I. Introduction

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) currently proliferating around the world, especially, in the East Asia region, have made the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) consider the preferential liberalization approach as an attractive policy alternative. More specifically, considering (i) the sluggish pace of negotiation for multilateral trade and investment liberalization under the WTO’s DDA (Doha Development Agenda) round, (ii) the failure of the APEC’s EVSL (Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization), (iii) the slow progress of the Bogor Goals, (iv) the loss of vitality of APEC economic activities after the East Asian financial crisis of 1997, (v) the spaghetti bowl phenomenon expected from a complicated web of overlapping RTAs in the Asia-Pacific region, (vi) deepening interdependence among APEC member economies, and (vii) strong positive welfare effects expected from RTAs;1 the revival and the promotion of the regional economic dynamism became top priority of APEC.

Consequently, on the recognition of the potential negative impact caused by overlapping regional trade agreements, APEC has recently begun searching for comprehensive and high-quality RTAs in order to supplement Bogor Goals through a harmonized integration of small-scale regional free trade agreements in the region. For this purpose, the establishment of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) is now being discussed with a long term perspective among APEC member economies as one of possible options to deepen regional economic integration.

Under these circumstances, this paper attempts to provide an economic implication of an FTAAP as a catalyst to promote APEC’s vision of creating a single, unified economic community. In order to serve this purpose, we endeavor (i) to examine a more concrete rationale for APEC member economies discussing a possible FTAAP by assessing conditions for a desirable FTAAP and (ii) to analyze the economic impacts of an FTAAP.

More specifically, we test whether the FTAAP satisfies necessary conditions for a trade bloc to generate positive and sufficient net trade creation effect by calculating trade-related indices representing market size, geographical proximity, tariff structure, trade volume, competitiveness, complementarity, and development level of member and nonmember economies. Moreover, to provide policy makers with a more realistic and practical forecast, the benefits linked to the economic impact of trade facilitation and reduction of barriers in service trade in addition to the core FTA chapters (liberalization for trade in goods) are analyzed by adopting both static and capital accumulation CGE models.

The paper is organized as follows. Section II characterizes briefly the existing RTAs in the APEC region, outlines conditions for a trade bloc to generate significant and sufficient net trade creation effects of RTAs, and evaluates whether the FTAAP satisfies these conditions. Section III proposes policy options for member economies to consider as scenarios. Section IV describes data used and model specified, and summarizes simulation results estimated for both welfare and growth effect of the FTAAP. Section V concludes this research.

1)See Scollay and Gilbert (2000), Scollay (2004, 2005, 2007), ABAC (2006), APEC (2007), Bergsten (2007) and Park (2009) for the economic effects of an RTA in APEC.

II. Regional Economic Integration and FTAAP

1. Regional Economic Integration in the APEC Region

The APEC’s stance on multilateralism has been deeply influenced by the proliferating RTAs around the world, and especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Both intra- and inter-regional trade agreements are proliferating in the Asia-Pacific region. As of January 2013, 46 RTAs have been implemented and more than two dozen RTAs are being negotiated or considered among APEC member economies.2

As a response to the world-wide movement towards RTAs; and carefully considering the stalled multilateral DDA negotiations under the WTO, limitations of the unilateral approach under the Bogor Goals, and expected gains from the regional approach; APEC has decided to study the possibility of implementing the best RTAs since the leaders’ meeting in Santiago, Chile, in 2004. Since then, APEC has been examining the feasibility and desirability of an FTAAP as a long-term vision for both APEC economies and the world economy.

