scholarly journals Trade Creation and Trade Diversion in African Recs: Drawing Lessons for AfCFTA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Woubet Kassa ◽  
Pegdewende Nestor Sawadogo
2015 ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Anh Tu Thuy ◽  
Ngoc Le Minh

This paper makes use of two trade indicators, Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) and Regional Orientation (RO), to evaluate the economic impacts of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (The) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on Vietnamese commodities at the Harmonized System (HS) 2-digit level. Several sectors in which Vietnam has revealed a comparative advantage, has benefited from the AFTA, and would continue to enjoy trade creation from the RCEP, are: Cereals (10), Salt, sulphur, earth, stone, plaster, lime and cement (25), Rubber (40), Knitted or crocheted fabric (60), etc. More importantly, the result provides a list of commodities in which Vietnam has a comparative advantage and only experiences trade creation when participating in the RCEP. These are: Milling products, malt, starches, inulin, wheat gluten (11), Vegetable plaiting materials, vegetable products not elsewhere specified (14), Wood and articles of wood, wood charcoal (44), etc. Findings also show commodities in which Vietnam has a comparative advantage; but are not well positioned in the RCEP market yet, e.g. Cereal, flour, starch, milk preparations and products (19) and Manmade staple fibres (55). If sufficient investment decisions and marketing strategies are applied to these commodities, they will well penetrate the RCEP market and bring trade creation and welfare improvement to Vietnam. Public and private investment should consider the above-mentioned commodities as targets to leapfrog the benefits of RCEP.


Author(s):  
Monika Jain

India dropped out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which included the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, China, South Korea, New Zealand, Japan and Australia, after negotiating for almost seven years in November 2018 on the grounds of national interest and also that free trade agreements (FTAs) did not amount to free trade and led to more trade diversion than trade creation. The cost and benefit of a regional agreement depend on the amount of trade creation with respect to trade diversion (Panagriya, 2000). This study tries to examine India’s concerns and at the same time, highlights the cost of not joining RCEP. India’s trade deficit with 11 out of the 15 RCEP nations has been a major cause of concern. Unfavourable trade balance, concerns about the impact on dairy sector, economic slowdown, past experience with FTA’s, China factor, data localisation, rules of origin, the experience of ASEAN countries with Sino-FTA have been some of the reasons behind India’s decision to opt-out of this mega multilateral agreement. Also, bilateral trade agreements with some RCEP countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and South Korea were operational. A multilateral trade agreement with ASEAN countries was very much in place. So, trade between India and 12 of the RCEP member countries would not have changed much after India’s inclusion in RCEP. The impact of lower tariffs would have been evident for the remaining three countries: China, Australia and New Zealand. Furthermore, there was fear of a massive surge in imports of manufactures from China, dairy imports from Australia and New Zealand. This study also examines the long term impact of this decision and if India has missed out on becoming a part of the global value chain and gaining greater market access in the Asia Pacific region. India’s policy of import substitution and protectionism did not capitulate desired results in the past. Hence, a critical evaluation of India’s decision and some validation on her concerns and fears have been done.


2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piriya Pholphirul

This paper examines whether the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (“AFTA”) creates trade for Thailand or actually diverts it away from the country. It does this by analyzing various trade indicators: the Export Similarity Index, the Intra-Industry Trade Index, and Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) rank correlation. By examining the patterns of trade between Thailand and other members of ASEAN, it reveals a high degree of similarity regarding the trade structure between Thailand and AFTA, which indicates that there will be fewer trade-creation benefits from AFTA and a greater likelihood of trade diversion once the AFTA scheme has been fully implemented. This similarity pattern explains the reasons for future collaboration among member countries and supportive arguments for the future extension of ASEAN (“ASEAN+”). Market-penetration and development strategies should be employed by Thai exporters when accessing the ASEAN market.


2020 ◽  
Vol 156 (4) ◽  
pp. 985-1024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pfaffermayr

Abstract For PPML estimation of high-dimensional structural gravity panel models it proves useful to exploit the equilibrium restrictions imposed by the system of multilateral resistances. The main advantage of this approach lies in the functional dependence of the parameters of all dummy variables on the structural trade cost parameters. Moreover, the delta method is used to establish confidence intervals of counterfactual changes. Using the constrained panel PPML estimator for a panel of 65 countries in the period 1994–2012 indicates significant trade creation of economic integration agreements with average ranging in between 12.2 and 30.3% in 2012. Results also point to substantial domestic and international trade diversion, where the former dominates the latter.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document