Trade, Transparency, and Welfare in the Asia Pacific

Kazutomo Abe () and John Wilson
Additional contact information
Kazutomo Abe: Tokyo Denki University

East Asian Economic Review, 2008, vol. 12, issue 2, 35-78

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of reducing corruption and improving transparency to lower trade costs in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation region. The authors find, based on a computable general equilibrium model, significant potential trade and welfare gains for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation members, with increased transparency and lower levels of corruption. Results suggest that trade in the region would increase by 11 percent and global welfare would expand by USD 406 billion by raising transparency to the average in the region. Most of the increase in welfare would take place in member economies undertaking reform. Among the reformers, the gross domestic product (GDP) of Vietnam, Thailand, Russia, and the Philippines would increase by approximately 20 percent. The benefits to Malaysia and China would also be substantial with increased transparency and lower levels of corruption.

Keywords: Trade; CGE Models; Transparency; Corruption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 F15 O24 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.11644/KIEP.JEAI.2008.12.2.188 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:eaerev:0129

Access Statistics for this article

East Asian Economic Review is currently edited by JE Lee

More articles in East Asian Economic Review from Korea Institute for International Economic Policy [30147] 3rd Floor Building C Sejong National Research Complex 370 Sicheong-daero Sejong-si, Korea. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by JE Lee ().