• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.40 no.6
• /
• pp.485-494
• /
• 2016

The primary purpose of this study is to analyze the impact and determinants of bilateral Free Trade Agreements on international total bulk shipment trade volume at the port of Korea using the Panel Gravity Model. The model estimates the aggregated panel data of exports and imports (excluding transshipment) as a dependent variable during the period from 1996 to 2015. GDP, GDP per capita, distances between bilateral countries, and FTA dummies are included as independent variables. And the economic integration of FTAs including ASEAN+3 and NAFTA3 countries were used as dummy variables. Study results show that GDP and GDP per capita have positive impacts on bulk shipment trade volume at the port of Korea. In addition, Korea's bilateral FTAs with Singapore, India and the United States have positive effects on total bulk trade volume in Korea. This is the so called trade creation effect. On the other hand, ASEAN+3 and NAFTA have negative effects on the total bulk trade. This is the so called trade diversion effect. Also, the distance between Korea and its trade partners has a negative impact. These findings provide insights for: further academic research, site operators who work in related trade and maritime sectors, and policy makers engaged in port and maritime operations. The results can be used to develop strategies for maximizing bulk port throughput.

• East Asian Economic Review
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.95-117
• /
• 2022

This paper empirically examines what factors affected the termination of anti-dumping measures in Korea during the 2006-2019 period. Employing a meticulous literature review, the paper investigates the WTO's and Korea's rules on the termination of anti-dumping measures and sets up the related variables in the Cox proportional hazards model. The empirical results show that the GDP growth rate, employment, and trade competitiveness in domestic industries had positive effects on the hazard of the termination of AD measures, while free trade agreements had negative effects. By industry, the hazard of the termination of AD measures was less prominent in the steel industry, while it was more prominent in the machinery industry. These results imply that AD measures in Korea had the properties of a proper trade remedy policy and, at the same time, a protectionism tool to sustain its domestic industries, depending on industrial characteristics and other trade policies.

• Journal of Korea Trade
• /
• v.25 no.6
• /
• pp.1-19
• /
• 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 Information Technology Applications and Management
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.39-59
• /
• 2011

Information Technology (IT) has been working as an engine of growth in Korea since early 1990's. For the next leap of Korean economy and to overcome worldwide financial crisis, Korea's IT industry needs to find a new breakthrough. In this viewpoint, we tried to empirically analyze the impact of Korea's IT trade on domestic industry. Since Korean government is trying to set up a few free trade agreements (FTA) with major trade partners, more accurate understanding of the impact of FTA is required to find the correct way to promote Korea's IT industry. We first looked at the current status of Korea's IT trade with major partners such as the US, Japan, and China to understand the competitiveness of Korea's IT industry. Having done this, we measured the impact of IT trade on domestic industry using Granger causality test. The results showed that the positive impact of trade is bigger on IT industry than on whole industry. Also, the impact of import turned out to be bigger than that of export. Among the major trade partner countries, the US’s and China's impacts are bigger than Japan's impact. Another notable thing is that IT product import from the US has especially big impact on domestic IT industry. Our findings may have certain implications to the FTA related policy.

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.44 no.2
• /
• pp.203-219
• /
• 2019

Recently, the Trump administration initiated a new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that strengthened NAFTA's rules of origin to enhance protectionism while maintaining the framework of trade agreements rather than completely abolishing them. This study focuses on the behavior of firms motivated to influence the government to practice protectionist trade by analyzing the rules of origin verification and adopting the political economics model. This paper explains the process of endogenous determination of the stringency of rules of origin verification as a non-tariff barrier using the lobbying model. Comparative static analysis shows that the more efficient technology a domestic firm has and the more government prefers to raise political contribution, the more is verification likely to be strict. This suggests that a rationale exists to maintain a free trade agreement in the form of the new agreement (USMCA) without abolishing the current NAFTA regime.

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.45 no.1
• /
• pp.155-171
• /
• 2020

In reality, there are numerous [Note: I advise to change the tone to being more certain, as opposed to offering a possibility. You need to emphasize the seriousness of the conditions that your study wants to talk about] non-tariff trade barriers under free trade agreements, with various stakeholders having different trade-off interests. This study focuses on the rules of origin verification and considers cases in which domestic firms, foreign firms, and domestic consumer groups compete politically for their rent protection in the domestic market. As in Gwande et al. (2006), cross-border lobbies are considered possible wherein foreign firms also lobby the government to influence the decision-making process of how stringently to verify the rules of origin. [Note: Starting here, switch to past tense because a: study intentions above can be in present tense, b: study procedures should be in past tense] In this study, we assumed that all stakeholders form interest groups and present political contributions to the government based on their interests. The stringency of the rules of origin verification was then determined through this political process, and we compared this to a socially optimal one in the analysis. It was found that the verification was less stringent when there was cross-border lobbying than the socially optimal one.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.141-165
• /
• 2007

