An empirical analysis of Korea's trade imbalances with the US and Japan

This paper investigates the macro-determinants of Korea's persistent bilateral trade deficit with Japan but her trade surplus with the US using Johansen's cointegration-error correction model, which includes bilateral trade balance and real exchange rate, domestic and foreign incomes and relative money supply. The empirical results show that all variables included affect bilateral trade balances and there exists a long-run equilibrium among them. Especially, Korean won depreciation improves Korea-US trade balance according to the Marshall-Lerner condition while the J-curve effect between Korea and Japan exists with a little improvement of deterioration of trade balance followed by Korean won depreciation. In addition, domestic economic growth is found to improve persistent trade deficits against Japan and mitigate trade surplus with the US. The short- and long-run effects of monetary policy on Korea-US trade balance are opposite to those on Korea-Japan. The exogenous US income contributes to increase Korea-US trade balance.