Acknowledging that the successful completion of WTO/DDA negotiations is the primary policy option to be pursued, Hatakeyama (2007), Stoler (2007), and Brilliant (2008) initiated by Bergsten (2007), argue that the FTAAP would be the best available insurance policy. In particular, Bergsten (2007) highlights that the FTAAP will (i) create positive and sufficient gains from free trade induced by the largest single trade bloc, (ii) become a stepping stone towards global free trade by inducing the WTO and excluded nonmembers like EU to resume the multilateral DDA negotiations, (iii) become the best available “Plan B” alternative to the DDA, (iv) prevent competitive liberalizations in the Asia-Pacific region and mitigate the negative effects of the proliferating hub-and-spoke type of overlapping RTAs by consolidating the sub-regional trade blocs into a large umbrella, (v) revitalize APEC, (vi) ameliorate the China-US economic conflict, caused mainly by trade imbalance between the two nations, and (vii) maintain US engagement in Asia.

2. Conditions for a Desirable FTAAP

Will the proposed FTAAP be a desirable RTA for APEC economies and the world economy as a whole? In order to be a ‘good’ RTA, the RTA should create a significant and sufficient positive welfare (trade creation) effect on all participating member countries and on the world as a whole, which will lead RTAs to a nondiscriminatory global free trade area. Otherwise, the RTA could easily stall and be ineffective as time passes. In addition to positive gains to members and the world economy, the negative welfare (trade diversion) effect on nonmembers should be minimized or avoided.

How can we maximize the trade creation effect and minimize the trade diversion effect? In order to answer the question, we outline following conditions that need to be fulfilled.3

① Market size of the RTA: larger the better

② Pre-RTA intra-regional tariff: higher the better

③ Pre-RTA extra-regional tariff: lower the better

④ Pre-RTA intra-regional trade volume: deeper the better

⑤ Competitive pre-RTA industrial structure: tougher the better

⑥ Complementary post-RTA industrial structure: stronger the better

⑦ Pre-RTA level of economic development gap: narrower the better

⑧ Geographical proximity: closer the better

Overall, APEC economies satisfy most of the conditions for the positive welfare effects expected. Table 1 figures key economic indicators of APEC economies to be used for evaluating the above-mentioned conditions required for measuring the welfare effect of an RTA. The consolidated market size (40% of the world population and 56% of the world GDP) is large enough to create a positive trade creation effect. The pre-RTA tariff structure is a controversial factor but a relatively higher deviation of tariffs among APEC member economies and lower tariff rates of the APEC economies (5.0% and 5.7%) than that of the world as a whole (6.2% and 8.8%) may guarantee significant net trade creation effect as APEC successfully launches its regional trade bloc. As shown in Table 2, the strong interdependence among APEC member economies in terms of intra-regional trade share of over 67% is the most promising factor in expecting a large trade creation effect.

Considering the large number of membership (21 nations) in FTAAP, we know that the pre-RTA industrial structure of the potential members is competitive and may expect significant efficiency gains from the regional free trade. In addition, Table 3 estimates the complementarity index of 20 APEC economies. It takes a value between 0 and 100, with 0 indicating no overlap and 100 indicating perfect overlap. The simple averaged complementarity index of APEC is 47.2, a figure not excessively high or low. We may also expect a significant net trade creation effect from economies of scale after the establishment of a single market in the APEC region.

By contrast, the expected welfare effect of the last two conditions will not be positive due to the diversity in the level of economic development among the 21 APEC member economies. Relatively larger number of membership covering wider areas in APEC may lead to higher cost of transaction. The welfare effect of the FTAAP on individual member economy will depend on the membership combination, and the overall effect on APEC as a whole will be heavily affected by the bilateral combination of membership. Thus it may not be possible to evaluate the welfare effect without a rigorous method of quantifying the likely effect of an RTA in APEC. We need to adopt economic modeling methodologies such as an ex-ante computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation analysis.

2)Calculated from the WTO website, http://rtais.wto.org/ui/PublicAllRTAList.aspx

3)See Park, Park, and Estrada (2009) for more detailed information about the conditions.

III. Scenarios for the Incremental Liberalzation in FTAAP

The welfare effect of the FTAAP on an individual member economy and APEC as a whole will depend not only on the economic linkages of the members analyzed in Section II but also on the scope of the agreement. Following scopes are necessary conditions for the FTAAP to be a comprehensive and high-quality RTA. The selected conditions as scenarios will be quantitatively investigated in the following chapter with static and capital accumulation CGE models.