This study aims to make a contribution to the promotion of trade and economic development of South Korea, and, at the same time, call attention to the increasing trend of investment agreements concluded within Free Trade Agreements (FTA) by examining theoretically FTAs and dispute resolution and investigating systematically the conclusion procedure of agreements, and the system, institutions, and jurisdiction of dispute resolution, and presenting these findings to the government and investors involved. The most problematic aspect in the legal process of arbitration involving disputes over investment is that of arguments concerning the right of jurisdiction. When a dispute arises, even though an investor files for arbitration at an ICSID institution, the parties become involved in another energy-consuming argument even before proceeding to the hearing and decision of the original plan in cases in which the respondent of the dispute files an objection to the decision rights of the arbitral tribunal. As the main basis for this type of plea, the point of non-existence of jurisdiction is first raised where the applicable dispute does not fall under the range of investments defined in individual investment contracts or investment agreements such as a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). To avoid an open-ended definition of investment for the range of investments, articles concerning investments in the FTA and NAFTA between Canada and the USA adopt the limited closed-list method. Article 96 of the FTA between Japan and Mexico applied the same abovementioned method of limited form of definition regarding range of investments and concluded BITs between member countries of APEC applied a similar method as well. Instead of employing the previously used inclusive definition, the BITs concluded between countries of Latin America and the USA are equipped with limited characteristics of an investment. Furthermore, to correspond with this necessary condition the three following requirements are needed : 1) fixed investment funding; 2) expected profits resulting from such investments; 3) and the existence of fixed risk bearing.

• East Asian Economic Review
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.417-444
• /
• 2013

This paper aims to empirically identify the effects of FTAs on outward and inward FDIs in Korea. Considering the income differences between Korea and its FTA partners, we hypothesize that FTAs have a positive effect on outward FDI to developing countries and inward FDI from developed countries. An underlying source of the hypothesis is the Knowledge-Capital model, addressing the positive (negative) relationship between trade costs and horizontal (vertical) FDI. We test for the hypothesis using data on Korea's FTAs and FDI over the period 2000-2010. We find that our empirical results support the hypothesis, and additionally, FTAs in general encourage FDI by creating an FDI-friendly environment.

• Journal of Korea Trade
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.47-60
• /
• 2023

Purpose - This paper assesses the trade potential and efficiency of Korea and China in the aquatic products trade. Trade efficiency and potential are the main factors that affect the growth of a country's trade. In this study, a time-varying stochastic frontier trade gravity model was constructed to analyze the trade potential and efficiency between Korea and China. By integrating the results of trade theory and empirical analysis, measures and suggestions were proposed to encourage the release of trade potential of fish exports between Korea and China. Design/methodology - In this paper, GDP per capita instead of economic size was chosen as an explanatory variable, and population size and relative distance were selected as explanatory variables to measure trade potential. For trade non-efficiency terms, regional organizations, political factors, and economic factors were mainly considered, and variables such as free trade agreements, political stability, regulatory quality, government efficiency, currency freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, and trade freedom were selected. Panel data for South Korea and 14 aquatic products trading partners (including China) from 2002 to 2020 were used in the empirical analysis. Findings - In the past 19 years, South Korea's export trade potential of aquatic products to China has never been lower than 70%. It was above 90% from 2006 to 2018, and has been at a high level for a long time. This shows that China's aquatic product market has large potential for development. Originality/value - This study examines the effectiveness and potential of South Korea's exports of aquatic items to China in a methodical and comprehensive empirical manner. The evaluation of the export trade potential of South Korea's aquatic goods to China is more precise when the effects of regional organization, political, and economic variables are taken into account in the trade non-efficiency term of the stochastic frontier gravity model. At the same time, we propose to increase the scale of South Korea's aquatic products trade from the perspective of China's demand. This issue of trade studies is underexplored both empirically and in theory, although the issue has long been important to Korean and world trade.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
• /
• v.8 no.spc1
• /
• pp.391-409
• /
• 2005

Free trade agreements have fast grown into a global phenomenon and their impact and repercussions are felt more strongly everyday. Korea, joining this large trend of the global economy, is currently pressing ahead with its negotiation rounds for FTA. In this paper, we focus on the e-commerce sector affected by the Korea-Singapore FTA, and the main issues and the future countermeasure directions of e-commerce on FTA has been analyzed. In conclusion, FTA is not an option even though there are still many remaining issues to be discussed regarding its effects. We identified countries excluding themselves from FTA are losing international competitiveness, and moreover, the losing competitiveness will end up more serious problems since the importance of FTA is especially high for e-commerce, as e-commerce accounts for a growing share of international trade. This paper also discusses the far-reaching potential consequences of the content of an international agreement at a government-to-government level on the economy and industry of a country by presenting past examples from. Korea, and recommends that policy-makers should exercise extreme vigilance in their negotiation of terms and conditions for FTA.