[[alternative]]Trade Liberalization and Production Efficiency: Evidence from AFTA

[[abstract]] 由於在GATT和WTO架構下的多邊貿易自由化進展緩慢，因此各國為提高其國際競爭力，多採用簽署自由貿易協定的方式進行雙邊貿易自由化。台灣在這個環境底下備感壓力，故積極和其他國家推動貿易自由化談判。然而兩岸複雜的政治因素使台灣在這方面難有重大突破，各界擔心台灣是否有被「邊陲化」的疑慮。過去文獻對於這方面的研究，多聚焦在自由貿易協定對進出口貿易、GDP成長率、社會福利等的影響，而忽略了生產效率。近年來，有愈來愈多的文獻將重心放在各國生產效率方面，因為生產效率的提高，代表資源能更有效的配置，要素報酬亦能因此而提高。 為研究自由貿易協定的簽立是否有助於提升簽署國的生產效率，或是否會阻礙未簽署國之資源作有效配置，本文以亞洲最重要之自由貿易協定-東協自由貿易區之成立為研究標的。選定區內的泰國、馬來西亞、菲律賓和印尼四個國家，及區域外的中國、日本、南韓與台灣為研究對象。本研究使用隨機邊界法(stochastic frontier approach, SFA)，以translog方式建立隨機生產邊界並設定無效率形式，並以各國總體生產函數估計出無效率值，評估各國決定其技術效率的主因。本研究結果顯示貿易自由化下的開放程度會造成菲律賓、印尼，中國和日本生產效率下降；台灣生產效率上升。各國進出口到東協比例導致區域內的馬來西亞和菲律賓生產效率下降，和區域外的台灣生產效率的下降。實施共同有效優惠關稅(Common Effective Preferential Tariff, CEPT)使區域外的中國、日本生產效率上升和台灣的生產效率下降。另外，考慮台灣加入直接投資東協比例後，結果顯示直接投資東協比例的越高，台灣的技術效率會隨著下降。[[abstract]] In recent years, due to the slow progress of multilateral trade liberalization, the countries signed a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) to increase its international competitiveness. Due to complicated political situation cross-strait, however, Taiwan's government is difficult to make a huge breakthrough in the international negotiation. Also the doubt that Taiwan would become marginalized. According to previous literature, most of papers focused on the effect of FTA on the trade, GDP growth rate, social welfare and so on. The view of point on production efficiency is largely ignored. At present, more and more research put the emphasis on production efficiency. In this paper, we takes the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) of the subject for the study. We takes the AFTA countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia) as well as non-AFTA countries (China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) as objects of research. We use the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), along with a translog model, to build up a stochastic frontier and to set up an inefficiency form. The results of this study show that under trade liberalization would cause the openness of the Philippines, Indonesia, China and Japan decreased productivity; Taiwan increase production efficiency. An increasing in the percentage of one country's trade with AFTA in its total trade leads to decrease production efficiency in Malaysia (within AFTA) and Taiwan (non-AFTA). CEPT implementation has positive impact on production efficiency for China and Japan, but has negative impact for Taiwan. Furthermore, to consider Taiwan's the proportion of foreign direct investment in AFTA, the results showed that the higher the proportion is, the lower the technical efficiency in Taiwan will be