1. A Desirable FTAAP

First, a desirable RTA should include some essential elements for deeper integration. As summarized in Elek (2005, p. 99); desirable RTAs in APEC should satisfy the following contents: WTO-plus approach; comprehensive in scope by liberalization of all sectors and minimization of any phase-out periods for sensitive products; compatible with multilateral liberalization; simple rules of origin (RoO); transparency; and openness. Soesastro (2003) also emphasizes open accession, MFN based multilateral liberalization approach, and harmonization of RoO. In particular, Plummer (2007) proposes the‘Ten Commandments’ of the best practice FTAs: comprehensive coverage within a reasonable period of time; low and symmetrical RoO; progress in trade facilitation such as customs procedures; intellectual property protection; nondiscriminatory foreign direct investment-related provisions; transparent anti-dumping procedures and dispute resolution; open and nondiscriminatory government procurement; competition policy; and low and standardized technical barriers to trade.

Second, because this research is an empirical investigation of the likely impact of the FTAAP, the selected conditions for the deeper integration of desirable RTAs should be quantitatively evaluated. Thus, some of the above-mentioned conditions will be excluded because they are not suitable for specification into a CGE model for quantitative analysis.

Third, fully feasible scenarios should be envisioned. As mentioned earlier, better ways for promoting the FTAAP can be addressed, including support for small-scale regional free trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region compatible with WTO’s multilateralism and accommodating APEC’s fundamental principles such as open regionalism and non-binding voluntarism.

In this light, trade liberalization through tariff reduction or elimination in trade of goods needs to be implemented. The quantitative analysis on the liberalization of trade in services is another aspect of interest in addressing the increasing importance of the industry. Considering APEC’s ongoing efforts to reduce trade cost, combined effect of trade liberalization through traditional tariff reduction and trade facilitation is strongly suggested as a test scenario.

2. Scopes of Practical and Measurable Liberalization in FTAAP

Following three elements of a desirable RTA are introduced for deeper integration in APEC.

A. Comprehensive Application of Tariff Elimination in Goods Trade

According to the Gravity model estimation with fixed effects by Park and Park (2011), positive trade-enhancing effect is expected when GATT Article XXIV is strictly applied, which can be observed. It was found that RTAs under GATT Article XXIV create more intra-bloc trade (8.2%) and divert less extra-bloc trade (-8.1%) than RTAs in general (3.5% and -11.6%, respectively). The trade creation effect under the Enabling Clause is negative (-7.1%), and trade diversion effect is somewhat stronger (-8.6%) than that under GATT Article XXIV. In accordance with the outcomes, it is strongly suggested that FTAAP should be promoted across the all tradable sectors.

B. Liberalization of Trade in Services

With innovations in telecommunication and information technology, deregulations in public sectors, liberalization of capital flows, and facilitation of services trade through proliferating FTAs, more non-tradable services have become tradable. The world's total amount of trade in services increased 10 times from US$ 395 billion in 1980 to US$ 4,243 billion in 2011.4 In particular, in recognition of the fact that the service industry is believed to play a key role in producing final consumption goods and in enhancing productivity in manufacturing industry for intermediate goods, the liberalization of services trade is expected to create enormous economic welfare effect through the overall enhancement of productivity.

Brown et al (1996) estimates the effects of services trade liberalization in the Uruguay Round by using the multi-economy Michigan CGE model. Dee and Hanslow (2001) quantify the effects of eliminating all post-Uruguay trade barriers and find that there are still considerable gains from trade liberalization in agriculture and manufacturing, but larger gains would come from trade liberalization in services. In particular, Konan and Maskus (2006) compare the impacts of goods versus services liberalization in a developing economy. Employing a CGE model, they show that trade liberalization in goods yields a modest gain in aggregate welfare, while reducing service barriers generate relatively large welfare gains. These results imply the potential importance of services liberalization for economic development.

