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How much of South Korea’s growth miracle can be explained by trade policy?

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Michelle Connolly
Kei-Mu Yi

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Abstract

South Korea’s growth miracle has been well documented. A large set of institutional and policy reforms in the early 1960s is thought to have contributed to the country’s extraordinary performance. In this paper, we assess the importance of one key set of policies, the trade policy reforms in Korea, as well as the concurrent GATT tariff reductions. We develop a model of neoclassical growth and trade that highlights two forces by which lower trade barriers can lead to increased per worker GDP: comparative advantage and specialization, and capital accumulation. We calibrate the model and simulate the effects of three sets of tariff reductions that occurred between the early 1962 and 1995. Our main finding is that the model can explain up to 32 percent of South Korea’s catch-up to the G7 countries in output per worker in the manufacturing sector. We find that the effects of the tariff reductions taken together are about twice as large as the sum of each reduction applied individually.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in its series Working Paper Series with number 2008-23.

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Date of creation: 2008
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2008-23

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  3. David Hummels & Dana Rapoport & Kei-Mu Yi, 1998. "Vertical specialization and the changing nature of world trade," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Jun, pages 79-99. [Downloadable!]
  4. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," NBER Working Papers 10480, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Reinhart, Carmen & Ogaki, Masao & Ostry, Jonathan, 1996. "Saving Behavior in Low- and Middle-Income Developing Countries: A Comparison," MPRA Paper 6978, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Davis, Donald R., 1995. "Intra-industry trade: A Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo approach," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 201-226, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Baier, Scott L. & Bergstrand, Jeffrey H., 2001. "The growth of world trade: tariffs, transport costs, and income similarity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-27, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Papageorgiou, Chris & Perez-Sebastian, Fidel, 2006. "Dynamics in a non-scale R&D growth model with human capital: Explaining the Japanese and South Korean development experiences," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 901-930, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Hummels, David & Ishii, Jun & Yi, Kei-Mu, 2001. "The nature and growth of vertical specialization in world trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 75-96, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Kei-Mu Yi, 2003. "Can Vertical Specialization Explain the Growth of World Trade?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(1), pages 52-102, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Keith Head & John Ries, 2001. "Increasing Returns versus National Product Differentiation as an Explanation for the Pattern of U.S.-Canada Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 858-876, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Young, Alwyn, 1995. "The Tyranny of Numbers: Confronting the Statistical Realities of the East Asian Growth Experience," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(3), pages 641-80, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Alvarez, Fernando & Lucas, Robert Jr., 2007. "General equilibrium analysis of the Eaton-Kortum model of international trade," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1726-1768, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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