Abstract On 6 December 2006, Australia and Korea announced a joint study on a possible Australia-Korea free trade agreement (AKFTA) to promote trade and economic relations between the two countries. The paper provides empirical evidence on the possible gains and their transmission mechanism from this agreement. Significantly, it uses a new economic policy modelling approach, the endogenous grav...

In a simple model where global trade negotiations precede sequential Free Trade Agreement (FTA) formation, we show global tari¤ negotiations can prevent global free trade: FTA formation can yield global free trade in the absence of global tari¤ negotiations, but global free trade never emerges when global tari¤ negotitaions precede FTA formation. Intuitively, global tari¤ negotiations can preve...

This article aims to examine the trade effects of the South Asian FTAs including regional and bilateral ones with a focus on Sri Lanka, by applying a gravity trade model as an analytical framework. The study specifically targets the following three FTAs: the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) enforced in 2006, the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISFTA) in 2001, and the Pakistan-Sri ...

The purpose of this paper is to, firstly explain the reason of international trade according to recent theories; secondly, collect several sorts of opinions about free trade and protectionism referring to relevant literatures; thirdly describe export barriers in different aspects, such as natural barriers and artificial barriers; lastly from trade regulation perspective introduce WTO as a tool ...

This paper infers the terms of trade effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) implemented in the 1990s. We estimate large FTA effects on bilateral trade volume in 2 digit manufacturing goods from 1990-2002, using panel data gravity methods to resolve two way causality. The terms of trade changes implied by these volume effects are deduced for 40 countries plus a rest-of-the-world aggregate using...

This paper is concerned with the sustainability of free-trade areas. I begin with an FTA that is formed as a political equilibrium and examine conditions under which the FTA is sustainable, i.e., governments do not leave it. The sustainability of the FTA is in°uenced by governments' valuation on political contributions, discount factors, the lobbying position of the speci ̄c-interest group in in...

Relatively little research has focused on whether countries’ political institutions affect international trade relations. Here, we address this issue by analyzing the relationship between regime type and trade policy. We begin by presenting a formal model of commercial policy that establishes that the much more important role played by the domestic legislature in democracies than autocracies le...