• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.155-171
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• 2020

In reality, there are numerous [Note: I advise to change the tone to being more certain, as opposed to offering a possibility. You need to emphasize the seriousness of the conditions that your study wants to talk about] non-tariff trade barriers under free trade agreements, with various stakeholders having different trade-off interests. This study focuses on the rules of origin verification and considers cases in which domestic firms, foreign firms, and domestic consumer groups compete politically for their rent protection in the domestic market. As in Gwande et al. (2006), cross-border lobbies are considered possible wherein foreign firms also lobby the government to influence the decision-making process of how stringently to verify the rules of origin. [Note: Starting here, switch to past tense because a: study intentions above can be in present tense, b: study procedures should be in past tense] In this study, we assumed that all stakeholders form interest groups and present political contributions to the government based on their interests. The stringency of the rules of origin verification was then determined through this political process, and we compared this to a socially optimal one in the analysis. It was found that the verification was less stringent when there was cross-border lobbying than the socially optimal one.