This study focuses on the issue of technical barriers to trade (TBT) as the trend of trade policy has shifted to NTM-oriented protectionism, especially in developed countries since the late 2000s. Since Jang et al. (2011), Korea’s first comprehensive study on TBT, many TBT studies have been conducted in Korea. However, there was no comprehensive study covering international legal, administrative, political and economic analysis, including a proposal of organizational structure of the government bodies dealing with TBTs. In this regard, this study examines international discussion trends, trade disputes and current issues, and the main contents of the FTA TBT Agreement, using newly released TBT data since 2010, and conducted empirical analysis through newly developed quantitative methodology.
   In Chapter 2, we illustrate the current discussion on TBT at the international level, focusing on international organizations such as WTO and OECD. Discussions on TBTs are mainly led by developed countries such as the US or EU. General characteristics derived from the analysis are as follows. First, practical and specific ways to implement and apply the WTO TBT agreement has been proposed. The WTO pushes ahead the application of Regulatory Impact Assessment and Good Regulatory Practice, standardization of the notification form, establishment of electronic notification system, enhancement of transparency by establishing inquiry points at each country and providing 90 days of notification period. Second, the WTO seeks to provide technical assistance to developing countries and to enhance SDT(Special and Differential Treatment) encouraging the participation of developed countries. Third, there are more active discussions on how to apply international standards to solve TBT concerns. However, disagreement on the scope and definition on international standards between the US and EU remains and establishment of international standards is still relatively slow compared to the rapid development of existing industries and the advent of the new industries. Fourth, due to the aforementioned difficulties of reaching an agreement on standards, post-accreditation system based on market surveillance will become prevalent through voluntary standards and SDoC(Supplier Declaration of Conformity). Fifth, OECD attempts to tackle TBT concerns based on a comprehensive guideline for cooperation between stakeholders. This guideline, International Regulatory Cooperation(IRC), is classified by 11 forms. Among the 11 forms, the most frequently used mechanism is Mutual Recognition Agreements(MRAs). Quantitative studies also show that MRAs significantly eliminate trade barriers and facilitate trade confirming the effectiveness of MRAs.
   Chapter 3 examines the main contents and characteristics of TBT provisions in regional trade agreements from the perspective of international law, focusing on the WTO TBT dispute, the current status and features of specific trade concerns(STCs), and the CPTPP and USMCA. Since the main goal of technical regulations and standards introduced by each country is to achieve legitimate policy purposes such as providing safety, health, environment, and consumer information, there is a fundamental difficulty solving the TBT issues through legal review procedures by the panel and appellate body provided by the WTO Dispute Settlement System. As a result, even though the WTO dispute settlement process has been initiated on TBT issues, most cases are resolved by mutual consultation. In this context, the STC process of the WTO TBT Committee is a practical and important system for solving TBT issues. In Korea, more than 70% of cases of STC are raised together with many other countries. In order to enhance the effectiveness of the STC process, the response capacity in terms of multilateral cooperation should be strengthened.
   The FTA TBT negotiations were generally aimed to strengthen transparency and cooperation to eliminate TBT, based on the rules and procedures of the WTO TBT Agreement. Korea has removed TBT by recognizing the equivalence of technical regulations or by introducing SDoC in the automotive, electrical and electronic sectors in the Korea-US FTA and Korea-EU FTA negotiations while labeling provisions has been introduced in Korea-China FTA. The TBT provisions of the US-led TPP(now CPTPP) and USMCA include the institutional elements that are not included as WTO or existing FTA’s TBT provisions. In particular, it has led to the opening of testing and certification services sector by making official the use of international accreditation systems related to conformity assessment and prohibiting the requirement that conformity assessment bodies to be within the territory of importing countries. In addition, the two agreements show that the strategy of eliminating specific technical barriers based on the sectoral approach has been actively used. In particular, the USMCA-related Annex contains new rules with the advent of the digital economy, including the prevention of technology transfers in the information and telecommunications sector. This has important implications for the negotiation of digital trade rules as a TBT system.
   In Chapter 4, we conduct an empirical study to assess the effect of TBTs on Korea’s exports based on disaggregated export data at HS4 along with new TBT data and export quality index during 1996~2014. The TBT data is the newly released「wiiw NTM」which minimizes the problem of sample selection because a significant share of TBT notifications do not report relevant HS codes. We examine the trade effects of TBT based on the gravity model, and use PPML to avoid the problem of sample selection due to zero trade. Empirical results show that technical regulations adversely affect Korea’s exports on average while this effect becomes larger after the Global Financial Crisis. This suggests that the negative effects may be led by the protectionist sentiment. Also, we find that TBTs by countries with higher income than Korea decreased Korea’s exports while TBTs by lower income countries actually led to more exports. The adverse effects of TBT are possibly because TBT by higher income countries require higher compliance cost. Lastly, including an additional explanatory variable, export quality index in our specification, we find that TBT actually increases Korea’s exports possibly because it mitigates the problem of asymmetric information between consumers and producers.
   Chapter 5 empirically studies how the characteristics of TBT provisions in FTAs affect international trade during 1990~2016. The empirical model is based on a gravity equation that controls for multilateral resistance terms by including exporter-year, importer-year dummies. To estimate the model, we use trade data and DESTA data that compile TBT provisions from multiple FTAs. We find that TBT provisions do increase trade between countries while the extent of the increase differs by how TBT provisions are included in FTAs. Empirical results show that FTAs that reaffirm the WTO TBT agreement has limited effects on trade while FTAs with TBT provisions that encourage the use of international standards or harmonization of TBT significantly increases trade. Examining this effect between groups of countries classified by income, we find that TBT provisions that encourage the use of international standards or harmonization of TBT have especially larger effects between developed and developing countries. We further show that the effect of TBT provisions that encourage the use of international standards decreased more recently during 2012~2016, while the effect of harmonization increased since 2007.  
   Summing up all results in previous chapters, we provide policy implications in Chapter 6. Korea currently has the official TBT organization which consists of two parts, the TBT Central Secretariat and the TBT Consortium: Korean Agency for Technology and Standards(KATS) manages the former, while private associations and public certificate institutions constitute the latter. We propose future plans and strategic approaches for TBT such as strengthening capacity in international organization, using the FTA TBT provisions, flexibly corresponding to foreign technical regulations at country-and/or sector-level, and improving domestic technical regulations and certificate systems according to international standards. In the long term, the official TBT organization in Korea also needs structural reform to be adequate for plans and strategies that we proposed.

국문요약 

제1장 서론

제2장 TBT의 국제적 논의 동향
1. WTO 논의 동향
2. OECD 논의 동향
3. 학술연구 동향
4. 소결

제3장 WTO TBT 분쟁 및 STC와 FTA TBT 규범 동향
1. WTO TBT 분쟁
2. WTO TBT 특정무역현안
3. CPTPP 및 USMCA 내 TBT 규범의 발전 동향
4. 소결

제4장 해외 TBT에 따른 우리나라의 수출 효과 분석
1. 전 세계 TBT 추이와 특징
2. TBT 측정방법과 데이터
3. 이론적 배경과 실증분석모형
4. 실증분석 결과
5. 소결

제5장 TBT 무역자유화 협정의 수출 효과 분석
1. DESTA 자료 설명
2. 실증분석모형 및 데이터
3. 실증분석 결과
4. 소결

제6장 결론 및 정책적 시사점
1. 전체 연구결과 요약
2. 우리나라 TBT 대응조직의 현황과 특징
3. 정책적 시사점

참고문헌

부록

Executive Summary