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An Empirical Study on the Utilization Ratio of FTAs by Korean Firms

2009; Volume: 13; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

1229-828X

Inkyo Cheong, Jungran Cho,

Overlapping and complicated FTAs have been progressing ahead in East Asia, but the issue of the ‘Asian noodle bowl’ rose as one of the research topics in regional economic integration a few years ago. The topic gave rise to concern with the finding of low business utilization ratio of FTAs in sample East Asian countries. This raised the necessity of a survey on the utilization ratio of Korea’s FTAs since the country has been promoting FTAs most actively in the region for last several years. This paper tried to study Korean firms’ utilization of FTAs under current implementation and the general attitude towards FTAs. One of main findings is that only one out of five Korean firms surveyed utilizes FTAs, although about half of the firms evaluated FTAs to be beneficial for their businesses. This paper asserts that the government has been less successful in promoting useful FTAs for business so far. It emphasizes that the government should push forward various schemes for enhancing the firms’ utilization of FTAs rather than voicing up the merits of FTAs.