RESEARCH
Working Papers
-
EU Enlargement in 2004 and the Changing Landscape of the European Economy
The European Union will be enlarged with the addition of 10 new member states from Eastern and Southern Europe in the year 2004. In political and security terms, this fifth wave of the enlargement taken by the EU in 2004 marks the..
Heungchong KIM et al. Date 2003.12.27
Economic IntegrationDownloadContentSummaryThe European Union will be enlarged with the addition of 10 new member states from Eastern and Southern Europe in the year 2004. In political and security terms, this fifth wave of the enlargement taken by the EU in 2004 marks the end of the Cold War and an arrival of permanent peace in Europe, since the Central and Eastern European countries, where communism once prevailed, will be fully absorbed into the regime of the Western capitalism, by joining the EU. The fifth enlargement would further contribute to bringing stability and prosperity into the neighboring regions by providing creating a more intimate relationship between the EU and its new border countries, including the Balkans and the former constituent countries of the Soviet Union.
In economic terms, the fifth enlargement would bring revolutionary changes to both incumbent member states and incoming ones. First of all, the number of incoming states, the size of their population and, among others, the substantial income gap between the incumbents and the incoming member states, the enlargement will provide an unprecedented challenge for the EU. The EU is in a stage of thoroughly reviewing its institutions and policies, which have been evaluated to be too generous for the underdeveloped members. To name a few, the EU needs to accommodate itself to the new situation of perfect freedom of labor mobility and extensive adoption of the Common Agricultural Policy and Regional Policy in the poorer agricultural new member states, although the policies will be adopted after three-to-five years of transition period. In this sense, the enlargement is playing a role of catalyst to accelerate the reform of the EU institutions.
On top of this, the enlargement provides an impetus to address a very important agenda such as changing the decision-making structure within the EU institutions, the future of the European political entity and, above all, the establishment of the EU constitution. All of these have been slow to materialize.
This study aims at evaluating the on-going process of the enlargement, and examining the impacts of the process on the European economy, so that we can deepen our understanding of the European economy on the eve of the enlargement. It is hoped that this will induce valuable insight with respect to the changes in the European economy.
Chapter II outlines the history of the fifth enlargement, the present stage of the entire enlargement process and future agenda. Although new member states have not yet fulfilled all the requirements for the accession criteria, they are expected to be equipped with full qualifications and to be accepted in May of 2004. Therefore, by November 2004, the new EU, with new representatives in the European Parliament and the Commission, will take off. Further accession negotiations with Rumania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Turkey, establishing relations with new border countries, and joining the EEA are other remaining agenda worthy of note. The Agreement on the new EU constitution, which resulted in a miserable failure at the recent gathering of the EU summit meeting, will remain to be one of the most demanding issues in the years to come. Any failure of agreement on the EU constitution would put the EU in danger of a looser international community.
Chapter III and IV deal with the institutional aspects of the enlarged EU. Chapter III examines the impact of the enlargement on the EU's institutional reform process. The structure of the decision making in the Council and the Parliament has experienced substantial changes these days. An account of the background, contents, implications and limitations of these changes are provided in detail. The reforms of the EU budget and the Common Policies such as the CAP, CCP, Regional Policy and Schengen agreement are closely related with each other, and the process of the reformation cannot be free from the budget constraints of the EU, the economic burdens of the incumbents incurred by the enlargement, and the inveterate nationalism of each member states.Chapter IV takes the readers through the institutional approach towards the incoming states. In particular, the EU's pre-accession assistant programs for the incoming states (such as PHARE, ISPA and SAPARD) are explained in detail. It is also evaluated country by country how much the incoming member states are ready for the criteria, the so called acquis. Despite much progress in fulfilling the criteria, there still remain rooms for further improvement in the incoming states. The reform process, which has been strongly driven by the EU, has given the new member states enormous growing pains.
It cannot be denied, however, that this will contribute greatly to implanting capitalism and to constructing a more efficient socio-economic structure in the incoming states.
