• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.289-305
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• 2019

Recently, each country has been using non-tariff barriers (Non-Tariff Barriers, NTB) as a new protection trade policy. In particular, TBT lies at the center of NTB. In this context, we examine the impact of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) on Korea's exports to ASEAN. Using 10-year statistics from 2007 to 2016 that came into effect with the ASEAN FTA, we analyze the impact of TBT on the Korean exports in the electrical machinery industry (HS85), which accounts for more than 30 percent of Korea's total exports to ASEAN. The results of the empirical analysis using a gravity model showed significant and positive effects in the variables of GDP and real effective exchange rate in each ASEAN country on Korea's exports to ASEAN. As expected, the tariff rate has a negative effect. As for TBT, the key variable of this study, the results are as follows. Although many previous studies reported that TBT has negative impacts on exports, this study could not find any significant impact of TBT and found that Korea's exports of electrical machinery to ASEAN countries are not affected by TBT. Various implications of these results are suggested.