Thesis research design

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM –THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE EFFECT OF REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENT TO TRADE FLOW: EVIDENCE OF TRADE CREATION AND TRADE DIVERSION OF ASEAN – JAPAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT BY PHAM THI HIEN MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, December 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE EFFECT OF REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENT TO TRADE FLOW: EVIDENCE OF TRADE CREATION AND TRADE DIVERSION OF ASEAN – JAPAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By PHAM THI HIEN Academic Supervisor: Prof. Dr Nguyen Trong Hoai HO CHI MINH CITY, December 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION This is to certify that that this thesis entitled “The effect of regional trade agreement to trade flow: Evidence of trade creation and trade diversion of ASEAN – Japan free trade agreement”, which is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art in Development Economics to Viet Nam – The Netherlands Program (VNP). The author hereby declares that she edit this thesis individually, using only stated resources and literatures. To the best of my knowledge, my thesis does not violate anyone’s copyright as well as any proprietary rights which are fully acknowledge in accordance with the standard referencing practices.

HCMC, December 15th, 2016 Pham Thi Hien LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am using this opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone who supports me during the master course time. First and foremost, I would like to sincerely thank my research supervisor, Prof. Nguyen Trong Hoai who given to me a comprehensive guidance, great support and valuable advice during the thesis research process. I am lucky person when every time I needed support or was in difficulties, he has open the door to welcome me and sent to me the prompt advice.

I also would like to thank my co-supervisor Dr. Truong Dang Thuy for his enthusiastic support and precious suggestion, which help me overcome the challenges and difficulties in doing regression model, take me in the right direction. I would like to express my gratitude to all lecturers of the Vietnam- Netherlands Program who have provided the interesting lessons to build my economic knowledge during this program. In addition, I would like to express my appreciation to the VNP academic staffs for their feedback, cooperation during a long-period time I have learned here.

Besides, completing this work would be very difficult without the support from my best friends. I am indebted to them for their help. Moreover, I wish to thank all my fellow master students in VNP 21 class who share with me unforgettable memories in this program. Last but not the least, there are also words of deep gratitude for my family who support spiritually and encourage continuously during my thesis writing and my life in general.

LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Table of Contents CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION. 3 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW. Trade creation and trade diversion. The gravity model in international trade.

The origin of gravity model. Theoretical support and theoretical equation. Empirical support for effect of FTA to ASEAN. Empirical support for effect of AFTA to intra-bloc trade flow.

Empirical support of effect of ASEAN + 1 FTAs. Zero trade data problem. 17 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Model specification and validity testing .2 Model validity testing.

Data and data sources. 23 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Descriptive statistics of variables. 30 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 Comparison of estimator properties.

31 Chapter 5: Conclusion and policy recommendation .3 Limitations of the study. 47 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1. Problem statement It is no doubt to saying that recently, regional trade agreements (RTA) have become a popular widespread trend in the international economic system, especially after Doha round of GATT/ WTO. According to the definition of WTO, regional trade agreement, included free trade agreements (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs), are the negotiations of two or more parties, in which these participants agree to reduce their current custom barriers, such as tariffs, quotas.

Since early of the 1990s, RTAs have increased widespread. According to reports of World Trade Organization (WTO), until February 2016, there are 625 notifications of RTAs and 419 in which were in force. Regarding the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is considered as a successful model of regionalism and the community is step by step greatly co-operating and integrating to the world economy. In addition, Japan, an economy was growing rapidly, involving 17% to world economic in 2005 but reduced to only 6% in 2015 (IMF, 2015).

However, her economic performance has a massive influence on the economy of the entire region. For evidence, Japan is one of top three trading partners of ASEAN economies, especially Indonesia and the Philippines. Before integrating into ASEAN regional economies, Japan was playing an important role in the regional development. In the 1970s, 25% per total import and export values of ASEAN were doing with Japan.

Moreover, with lower cost in materials and labors, ASEAN markets were attractive destinations of capital investment flow from Japanese companies. It generated work jobs and increased working wages, especially, with high technologies and high-trained employees, they provided a valuable opportunity for learning and transferring in this area during the 1980s to 1990s. The increasingly integrated business need a major opportunity to strengthen linkages between ASEAN and Japan. That is the reason for raising a needful talk about a regional agreement.