In Chapter V, we show various aspects of the resulting changes in the European economies, mainly focusing on the accession countries. In spite of higher economic growth since the mid-1990s, the incoming countries suffer from many economic problems. These include high unemployment, huge amount of budget deficits and low labor productivity. The income level of the incoming member states has been around just half of the incumbents'. Thinking of the economic geography in the EU, we can find that country specialization and industrial concentration in the EU region has been reinforced since 1980, but that a divergence from this trend has been observed in the 1990s: industrial concentration has been more or less weakened, as some industries located in Southern Europe have moved to the incoming countries.
In order to understand investment strategies taken by the European firms, we explain general features of German and French firms' investment behavior to the new member states, and analyze the changing landscape of the European automobile industry in the 1990s. The stylized facts about the investment strategies are, firstly, that there has been a lot of investment by the western European firms on the incoming countries, especially in the latter half of the 1990s. Secondly, most of the investment focused on the expansion of the production facilities for the standardized products, other than the core parts of designing, engineering and high technologies. This has resulted in a vertical division of labor between Western and Eastern Europe, substantially increasing intra-industry trade between the two regions of Europe. Investment-induced trade has also significantly increased.
In the meantime, the structures of industry and trade among the new member states have experienced a lot of changes. The share of agriculture consistently decreased. The service sector has gained its portion but this only reflects the shrinking share of the industrial sector, including manufacturing. Conspicuous productivity gain and higher economic growth in the accession countries have been observed since the latter half of the 1990s, although it has not so far reached the levels of those of the Western countries so far. After the enlargement process is completed in 2004, the adoption of the acquis by the incoming states would is expected to negatively affect some industries with a high standard of environment protection such as the steel industry. Moreover, bordering areas and SMEs that have not prepared for the regime change will be disadvantaged, too. Thus, it is anticipated that the growth gap would be widened after 2004, at least in the short term, by industry, by region and by firm size.
Chapter VI conducts empirical analyses on the convergence of the accession countries to the EU and the degree of trade integration between the two areas. The convergence analysis shows that the trend of convergence is revealed to be very weak and irregular year by year. Only 1 percent of convergence rate was observed when the year 1993 is was taken as the base year, and the impacts of Ireland and Luxembourg are controlled for. This kind of the weak convergence leads to a pessimistic view that it is expected to takes about 69 years for the incoming countries to reduce half of the existing income gap with the EU.
The analysis of the trade intensity using the standard gravity approach shows that the dummy for the enlarged EU is statistically insignificant except for the case of 1995, when severe under-trade was observed. The under-trade between the two areas in 1995 is revealed to be the main explanatory factor for the under-trade in the enlarged EU in 1995. The under-trade between the two areas disappeared very rapidly since then. The coefficients of the dummy for the trade relations in the enlarged EU after 2000 are revealed to be insignificant, as the under-trade among the incumbents and the over-trade among the incoming countries are mutually offset. The results of the gravity analysis indicate that a revolutionary momentum for trade liberalization is necessary for the trade volume between the two areas to increase more than that explained by the gravity factors. However, the enlargement in 2004 hardly provides this kind of opportunity, considering the situation of the under-trade among the incumbents.
All in all, the 2004 EU enlargement in 2004 will provide a substantial momentum in the political and historical senses, but a lot of time will be necessary before any conspicuous changes can be observed in the economic sense. In Chapter VII, we derive the implications of the EU enlargement on the Korean economy with a special emphasis on trade. The result on the Korean economy is mostly desirable as the EU enlargement will propagate trade liberalization, and eventually lead to the advanced and prosperous economies in the incoming states. Nevertheless, it would bring some negative impacts for the Korean economy, too. Most importantly, there will be a trade diversion effect, heightened trade barriers in selective areas, the extension of import restraints to the incoming countries, and the adoption of strict environmental regulations of environment and standardization, as well as stronger enforcement of competition policy. To overcome any negative impacts, institutional advancement is required to improve economic relations between Korea and the EU. To achieve this, this study recommends conducting a careful inspection on the qualitative changes after the enlargement, and beginning FTA negotiations between Korea and the EU.
