This paper investigates the trade creation effects of Japan's free trade agreements (FTAs) using aggregate trade data for the years 1996–2015. We estimate various specifications of a gravity model. Our main finding is that the effects of Japan's FTAs are not clearly observed when the gravity model is specified with three types of fixed effects (i.e., exporter-year fixed effects, importer-year fixed effects, and country-pair fixed effects). In fact, the effects of FTAs vary substantially among trade partners and around half of the FTAs increase Japan's trade values. Our results also suggest that FTAs with small trade partners tend to have large effects on Japan as well as other countries. Recently enforced FTAs, however, increase Japan's import values more rapidly.

中文翻译：

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自由贸易协定的异质影响：日本案例

本文使用 1996-2015 年的总贸易数据研究了日本自由贸易协定 (FTA) 的贸易创造效应。我们估计重力模型的各种规格。我们的主要发现是，当重力模型被指定为三种类型的固定效应（即出口商年固定效应、进口商年固定效应和国家对固定效应）时，日本自由贸易协定的效应没有被清楚地观察到. 事实上，自由贸易协定的影响在贸易伙伴之间差异很大，大约一半的自由贸易协定增加了日本的贸易价值。我们的结果还表明，与小贸易伙伴的自由贸易协定往往对日本和其他国家产生巨大影响。然而，最近实施的自由贸易协定更快地增加了日本的进口价值。