Economic and Social Impacts from the Free Trade Agreement between Thailand and its Main Exporting Partners in Potential Commodities (in Thai)
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of FTA between Thailand and the main exporting countries including China, the United States of America, Japan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong which mainly highlights the impacts on macroeconomic variables, sectoral production, social welfare, poverty, and income inequality. Research methodologies are the descriptive analysis, Revealed Competitive Advantage (RCA) Index, and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model.
The results, according to the results from CGE model, reveal that Thailand will enjoy an economic growth measured by an increase of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 0.23-0.95 percent if Thailand signs FTA with the main exporting countries stressing on liberalizing the comparative commodity products which the positive results from this strategy are greater than from full liberalization in all commodities. Additionally, the results suggest that FTA can help reducing poverty as household income has increased but the income distribution will worsen because the return to capital owner whose income is relatively high is greater than to labor whose income is relatively low. Thus, government and trade negotiators should elaborately concern about the impacts on social welfare from future FTAs.
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