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South Korea has signed and implemented 15 free trade agreements (FTAs) with 52 countries. More than 80 percent of imports of agricultural products came from FTA partner countries in 2015. We can say that South Korea entered the era of an opening in agricultural import sector. It means that FTA is an important factor in causing changes in agricultural imports. As a result of the implementation of the FTA, tariff cuts and other changes in trade conditions could lead to an increase in imports of agricultural products from FTA partner country or diversity of partners. South Korea has implemented 15 FTAs so far, each with a different period of implementation, different scale of trade, and different major trade items. This means that each FTA will have a different size and type of impact on the changes in the import structure. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how the FTA actually affected agricultural imports and what type of impact each FTA had. Especially, the authors focused on the effects of trade creation and diversion to analyze the patterns of structural changes in the import of agricultural products according to the implementation of FTAs.

In this study, the authors analyzed both trade creation and trade diversion effect through the poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood method based on the previous research gravity model of Magee (2008, p. 353) and Yang and Martinez-Zarzoso (2014, p. 144). The biggest improvement compared to the standard gravity model is that all variables such as GDP, population, and distance are removed. This model cannot be regarded as a gravity model because the basic parameters of gravity model such as GDP, population, distance are excluded, but it can be said that the fixed effect variables replace the basic parameter of the gravity model.

According to the analysis, the authors found that the effects of trade creation were apparent in the early stages of FTA implementation before 2011 and the effect of the trade transition was seen in the mid-FTA transition period after 2011. The authors also clarified the pattern of structural changes in the agricultural imports of each FTAs. It is shown that the change in agricultural import structures was more apparent in major FTAs like the Korea-ASEAN, Korea-EU, and Korea-US FTA. In other words, the effects of trade creation and trade diversion in these FTAs were found to be statistically significant.

The limitations of this study are as follows. First, as multiple FTAs are implemented simultaneously, the effects of individual FTA can be offset. Second, the FTA effect of each item was not reflected, because it was analyzed based on the amount of imports by country. Third, the effect of the trade between the partners was not reflected. Therefore, future studies need to add or supplement these limitations.

This paper demonstrated through an empirical analysis that the FTA directly affects changes in agricultural import structure. And it proved that the period of FTA implementation, items imported from FTA partner countries, and the size of imports affected the structure of agricultural imports. Of course, changes in the domestic consumption patterns, changes in the supply and demand, conditions of quarantine inspection, and preference of importers are also factors that affect the structure of agricultural imports. It is expected that the effect of trade creation and the effect of trade diversion in agricultural import will be more significant when tariff rates are further decreased due to FTA implementation and domestic demand of agricultural product rises as a result of an economic recovery. As the FTA directly affects changes in agricultural imports, it should be carefully dealt with when signing a new FTA or improving the existing ones. And appropriate measures should be taken to minimize damages to the domestic agricultural sector due to changes in the import structure of agricultural products.

This paper fulfils an identified need to do research what kinds of effect occurred after FTA implementation in the agricultural sector. An empirical analysis was conducted on the effects of trade creation and diversion of agricultural products, based on the actual results of bilateral trade between the 50 major importers of agricultural products, including the 30 FTA partner countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a regional trade agreement among a group of small island developing states on trade creation and trade diversion.

An augmented gravity model and panel data are used to estimate the trade creation and trade diversion effects. The generalized method of moments technique is used to account for possible endogeneity. Country pair and time fixed effects are also included.

The regional trade agreement had a positive effect on intra-regional trade creation, but there was no significant diversion of imports from extra-regional trade partners.

Small developing economies can benefit from regional trade agreements (RTAs) among themselves. The trade diversion effects of such agreements are likely to be limited.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the only paper which investigates the impact of RTAs among small island developing states.

This article analyses the welfare implications of the customs unions in the presence of multinational corporations for a less than fully employed small open economy. The traditional two‐sector model, with a specific factor for the multinational corporation, is employed for this purpose. This article suggests that both trade creations I and II improve the social welfare and employment of the small open economy if the multinational sector is relatively capital‐intensive. However, the welfare and the employment effects of trade diversion I are ambiguous whereas trade diversion II affects employment level negatively. These results are in contrast with the previous studies on the theory of customs unions.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the economic repercussions of potential India–USA free trade agreement (FTA) on the trade of agricultural commodities at HS 2-digit level.