Since 2003, the government of Japan and the 10 countries of ASEAN completely signed the general framework of bilateral free trade agreement named ASEAN-Japan FTA (officially a comprehensive economic partnership), hereinafter referred as AJCEP. At the end of December 2008, the last official round was finalized, an agreement signed among Asian countries, included: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos PRD, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan has been forced, support multilateral trading by reducing the tariff. The origin objectives of this FTA are to encourage free trade across the border in intra- bloc ASEAN and Japan, strengthen Asian countries, Japan economic integration, enhance their economic in the world market, are transparent in trading procedure and maintain sustainability in the economic area. It seems a major opportunity for high-tech and modern industries of Japan such as automobile, electronic, etc to enter ASEAN markets as well as encourage assembly line in regions for Japanese firms.

Statically, after trade agreement in force, in 2013, two-way trading volume obtained $229 billion compared with $128 billion in 2000. In this year, Japan reported 14% and 15% for import and export value to ASEAN, Thai Land ($22.2 billion) and Malaysia ($29.6 billion) are top three Asian biggest exporters to Japan (ASEAN Statistics, 2014). The notable products mainly exported from ASEAN to Japan are foods, manufactured goods, textiles, crude material. Conversely, machinery and equipment transportation to gather with chemical and advanced technology manufacturing products are important to major export from Japan to ASEAN countries.

For example, according to Japan automobile Manufacturer Association statistics in 2014, about 47% Japanese cars, 80% truck vehicles and 85% buses were consumed as final products in ASEAN markets. Research objectives - The first research purpose of this study, in general, is to examine the effect of AJCEP to ASEAN economies in trade creation and trade diversion aspects with total export data - The second research objective is to examine the effect of AJCEP on sub-catalogues in particular: food products, agricultural products, manufactured products, Machinery and equipment of transportation and clothing and accessories and textile, fabric 1. Research questions According to numerous studies before, the effect of RTAs has no guarantee positive effect to help its member countries integrating with the global market. In many cases, RTAs actually caused some negative effects.

Therefore, this study aims to find the answers to these questions following: - How the trade creation and trade diversion in general total export have been caused by the free trade agreement which was signed by AJCEP to ASEAN member countries? 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - How the trade creation and trade diversion have been affected by the free trade agreement which is by AJCEP to ASEAN member countries in the five sub-catalogues: food products, agricultural products, manufactured products, Machinery and equipment of transportation and clothing and accessories and textile, fabric? 1. Research scope To estimate the effect of AJCEP, we employ a panel data set will be collected with period from 2000 – 2015 with total 5,920 observations with included 09 ASEAN countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and 15 biggest trading partners of Japan 2015 include: The United State, China, South Korea (Korea Rep.), Hong Kong SAR China, Australia, Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates, Russian Federation, Switzerland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico, Netherland and Japan. To our knowledge, there is the rapid development in investing effect of RTAs in theoretical as well as empirical accesses. However, most of them are usually focus on general questions: whether or not RTAs have affected to trade flow or created trade creation, trade diversion.

There are two main problems that many previous studies had. The first problem is estimation challenges of the gravity model which solve around the heteroscedasticity and the frequency of zero trade observations. These problems cause challenges in concerning the most suitable estimation technique to avoid biased and un-misinterpreted result. The second advantage is we do estimate regression model by using two sets of trade flow data.

The first data set is aggregated data is used to examine for bilateral total export flow. The second dataset is disaggregated data is optimized to estimate the AJCEP affect to five separate sub- categories: agriculture, manufacturing, chemical industry, machinery, transportation industry and clothing and accessories and textile, fabric. By two different approaches, we can analyze impacts of AJCEP in general and in the specific commodity in particular as well. Thesis structure After finishing introduction chapter, the rest of this paper is arranged as follow.

Chapter 2 presents the literature review in trade theories in international trade flow, theoretical support of gravity model in international trade, empirical support in order so to see the development of contribution 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com studies of AJCEP effect to ASEAN member as well as Japan. In addition, this chapter reviews empirical support of the methods to solve the popular issue of frequency of zero trade data. Chapter 3 states methodology, model construction, model estimation methods and data scope that used in the study. Chapter 4 interprets the result and findings from the regression model.

Chapter 5 summaries the thesis result and recommendation suggestion as well as limitation of the study. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, we will summary some related trade theories which are popularly used in international trade. Then, a review of theoretical and empirical support for gravity model on trade are added. In addition, we consider about some literature reviews about zero trade data and the developing of estimation techniques which some previous studies used.

Trade theories Many theories explain about the benefit that countries obtain from international trade. Among of them is Adam Smith’s Absolute productivity advantage model. He assumed that labor and factors of production are fixed, identical with a country and completely utilized, technology and cost of production are constant, zero in transportation cost.