Transformations  in
Business & Economics

ONE BELT ONE ROAD (OBOR) INITIATIVE IN CENTRAL ASIA: THE STUDY OF OBOR ON CHINA AND CENTRAL ASIA AGRICULTURAL TRADE
Jiliang Ma, Tomas Balezentis, Zhijun Zhao, Cheng Fang

ABSTRACT. Central Asian countries play a very important role in implementing the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. The focus on agriculture is needed to streamline the implementation of the OBOR initiative. Agricultural trade between China and Central Asia has increased annually (18.34%), and benefits complementarity among products. In this paper, we attempt to investigate whether OBOR initiative brings certain impacts to the Agricultural Trade of China and Central Asia. Using the panel dataset covering the period of 1992-2015, we employ System-Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to estimate the dynamic gravity models. We find that OBOR increases the agricultural trade between China and Central Asia by 8.8%, and the growth of bilateral trade is contributed to the precise measures and policy under the OBOR. The governance capacity of Central Asian countries has noteworthy effects on China and Central Asian trade. Free trade agreements (FTA) have positive and significant relationship with bilateral trade .

KEYWORDS:  agricultural trade, OBOR, dynamic gravity model, Central Asia, China.

JEL classification:  C23, C33, F14, Q17.