Are ASEAN Member States (AMSs) willing to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement? : new evidence from ordered probit and logit models.

• Main Author: Sefiani Rayadiani.
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Research Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Economic theory::International trade
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54050
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a movement among APEC economies to pursue Asia-Pacific integration in the region. Despite the fact that the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) still a vision, some economies attempt to establish it into reality. There are 4 (four) ASEAN Member States (AMSs); Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam; that had joined this movement. The major question is will the rest of ASEAN Member States joining to TPP? This paper attempts to estimate the probability and willingness to integrate of ASEAN Member States with their trading partner, mainly TPP member countries. Ordered probit and logit models are estimated to explore factors affecting the willingness to integrate. This study finds that market size, dissimilarity, distance, democracy and common language are relevant variables to explain the behaviour of ASEAN to integrate with TPP member countries. The result concludes that AMSs motivation of trade liberalization is purely on market access and deteriorated with the fear of competition. This study argued that TPP should be evolutionary instead of revolutionary to AMSs. The phase of TPP should be slow and accommodative to fear of competition.