C. Enhancing Trade Facilitation

Trade facilitation improves the welfare of importing economies by narrowing the gap between the world and domestic prices of imported goods, leading to an increase in the volume of world trade. Analyses on economic effects of the trade-facilitating efforts as a supplementary measure for trade liberalization and that of improvements in the trade facilitation in conformity with the APEC’s open regionalism, are required. The welfare effects of enhanced trade facilitation on APEC member economies by Kim et al (2006) are estimated to be significantly positive, which is comparable to that of the tariff-reducing with trade liberalization.

3. Scenarios for the Incremental Liberalization in FTAAP

Considering the above-mentioned necessary scopes to be tested for a desirable FTAAP by applying a CGE model estimation in Section IV, this research establishes the following 3 scenarios.

A. Scenario I: Basic Scenario for Trade Liberalization through Tariff Elimination

B. Scenario II: (I) + Liberalization of Trade in Services

C. Scenario III: (II) + Trade Facilitation

A. Scenario I: Basic Scenario for Trade Liberalization through Tariff Elimination

APEC (2005) reports that almost half of all APEC economies’ tariff lines are at less than 5 percent, and tariffs on many goods are now set at zero or negligible levels. As tariffs decreased, the focus of free trade agreements diversified. If an FTAAP is defined as a comprehensive and high-quality, large scale FTA in this analytical exercise, it is reasonable to assume full elimination of tariffs in trading goods.

B. Scenario II: (I) + Liberalization of Trade in Services

Recent FTAs adopt comprehensive clauses including investment, service, intellectual property, competition, government procurement, and E-commerce that go beyond the scope of traditional FTAs. Accordingly, in addition to Scenario I, we assume that the FTAAP member economies liberalize trade in services by reducing the tariff-equivalent barrier by 10 percent in construction, distribution, transportation and telecommunication, and business and financial service. The tariff-equivalent barrier in the service sectors of this research are adopted from Hoekman (1995).

C. Scenario III: (II) + Trade Facilitation

In addition to Scenario II, enhanced trade facilitation is addressed by saving five percent of trade costs, for example, in four areas of trade facilitation5 among the FTAAP member economies.

4)From the UNCTAD website, http://unctadstat.unctad.org/ReportFolders/reportFolders.aspx

5)Based on the APEC’s Shanghai Accord in 2001, the four areas of trade facilitation are customs procedures, standard and conformity, business mobility, and electronic commerce.

IV. Measuring the Impact of FTAAP

1. CGE Model and Data

A. Static and Capital Accumulation CGE Models

In order to provide a quantitative assessment on the effects of an FTAAP on both member and nonmember economies, the following two CGE models have been adopted. The first is the standard CGE model, in which the gains from trade liberalization stem mainly from the increased efficiency of resource allocation. It refers to the static CGE model. In particular, the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model, which has been extensively used in existing literature to examine a wide variety of trade policy issues, has been employed.

The second model is designed to capture not only the static effects, but also the capital accumulation effects. It refers to the capital accumulation CGE model. This model takes into account the positive relationship between trade, investment and growth (so called trade-induced investment-led growth) that is fairly well-established in a number of empirical studies. The standard GTAP model has been modified in order to identify medium-run growth effects of trade liberalization. Baldwin (1989, 1992) suggests that the static efficiency gains induce higher savings and investment, which in turn yield more output. Francois et al (1999) present a useful approach capturing the capital accumulation effects of trade liberalization in the context of the neoclassical growth model. Following Francois et al (1999) it is assumed that economies are initially in a steady state. Under this assumption, the magnitudes of changes in the capital stock and output can be obtained by comparing them in two steady states. The relationship between capital stock (K) and investment (I) is given:

where δ is the depreciation rate.

Incorporating the equation (1) into the CGE model gives a description of the relationship between capital stock and investment and controls the closure according to the equation (1) so that the change in capital stock and investment converge. That is, this second CGE model is constructed to take into account possible changes in capital formation that may be generated by an FTAAP.

