FTA 특혜관세 활용에 대한 실증분석: RCEP 국가들 대상으로

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the implementation of the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that Korea signed with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) members. To ensure enough time for FTA implementation, we restrict our sample to RCEP members that signed FTAs with Korea before 2015. The partner countries we cover in this study are 10 ASEAN member states, Australia and India. Using product-level data at HS-10 digits on Korean imports for 2012~2016, we calculate the utility ratios and preferential margin of each FTAs by products and partners for each year. After illustrating how the two variables changed throughout the years of FTA implementation by industry and partner countries, we empirically examine how preferential margins affect utility ratios. In line with previous studies, we find that greater preferential margins are associated with greater utility ratios. An increase in the margin by 1 percentage-point increases the utility ratio by 0.6 percentage- points. We also extend the baseline empirical model to study if there are significant differences across industries and FTA partner countries. Empirical results suggest that the impact of preferential margin on utility ratio is greater for Korea-ASEAN FTA than Korea-Australia FTA, as Korea signed its FTA with ASEAN earlier than its FTA with Australia. It is also shown that the positive impact is greater for light manufacturing than for the primary industry. In other words, we find heterogeneous effects of preferential margin on utility ratio across partner countries and industries. Lastly, we also find that the positive effect is larger for products with greater preferential margins, suggesting a non-linear relationship between preferential margins and utility ratios. The non-linear relationship implies the existence of fixed cost of FTA utilization.