브렉시트 투표 전후 한국-EU 교역구조의 비교우위 및 산업내무역 비교 분석

Brexit Vote and Korea-EU Trade Structure, Comparative Advantage and Intra-Industry Trade

Purpose- In year 2016 there was the UK’s national vote about Brexit. The Brexit would influence the EU economy and UK economy as well as Korea’s trade structure against EU and UK. However, there has never been a study which analyzes the Brexit’s effects on international trade structure between EU and Korea. Design/methodology/approach- This study examines Korea’s largest 30 export items versus the EU and analyzes Brexit effects on international trade structure between Korea and the EU using HKS 2 digit codes in 2010’s. With using the recent international trade between Korea and the EU, this study tested empirically several trade structure tests such as trade intensity or Relative Market Intensity (RMI) tests, intra-industry trade index (IIT) and realized comparative advantage (RCA) index. Findings- Korea has recorded the high Relative Market Intensity index throughout years 2010-2019. But after the Brexit voting day, Relative Market Intensity index decreases. Most trade structure tests show that Korea’s main export items in general have the comparative advantages against the EU and low intra-industry trade in 2010’s. Among intra-industry items, even though we have the mixed results, Korea had the more vertical intra-industry items than horizontal intra-industry items. Among vertical intra-industry items, most Korea’s larger export items have high-quality vertical intra-industry but the other smaller export items have the low-quality vertical intra-industry. Research implications or Originality- There have been small changes with the Brexit vote result. Thus, to promote the competitiveness of Korea’s products in EU market, we have to analyze the trade structure Korea and the EU more carefully and trace out the changes of trade between Korea and EU before and after Brexit.