東アジア共同体構想における農業・環境問題と産業内貿易の意義

Abstract

Recently a number of FTAs have been formed all over the world while global trade negotiation through WTO has been stagnated. Under these situations, several types of regional trade agreements have been argued in the Asia Pacific region, such as East Asia Community Concept. The proposal of this kind of regional integration in this area was not the first time. In 1980s, the Pacific Rim Cooperation Concept was proposed by the Ohira administration. But in that case, it was not accepted by the surrounding countries such as China, ASEAN and even the Pacific island countries. After these arguments, APEC was formed by the proposal by Australian Prime Minister Hokes in 1989. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of regional trade agreements on the economic performance and environments in these areas and the possibility of East Asia community concept. For this purposes, the several analysis of global trade model are reviewed and discussed about the impacts on economic and environmental indicators such as nitrogen accumulation and agrochemical inputs. Also, by using the regional revealed comparative advantage index and the inter industry trade index for China, Korea and Japan, the substitutable and complementary relation among the three countries are studied. From these studies, the followings are pointed out. Through the regional trade liberalization, the economic and environmental effects are positive as a whole regions although some countries suffer from negative effects. In addition, FTA between China and Japan is most difficult but FTA between Korea and Japan is easiest in comparison with FTA between China and Korea. Finally, it is suggested that for promoting the regional integration, the fragmentation process such as "inter production stage trade" will be more important, based on vertical rather than horizontal inter industry trade.