This paper estimates the effects of transport (road and rail) & energy and ICT infrastructure (telephone, mobile, and broadband) on GDP growths in neighboring countries as well as own countries. We confirm positive direct contributions of infrastructure, access to Internet, and human capital on economic growth. The spatial panel regression models indicate that there exist positive externalities of the broadband infrastructure and human capital, and these results are robust regardless of the choice of spatial weight matrices. Our findings on spillover effects of infrastructure suggest the key role of neighboring countries’ infrastructure on own country’s economic growth.

JEL Classification: C21, D24, D62

Many different approaches and databases have been developed for the evaluation of non-tariff measures (NTMs) and free trade agreements (FTAs). This paper is devoted to the EU-South Korea agreement, which is the first ‘second-generation’ FTA of the EU, addressing a wide array of non-tariff policies. We review the evolution of NTM types applicable to the EU-South Korea trade relationship and the role of NTMs in ex-ante and ex-post analyses of the agreement. Subsequently a structural gravity model is employed to assess the value added of information on different aspects of FTAs and types of NTMs by evaluating their ability to predict the trade effects of the EU-South Korea FTA. Our results show that, when accounting for information on the components common in modern deep trade agreements, no additional trade effect is attributable to the EU-South Korea FTA. The evolution of NTMs differs considerably across indicators used, but trade predictions are hardly affected. Most specifications point towards a negative effect of bilateral differences in the number of technical barriers to trade (TBT) applied and sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) against which trading partners issued complaints at the WTO.

JEL Classification: C54, F13, F14

China has experienced many structural changes in the process of economic development over the past three decades. Using a time-varying parameter VAR model with stochastic volatility and mixture innovations, this study investigates whether such structural changes in, especially tools and operational aims of monetary policy, affect the monetary transmission mechanism. We find that impulse responses of output growth and inflation to monetary shocks have substantially increased and then reversed to decrease around 2005-2006. This time variation is mainly caused by changes in the monetary transmission mechanism, i.e., the manner in which main macroeconomic variables respond to policy shocks, rather than by changes in volatilities of exogenous shocks. The result implies that aggressive monetary policy to facilitate economic growth in the developing economies may be legitimized, unless it causes inflation seriously.

JEL Classification: E52, E30, C11

This paper investigates the relationship between the minimum wage and firm’s export behavior by using firm-level data of Vietnamese manufacturing enterprises over the period 2010 through 2015. In this regard, I apply the logistic regression model for the probability of exporting and the differences-in-differences analysis to the data, and find that raising minimum wage standards drive no new exporters but a rise in a firm’s export sales. Less productive and more labor-intensive firms raise their amount of exports in response to increasing minimum wage levels. Being exposed to increasing minimum wage levels makes a firm under-perform in terms of export sales compared to non-exposed firms.

JEL Classification: J38, F16, F23, O14