B. Specification for Trade in Services

In order to capture the effects of trade liberalization in services, the methods of Hertel et al (2000) and Anderson et al (2000) have been used. Brown et al (1996) suggested a modeling method that constructs the base data to include the tariff equivalents. In this model, trade liberalization in services generates tariff revenue; although, in reality, there are no tariffs. Hertel et al (2000) and Anderson et al (2000) assume instead that barriers to trade in services reduce the actual volume of service trade that can be delivered at a given cost. In contrast, trade liberalization in services leads to the increase of the amount of services and reduction in prices of imported services in the domestic market. These effects can be captured by introducing a services import-augmenting component into the CGE model.

C. Specification for Trade Facilitation

To estimate the effects of trade facilitation, the standard CGE model has been modified to adopt the simple “iceberg” model of trading costs, introduced by Samuelson (1954). Some units of the good “melt” in transit, which can be thought of as a cost of trading that good. Then, an effective price of the good i imported from economy r at domestic prices is introduced in destination economy s : This is associated with the observed price, P_irs, as following:

where A_irs reflects the trade facilitation costs for the good i. An increase in A_irs by enhanced trade facilitation means a fall in the effective price of the good i imported from r to s, thus encouraging an expansion of imports. To ensure a balanced data set, a quantity adjustment equation is required. Similar to the definition of the effective price, the adjusted effective quantity is as follows.

By incorporating equations (2) and (3) into the standard CGE model, the effects of trade facilitation, which reduces trade costs, can be estimated.

D. Data

The world economy is organized into 15 sectors, 19 APEC economies and 2 regions (EU, ROW) hereafter for the CGE model analysis (All of the above are listed in Table 4). Social accounting data are based on the GTAP 7 Data Base. Initial protection data are representative of the world as of 2004. Among APEC member economies, relevant data set for Brunei Darussalam and Papua New Guinea are missing. Thus, the two member economies are excluded from this study.

2. Simulation Results

It should be noted that the estimated results of CGE simulations are sensitive to the assumptions made in the modeling. One should be cautious in the interpretation of the results of CGE simulations. The relative effects of different agreements or different policy experiments are more important than the absolute size of estimated effects. Thus this paper focuses on the relative effects gained by estimating three different scenarios under the same CGE model (see Table 8).

First one is the results of Scenario I in which tariffs among FTAAP members are removed. Table 5 presents the economy-wide effects of the FTAAP under the assumption of a fixed capital stock. These involve changes in real GDP, welfare, exports, and imports. It is expected that real GDP increases in developed economies such as the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia and Singapore are relatively smaller than in developing economies, yet an FTAAP will be beneficial to all economies. However, the welfare of Canada, Chile, Indonesia, Russia and Peru, though small, would decrease. We also find that the tariff eliminating regional FTA expands intra-regional trade and contracts extraregional trade.

The results of the policy experiment Scenario II are reported in Table 6, which presents the economic effects of tariff elimination and reduction in tariff equivalents of services by 10 percent. These effects are estimated also by using a static CGE model. Compared to Scenario I, the FTAAP according to Scenario II yields higher economic gains for APEC individual member as well as economies as a whole in terms of real GDP and welfare. All member economies of an FTAAP would experience positive growth in real GDP and welfare. Moreover, the magnitude of these positive effects is larger than those of Scenario I as compared in Table 8. These results imply that service liberalization has significant impacts on GDP as well as the welfare of each member economy. In this respect, we also may argue that liberalization in services leads to increased efficiency in service sectors. Since services are basic inputs or intermediates for industrial production, the competitiveness of manufacturing sectors would also be improved.

This study also discusses the results of the policy experiment Scenario III that includes Scenario II and 5% reduction in trade cost by trade facilitation. The economic effects of an FTAAP according to Scenario III are reported in Table 7. Comparing these results with those of Scenario I and II, the magnitude of increases in real GDP and welfare of all member economies has been found to expand. The relative additional gains to APEC economy as a whole are shown in Table 8. This implies that trade facilitation is one of the most important catalysts of economic growth and its impacts on GDP and welfare are significant.

