This paper empirically decomposes trade creation effects of regional trade agreements (RTAs) into those due to the tariff reduction effects and due to non-tariff barrier (NTB) removal by using the most disaggregated tariff-line level trade data in a large number of countries in the world....

Academic literature has theoretically discussed government strategy on regional trade agreements (RTAs) and has empirically identified some elements that play significant roles for that. The purpose of this study is to check the validity of these elements by means of a questionnaire survey of...

In this paper, we measure the costs for utilization of free trade agreement (FTA) tariff schemes. To do that, we use shipment-level Customs data on Thai imports, which identify not only the firms, source country, and commodity, but also the tariff schemes. We propose several measures as a proxy...

We examine the firm-level impact of the use of free trade agreement (FTA) schemes on import prices by employing firm-level import data that enables us to identify the use of different tariff schemes, such as FTA schemes and most favoured nation (MFN) schemes. Unlike the previous studies, we...

This paper provides the first empirical evidence about the tariff passthrough in world-wide trade. Specifically, we estimate the effects of tariff reduction on import prices for our tariff line-level data in 46 importing countries in 2007- 2011. The estimation results show that the average...

ASEAN has successfully reduced tariffs but not non-tariff measures (NTMs). Efforts to reduce NTMs always hit the debate surrounding justification of application of the measures. Efficiency of implementation of the measures adds to another issue in the agenda to reduce NTMs regardless the debate,...

Investment liberalization is central for ASEAN to attract greater FDI inflows and intra-region direct investment flows. This paper focuses on measuring and examining the progress and challenges in the implementation of the investment liberalization initiatives in the AEC Blueprint 2009–2015....

Financial integration challenges in ASEAN beyond 2015 can be grouped into two broad classes. The first classes of challenges are the regulatory and infrastructure challenges of financial market integration itself. The second pertains to monetary and fiscal policy regimes and how they are...

Korea’s trade with most of its 46 free trade agreement (FTA) partner countries has been expanded continuously. Its FTA utilization ratios were as low as 20% before 2010, and some suspicions regarding the benefits of FTA were raised, despite the government’s active promotion. But Korea...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of one-sided tariff cuts on firms’ export product scope. The theoretical model explicitly incorporates cost of management in addition to the commonly used production cost. The analysis predicts that the home country’s...