seamlessly to multilateral parties. Flowing data with an optimized process is the critical success factor to accomplish seamless trade. This study proposes four critical digital trade infrastructures as a platform service : (1) data-centric Intelligent Document Recognition(IDR), (2) data-driven Digital Document Flow (DDF), (3) platform based Digital Collaboration & Communication(DCC), and (4) new digital Trade Facilitation Index (dTFI) for precise assessment of K-Trade Digital Trade Framework. The results of new dTFI analyses showed that redundant reentry load was reduced significantly over the whole trade and logistics process. This study leads to the belief that if put into real-world application can provide huge economic gains by building a new global value chain of the K-trade eco network. A new digital trade framework will be invaluable in promoting national soft power for enhancing global competitiveness of the trade community. It could become the advanced reference model of next trade facilitation infrastructure for developing countries.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.161-178
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• 2023

Purpose - purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the investment facilitation levels of 11 RCEP countries (excluding Myanmar, Brunei, and Laos due to lack of data) on China's outward foreign direct investments(OFDI) using balanced panel data from 2010 to 2019. Design/methodology - First, four investment facilitation measurement indicators (regulatory environment, infrastructure, financial market, ease of doing business) were selected,investment facilitation scores of the 11 countries were obtained using the principal component analysis, an investment gravity model was established with nine explanatory variables (investment facilitation level, market size, population, geographic distance, degree of opening, tax level, natural resources, whether the country is an APEC member or not, and whether a valid bilateral investment treaty with China has been concluded) were used to establish an investment gravity model, and regression analyses were conducted with OLS and system GMM. Findings - The results of the regression analyses showed that investment facilitation levels had the greatest effect on China's OFDI, all four first-level indicators had positive effects on China's OFDI, and among them, the institutional environment had the greatest effect. In addition, it was shown that explanatory variables such as market size, population, geographical distance, degree of openness, natural resources, and whether or not a valid bilateral investment treaty has been concluded would have positive effects on China's OFDI, while tax levels and APEC membership would impede China's OFDI to some extent. Originality/value - Since the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEPT) came into effect not long ago, there are not so many studies on the effects of investment facilitation levels of RCEP member states on China's OFDI, and the investment facilitation measurement index constructed in this paper is relatively systematic and scientific because it includes all the contents of investment facilitation related to the life cycle of company's foreign direct investments.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.96-112
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• 2019

Purpose - "Trade Facilitation" aims the easier flow of trade across borders, driven not only by effective customs administration, the efficiency of appropriate authorities, but also by telecommunications, the quality of infrastructures and competent logistics. Facilitating trade will help lower trade development costs as well as improve economic development and enhance economic benefits for emerging economies at a time when imports and exports are sent in and out across borders several times in the form of intermediate and final products. Not only that, globalization is being accelerated, which in turn increases competitiveness and this makes logistics one of the key factors when it comes to international trade. Highly efficient logistics services promote product movement, ensure product safety and delivery speed, and reduce trade costs between countries. The purpose of this study is, by using the LPI indices based on gravity model estimates, to analyze the impact of each LPI component on trade with the 20 biggest exporting countries of Northeast Asian countries-Korea, Japan, and China-which account for 19.05% of global exports. Design/methodology - Also, this study statistically analyzes the impact of trade on Northeast Asian countries' top 20 exporting countries, using the LPI indices relevant to Trade Facilitation based on the gravity model estimates. Findings - As a result, it was turned out that the distance, GDP, and the LPI components have relevant impact on the trade exports of all three countries but demonstrated little relation to the demographic perspective. Originality/value - The study also found we can increase the trade volume by improving three countries' trade partners' LPI indices since Korea, Japan, and China share most of their 20 biggest trade partners.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.25-43
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• 2022

Purpose - This study is to investigate the direct and moderating effect of intangible variable like economic freedom to facilitating factors on FDI(foreign direct investment) inflows and the difference of facilitating factors by the stage of economic development. Design/methodology/approach - Fixed-effect panel regression analysis with 19-year macro economic data from 2000 to 2019 including economic freedom index from Fraser Institute in 13 developed and 15 developing countries was used. Research implications or Originality - In analysis of direct effect of 5 sectors in economic freedom, the influence of economic freedom was shown weaker than other macro economic factors on FDI inflows, which indicates that actual development of economic factors are more important. The effect of economic freedom on FDI inflows at the stage of economic development differed. In developed countries, human capital, GDP, export, free trade and regulation affected FDI inflows in decreasing order, as did human capital, GDP, consumption expenditure, export, investment expenditure, government expenditure, free trade and sound money in developing countries. In analysis of moderating effect of economic freedom, a domestic and international market size, a flexible labor market which can provide a cheaper good human resources and government expenditures for improving social infrastructure under free economic environment facilitated FDI inflows. However, the statistical significance of moderating effect on export was not shown, which indicates that economic freedom policy itself without actual improvement of exports could not attract FDI inflows.