The important year of 1995 marked Vietnam’s first integration as a member of ASEAN. By 2016, Vietnam had negotiated, signed, and implemented sixteen free trade agreements. They include both multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements such as the China-ASEAN, VietnamChile, and Vietnam-Japan agreements. By signing free trade agreements Vietnam can increase trade flows in bilateral and multilateral developed-country FTA scenarios. | VNU Journal of Science: Economics and Business, Vol. 33, No. 5E (2017) 1-15 How Free Trade Agreements Affect Exports and Imports in Vietnam Nguyen Thi Hoang Oanh1,2,* 1 Economics Department - National Chung Cheng University, No. 168, Sec. 1, University Road, Minhsiung, Chiayi 62102, Taiwan (.) 2 Thai Nguyen University of Technology, No. 666, 3/2 Street, Tich Luong Ward, Thai Nguyen City, Vietnam Received 21 July 2017 Revised 19 October 2017; Accepted 28 December 2017 Abstract: The important year of 1995 marked Vietnam’s first integration as a member of ASEAN. By 2016, Vietnam had negotiated, signed, and implemented sixteen free trade agreements. They include both multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements such as the China-ASEAN, VietnamChile, and Vietnam-Japan agreements. By signing free trade agreements Vietnam can increase trade flows in bilateral and multilateral developed-country FTA scenarios. Trade creation and diversion can be found in multilateral developing-country FTA scenarios and the author finds the impacts of each free trade agreement is different if analyzed for each 2-digit commodity. Keywords: Free trade agreement, trade, import, export. 1. Introduction reducing trade barriers, and increasing social welfare but also by bringing new competition for domestic firms with foreign firms in foreign and domestic markets. Until 2016 Vietnam signed and implemented 10 FTAs, finished negotiation of 2 FTAs, and is negotiating 4 other FTAs (VCCI). Do domestic firms take advantage of trade agreement opportunities? And which kinds of goods and services trade most through FTAs? These are issues the author wants to find answers to in this paper. The relationship between FTAs and international trade attracts the interest of researchers. Baier and Bergstrand (2007) mention some approaches to deal with the relationship between FTAs and trade, such as instrumental variables, control function and a penal approach [1]. They find that FTAs help increase .