The EU enlargement will not be fully completed in 2004. There will be a transitional periods after the accession and a consecutive accession negotiation process lies ahead. The reform process for the new EU will be continued as well. There is no doubt, however, that the enlargement process so far has injected fresh vigor into the European economy and contributes to leveling up the competitiveness of the European firms. We should keep a watchful eye on the process. -
ASEAN's Economic Integration: Recent Development and Policy Implications
ASEAN has been promoting economic integration since the early 1990s. It realized ASEAN 10 by increasing its membership through the additions of Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia (CLMV countries) to enlarge the effectiveness of e..
Yul Kwon et al. Date 2003.12.27
Economic IntegrationDownloadContentSummaryASEAN has been promoting economic integration since the early 1990s. It realized ASEAN 10 by increasing its membership through the additions of Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia (CLMV countries) to enlarge the effectiveness of economic integration. In particular, it promoted the early realization of AFTA and has eagerly propelled Southeast Asia market integration through its AFTA-plus policy, which includes industrial cooperation, the elimination of non-tariff barriers, standards and mutual arrangements, and e-ASEAN. These processes are part of efforts toward the market integration of Southeast Asia, corresponding to the enlargement of the Chinese economy. The processes aim to attract FDI and raise economic efficiency and industrial structure from a long-term perspective. (The rest is omitted.) -
Impacts of DDA Rules Negotiation on the Korean Economy
The on-going DDA negotiations are concentrated on vague and highly technical subjects of antidumping rules. In this paper, we discussed arguments of WTO antidumping reformers and supporters by reviewing the subjects in details suc..
Moonsung Kang et al. Date 2003.12.27
Multilateral NegotiationsDownloadContentSummary
The on-going DDA negotiations are concentrated on vague and highly technical subjects of antidumping rules. In this paper, we discussed arguments of WTO antidumping reformers and supporters by reviewing the subjects in details such as zeroing, sunset review, review, facts available, swift control mechanism for initiations and sales below costs. The empirical studies have been reporting that on average, the practice of zeroing and excluding below-cost sales from home-market sales cause dumping margins to increase by about 88% and 60%, respectively. Reviewing antidumping investigations in the United States, the EU and India, we found that the current antidumping rules are not targeting international price discrimination. In practice, the bulk of investigations are undertaken by the discretion of the authority. Thus, improving and clarifying the current WTO antidumping rules will contribute to establishing predictable and transparent trade environment. (The rest is omitted.) -
Financial Development and Integration in East Asia
The growing interdependence in the world economy through trade and financial integration has increased the need to engage in international and regional economic cooperation. This was never demonstrated more clearly than during the..
Choong Yong Ahn et al. Date 2003.12.26
Economic CooperationDownloadContentSummaryThe growing interdependence in the world economy through trade and financial integration has increased the need to engage in international and regional economic cooperation. This was never demonstrated more clearly than during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which highlighted the reality is that financial instability is unlikely to remain within the national borders of the country of origin. Cooperation at both regional and global levels is therefore needed to stem the negative spillovers. (The rest is omitted.) -
Moving Forward on the Establishment of an Effective Surveillance System and an Improved Financial Architecture for East Asia
The goal of this study is to contribute to the efforts to construct regional financial arrangements that would reduce the occurrences of financial crisis, and lower their costs. This study will confine itself to the issues relate..
Yunjong Wang et al. Date 2003.12.26
Economic Integration, Trade PolicyDownloadContentSummaryThe goal of this study is to contribute to the efforts to construct regional financial arrangements that would reduce the occurrences of financial crisis, and lower their costs. This study will confine itself to the issues related to crisis prevention through mutual surveillance. T
his study will review and assess existing regional or sub-regional arrangements covering information exchange, surveillance systems, and institutions. In particular, in relation to the current development of the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), our analysis will focus on how to strengthen mutual surveillance processes through regional policy dialogue. (The rest is omitted.) -
Intra-Industry Trade and Productivity Structure: Application of a Cournot-Ricardian Model
This paper extends the reciprocal dumping model of trade to a general equilibrium theory. We merge the Cournotian model of Brander (1981) with the Ricardian model of Dornbusch, Fischer and Samuelson (1977). In this Cournot-Ricardi..