The analysis is undertaken by assuming tariff reduction in a phased manner using the World Integrated Trade Solutions (WITS)-SMART partial equilibrium model to identify the trade creation and trade diversion effects.

Overall results show that both the trading partners gain from the proposed FTA. Trade creation dominates over trade diversion in India's analysis.

An FTA between India and the USA could be an essential step toward more liberal trade regimes and provide enormous economic benefits to both countries. Government of both the countries should support deeper integration. This will create more job opportunities and generate prosperity in both economies.

There are numerous studies conducted on evaluating the impact of FTAs ratified between countries. But there are limited studies which evaluate the impact of the proposed India–USA FTA on the economies of both trading partners specifically on the agriculture sector.

This paper aims to empirically examine the trade creation and diversion impacts on merchandise imports of Pakistan under the Pakistan–China Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The analysis of Pakistan’s preferential treatment with its largest trade partner as well as the most substantial exporter of the world will help to shape trade policy, open windows for academic research and also gives an immense contribution in literature.

A disaggregated panel data on the imports of Pakistan from China and other WTO member countries and tariff concessions at Harmonized System (HS) two-digit level used for the agreement period of 2006-2012. The empirical analysis takes care of bias through robust and panel-corrected standard errors with time, industry-specific effects and controlling for multilateral trade resistance.

Evidence found in support of trade creation under the Pakistan–China FTA. It means overall this agreement increased the welfare of Pakistani consumers.

Findings are in favour of negotiations and signing for the next round of this agreement and with other major trade partners like the US and Saudi Arabia.

It is worth investigating empirically the impact of preferential trade liberalization between Pakistan – a developing country – and China – the largest importer of the world – explicitly, in the form of trade creation or diversion. The empirical assessment of this FTA signed with the world’s largest exporter will not only contribute immensely to the literature but also help in trade policy formulation and open windows for academic research. Another unique aspect of this study is the use of disaggregated data consisting of all goods imports along with tariff concessions at two-digit Harmonized System (HS) code.

This paper uses the gravity model to examine the impact of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa on the flow of Kenya's exports. The empirical results suggest that COMESA has the effect of trade creation. No evidence for trade diversion is found. Accordingly, COMESA has helped to improve Kenya's export performance and, in turn, assisted in the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The results also show that nominal GDP of importing countries, distance, adjacency, and common official language have a statistically significant impact on the flow of Kenya's exports.

The effects of reductions in Canadian tariffs on imports from thirty non‐OPEC Third World countries are estimated using quarterly data for the period 1972–79. Estimates of total trade expansion, trade diversion and trade creation are obtained using linear and a log‐linear specification. The results imply that the trade diversion effect is in general and for most commodity groups larger than the trade creation effect.

This paper aims to use the approach based on the application of the law of gravity for the study of the flows of export and the effects of the RTAs.

In this paper, the authors evaluate the effects of RTAs on exports between members and non-members taking into account the Vinerian specification. The authors also try to estimate the impact of the recent economic crisis on the flows of export and the success of the RTAs. The authors use a model of static and dynamic gravity for 40 countries and six RTAs during the period 1980-2011.

Definitely the proliferation of RTAs will continue to be one of the driving forces that will constitute the political system and the global economy in the following years. It indicates a process that implies the merger of economies separated in bigger regions of free trade. Regional integration is seen as beneficial in many senses and is the major economic objectives in addition to presenting a stabilizing factor in international relations.

The gravity model is estimated using the last techniques of panel data which takes into account the endogeneity of the effects of integration and the existence of dynamic effect.

This paper examines the principal factors affecting the growth of intra‐group trade for four Latin American and Caribbean economic groups. Its findings suggest that the share of a group member's leading export sold within the group is an important determinant of intra‐group trade. For member countries that depend heavily on extra‐group markets, intra‐group trade is indirectly affected by the impact of extra‐group trade on gross domestic product.