한국 FTA 원산지규정 활용전략에 관한 연구

Abstract

Abstract

This study tries to make a literature survey to understand the testing methods and some characteristics of rules of origin in terms of Korean FTA. Also we introduce theoretical and empirical backgrounds about rules of origin in Korean FTA.

Then this study used the existing statistical data, related to Korean rules of origin such as FTA utilization rates, rigorness index, complexity index and tariff rates. Through the linear regression methods, we try to find the facts related to the spaghetti bowl effects in Korean FTA. We want to know whether the spaghetti bowl phenomena appear in Korean FTA or not.

Our study shows that Korean FTAs have the spaghetti bowl effects during early FTA periods before 2008.

Our empirical results and policy implications are summarized as follows. Firstly, the more complex rules of origin show the more serious spaghetti bowl effects. So the Korean government will make some efforts to unify the more complex rules of origin under the more FTAs. Also the government needs to analyze the complex rules of origin and introduce them with very easy contents. Small and medium- sized companies avoid the complex rules of origin and neglect them. They are not willing to utilize them because of heavy opportunity costs. So more incentives are given to these small and medium- sized companies

Secondly, the higher tariff rates induce the more utilization of rules of origin. The bigger differences between privileged and non-privileged tariff rates give some incentives to utilize the complex rules of origin even if more FTAs make Korean rules of origin more complex. This means that non-privileged tariff rates have strong protective effects which can protect domestic industries. From this result, we have to analyze the FTA results to harm the domestic industries with comparative disadvantages. We have to minimize the harmful effects to influence the domestic industries.

Thirdly, this study has some contributions in that we find out the spaghetti bowl phenomena in Korean FTAs. Many Asian countries have been exposed to more FTAs and rapidly experienced the more complex rules of origin. So these countries are expected to show more serious spaghetti bowl phenomena.

This study has some limitations.

In the future studies, we need to extend our data with longer time series. In particular, with recent rigorousness index, we should examine the recent spaghetti bowl effects. Also we need to analyze spaghetti bowl phenomena in terms of individual products instead of aggregate products. We need compare Korean results with foreign results.