The capital accumulation effects of an FTAAP, which captures not only static gains but also mid to medium-run growth bonus suggested by Baldwin (1989, 1992), have also been analyzed. The effects on the economic welfare and GDP of economies stem from the traditional efficiency gains from resource allocation and additional gains from capital accumulation. Table 7 also shows that medium-run effects of the FTAAP according to Scenario III for the member economies, estimated with the capital accumulation CGE model, would be larger compared to the estimates with the static CGE model for APEC as a whole as shown in Table 8. Moreover, the results indicate that the overall economic outcome is more favorable than any of the other Scenarios. More specifically, the outcome reports the highest welfare gains among other scenarios as it estimates 3.08 percent welfare gain for all APEC member economies. In addition, the outcome also yields relatively higher growth gains for some developing economies including Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. We have interpreted this outcome as follows: 1) as GTAP data base initially reports relatively high tariff rates for these economies, the size of the impact will be greater; and 2) the unique methodology for estimating capital accumulation CGE model and assumptions used in this scenario may result in favorable outcome for those economies having a large demand for capital.

In fact, evidence of high quality and medium-run growth bonus with trade liberalization is considered to be found by comparing the results estimated by the static model were compared with those estimated by the capital accumulation model. It is expected that real GDP for APEC members as a whole would increase by 3.31 percentage (Capital Accumulation under Scenario III), whereas only 0.13 percentage (Static under Scenario I) increase in real GDP for APEC economies would result from the static CGE model. Furthermore, the gains for Thailand and Vietnam in terms of real GDP are higher than other member countries. This implies that traditional trade liberalization in market access still has important and significant impacts on real GDP and welfare in those countries.

V. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The formation of an FTAAP is a challenge to and an opportunity for the reformation of APEC. The positive gains from a larger free trade bloc are expected to be significant enough to invite all APEC members to join. At the same time, however, the trade and investment liberalization of APEC through the second-best policy may encounter strong obstacles incurred by diversified interests of member economies as a group or as an individual economy, lack of political will, and problems of compatibility with multilateralism and basic principles of APEC.

Acknowledging these difficulties involved in the formation of the FTAAP,6 this study tested whether the proposed FTAAP may satisfy necessary conditions for positive net trade creation effects of an RTA and found that the FTAAP can be a desirable RTA for members. In addition, we designed a desirable FTAAP with following three policy options: 1) comprehensive application of tariff elimination in goods trade under the legal provision of GATT Article XXIX without any excluded sectors; 2) liberalization of trade in services; and 3) enhancing trade facilitation. If we summarize the expected gains from each scenario, the overall welfare gain for all subject economies range from US$ 55 billion to US$ 284 billion and US$ 149 billion to US$ 636 billion under static and capital accumulation models, respectively.

Although it is too early to evaluate whether the FTAAP can be a best practiced region-wide RTA as the research is still at an early stage, the results so far indicate that APEC should pursue a high-quality and comprehensive agreement for maximum economic output. Particularly in this paper, trade facilitation and liberalization of service trade have been found to contribute significantly towards increases in real GDP and welfare. This fact, aligned with the mandates from Leaders and Ministers as reflected in various declaration of past years including those from the 2005 Busan Roadmap and 2007 Report on Strengthening Regional Economic Integration, implies that FTAAP should be a high-quality and comprehensive agreement.

6)As a different approach, Petri et al (2011) introduce possible pathways to realize the FTAAP through two tracks of trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific region, the proposed TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement and the Asian track such as EAFTA (East Asian Free Trade Area, ASEAN+3: 10 ASEAN countries, China, Japan, and Korea) or CEPTA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia, ASEAN+6: 10 ASEAN countries, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and India). Recently emerging RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, currently ASEAN+6) can be another pathway to get there. The feasibility-focused research can be an interesting future research topic to be analyzed. In this research, however, we evaluated the desirability of the FTAAP and proposed more desirable practices for the FTAAP.