South Caucasus–People's Republic of China Bilateral Free Trade Agreements: Why It Matters

Hasmik Hovhanesian () and Heghine Manasyan ()
Additional contact information
Hasmik Hovhanesian: Yerevan State University, Postal: 52 Abovyan Street, Yerevan 0025, Armenia
Heghine Manasyan: CRRC-Armenia, Postal: 52 Abovyan Street, 3rd floor, Room 312, Yerevan 0025, Armenia

No 125, Working Papers on Regional Economic Integration from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: Regional integration could be turned into a basic factor for economic growth if combined with a strong economic-development-oriented governmental strategy. The effects of regional integration can be maximized for countries stressing open trade as opposed to creating trade-diverting conditions, which requires drafting different kinds of agreements, particularly free trade agreements (FTAs). The impact of regional integration is significant, especially for small open economies—such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, which together comprise the South Caucasus—entering into an FTA with a large economy like the People’s Republic of China (PRC). At the same time, FTAs have mutual economic and geopolitical benefits for all participant countries. Moreover, taking into consideration the interests of countries like Turkey, Iran, and the Russian Federation in the economic and geopolitical potential of this region, the PRC may have to re-think its role in the South Caucasus. This paper assesses the PRC’s FTA strategy, the potential for regional integration in the South Caucasus, and the likely impacts of an FTA on the economies of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the PRC by using several specific trade indicators and a partial equilibrium modeling approach (SMART Model).

Keywords: Free trade agreements; regionalization; South Caucasian countries; PRC; SMART model analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F15 F17 F43 F53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2014-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-cwa, nep-int and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://aric.adb.org/pdf/workingpaper/WP125_South_C ... anesian_Manasyan.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:adbrei:0125

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers on Regional Economic Integration from Asian Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivan B. de Leon ().