• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.509-535
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• 2010

This paper examines the Spaghetti bowl effect that different tariffs and rules of origin in multiple FTAs have resulted in increasing the significantly additional burden for business when it comes to apply for the use of FTA preference. The wide spread of FTAs in the several years, from 2003 to 2010, has been the most important trade policy development in economically important Korea. Korea presently has 5 FTAs in effect, and made 3 additional agreements which will be expected to take effect in next year. With the study result and expecting a growing number of FTAs in Korea in a next decade, the international trading firms will face rise of transaction costs for enterprises, particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) to cope with multiple tariffs and rule of origins in FTAs. To help mitigate negative effects and facilitate a more SEMs to use the FTA preference, providing new computer programs system, increasing the awareness of FTA provisions, improving business participation in FTA consultations, and SME support in light of education, and financial support are needed.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.363-394
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• 2012

WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) was designed to liberalize and expand trade in government procurement. Revised GPA was implemented in 1996 and the latest revision was completed (but not yet implemented) in 2012, but as a plurilateral agreement. Since the end of the UR, there has been attempts by various WTO members to liberalize trade in the government procurement market - through an expansion of Parties who are signatories to GPA, and through a negotiated agreement on transparency in government procurement. The attempt to expand the Parties who are signatories to the GPA - attempt to increase the width of the coverage of the agreement - has been somewhat successful, but I argue that the goal should be to further liberate the government procurement markets of the current Party members - to reduce thresholds and other barriers which limit market access even to other GPA members, in other words, to increase the depth of coverage. Taking cue from Korea's FTA, I propose a two-level liberalization of the government procurement market under the GPA: A "light" level which would be the same as the current level of liberalization; and a "deep" level with lower thresholds and less exemptions. I argue that, as seen in Korea, with FTAs, many GPA Parties already have multiple levels of liberalization (i.e, spaghetti-bowl effect of FTAs), but by limiting the levels of liberalization to two, we can seek the best of deep liberalization but reduce the spaghetti-bowl effect.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.55-63
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• 2016

Recently, FTA may go beyond the agreement of the two countries, and also FTA is tinged aspects of Mega FTA between the economic sphere, under the situation that FTA and the business model are mutually intertwined in convergence industrial environments. Since South Korea came into force in 52 countries and 15 cases of FTA, South Korea have completed FTA network with the United States, as well as ASEAN and most of OECD member countries, and South Korea is now a critical time to take advantage of the FTA to determine the South Korea's economic performance. This paper examined the previous studies of FTA utilization and analyzed practical usages and problems of SMEs' FTA utilization. Through analysis, this paper suggests that the Training Plans of SMEs' Origin Management Specialist for the Improvement of FTA Utilization is as follows: to build up the effective management system of origin supports, to enrich the origin management competency, to reinforce the operation of supporting system, and to strengthen practical capacity of Origin administrative staff. Based on the results, it is expected to provide the policy implications for the FTA utilization in the future.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.155-176
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• 2017

As an increasing number of the FTA, there have also been increasing interests in FTA utilization. It is critical to understand and implement the rules of origin for FTA utilization appropriately. However, due to the spaghetti bowl effect, the restrictiveness index, which is a measure of the degree of difficulty of meeting Product-Specific Rule(PSR) of origin, gets increased. Furthermore, there is a distortion in the method of calculating the correct restrictiveness index. Therefore, we implemented an enhanced method in a context of fishery product to correctly measure the restrictiveness index of Product Specific Rules (PSR) among the rules of origin.