FTA가 한국 중소 제조기업의 생산시설 해외 이전의도에 미치는 영향

Abstract

This paper aims to empirically analyze the effects of Free Trade Agreements on the intention of moving manufacturing facilities overseas by Korean small and medium sized enterprises in manufacturing industries by conducting a survey research. Korea has recently changed a focus on the WTO multilateral process to regional trade arrangements for removing trade barriers. The impact of the movement toward free trade agreement (FTA) between countries on the foreign direct investment will turns out to be different.

Conceptually, the FTA has negative influence on the horizontal type of FDI and positive influence on the vertical type, based on the relationship between the FDI and goods trade. There are hypotheses developed by reviewing literature related to determinants of foreign direct investment and the effects of FTA on exporting and importing. They were tested by a multiple regression analysis using firm-level data on 135 small and medium sized-manufacturing companies in Busan and Gyeong-nam.

The results of this study present that the independent variables; Executive’s Global-oriented Attitudes, the Effect of FTA on Importing and lower-Wages-advantages are positively significant. However, explaining the relationship between FDI and FTA is difficult because FDI can be substitute or a compliment to goods trade according to its structure; horizontal and vertical form. Therefore, I suggest that it needs to advance the research model including other important factors and measure more precisely for future research.