E. Young Song et al. Date 2003.12.26
Trade StructureDownloadContentSummaryThis paper extends the reciprocal dumping model of trade to a general equilibrium theory. We merge the Cournotian model of Brander (1981) with the Ricardian model of Dornbusch, Fischer and Samuelson (1977). In this Cournot-Ricardian model, we find that the share of intra-industry trade in total trade increases with a similarity between trading partners, where the similarity is measured in terms of the industrial distribution of labor productivities. Thus our model provides another micro-foundation to the general finding that the share of intra-industry trade is high when the trading partners are at a similar level of development. We also put this new model to a test. Using the data on trade and productivity, we find that the industrial distribution of labor productivities has significant explanatory power over the variations of intra-industry trade across country-pairs. This new variable seems to perform as well as the more popular variable, such as factor proportion, in explaining the share of the intra-industry trade. (The rest is omitted.) -
Trade Structure and Complementarity among APEC Member Economies
APEC has pursued economic cooperation among its member economies in the Asia-Pacific region since it was launched in 1989. In particular, APEC aims to foster free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region by 2010 fo..
Sang-yirl Nam Date 2003.12.26
Economic Cooperation, Trade StructureDownloadContentSummaryAPEC has pursued economic cooperation among its member economies in the Asia-Pacific region since it was launched in 1989. In particular, APEC aims to foster free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region by 2010 for developed economies and 2020 for developing economies through the 1994 Bogor Declaration. To achieve this goal more efficiently, we need to know better about the structure and relationships in international trade among APEC member economies. (The rest is omitted.) -
International Financial Transactions and Money Laundering: Case Studies and Countermeasures
Hyungdo Ahn and Deok Ryong YoonThis study focuses on the changing trends of international financial transactions and the possibility of money laundering. It further attempts to provide countermeasures by exploring the cases and an..
Hyungdo Ahn et al. Date 2003.12.26
DownloadContentSummaryHyungdo Ahn and Deok Ryong Yoon
This study focuses on the changing trends of international financial transactions and the possibility of money laundering. It further attempts to provide countermeasures by exploring the cases and analyzing the types and techniques of money laundering. (The rest is omitted.) -
Effect of the DDA Non-Agricultural Market Access Negotiations on Korea's Industrial Tariff System
A review of DDA non-agricultural market access negotiations up to 2003 reveals several contentious issues: (i) tariff reduction modality; (ii) sectoral tariff elimination; (iii) non-tariff barriers; and (iv) special and differenti..
Nakgyoon Choi et al. Date 2003.12.26
TariffsDownloadContentSummaryA review of DDA non-agricultural market access negotiations up to 2003 reveals several contentious issues: (i) tariff reduction modality; (ii) sectoral tariff elimination; (iii) non-tariff barriers; and (iv) special and differential treatment (SDT) for the least developed countries. The DDA Chairman's first draft on the modalities based on the Swiss formula considers the average tariff rates of member countries in calculating the line-by-line concession rates. Developed countries including the United States, the EU and Canada proposed the original Swiss formula to cope with the high tariff levels of developing countries. Conversely, the Chairman proposed a revised formula that entailed capping the average tariff rates contained in the formula. (The rest is omitted.) -
Free Trade Area of the Americas: Current Issues and Implications
In this book, we analyzed key issues of negotiations on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) including market access, agriculture, investment, services, government procurement, and social agenda such as labor and environment..
Moonsung Kang et al. Date 2003.12.26
Free TradeDownloadContentSummaryIn this book, we analyzed key issues of negotiations on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) including market access, agriculture, investment, services, government procurement, and social agenda such as labor and environment. In the area of market access, the key discussion has been focusing on how to eliminate both tariff and non-tariff barriers. In the agriculture, there is a sharp conflict of interests among participants on domestic subsidies and some sensitive agricultural products. (The rest is omitted.)
