Purpose - Using a sample of Korean multinational corporations, we examine whether the relationship between tax risk and the implied cost of capital discriminates between the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) of highly rated firms. Design/methodology - Firms with high tax risks have an increased uncertainty of future cash flows. Therefore, as the volatility of future cash flow increases, information asymmetry and the required return increases. Highly rated ESG firms can reduce information asymmetry, thereby weakening the positive relationship between tax risk and cost of capital. We employ the standard deviation of the cash effective tax rate as proxy of tax risk. We utilize the ESG rating data of the Korea Corporate Governance Service (KCGS). We use a PEG model, MPEG model, and GM model to measure the implied cost of capital. Findings - We find a positive association between the implied cost of capital and tax risk. The positive relationship between tax risk and the implied cost of capital weakens in highly rated ESG firms. Highly rated ESG firms prefer a stable tax position to invest after-tax cash flows into sustainable management. Therefore, the negative effects of tax risk on cost of capital can be reduced. Originality/value - This study provides empirical evidence that ESG activities can mitigate the negative impact of tax risk on the cost of capital for Korean multinational corporations. In a business environment where ESG activities are more important, the empirical results that ESG activities can reduce the corporate risk of Korean FDI companies are expected to provide implications for the ESG activities of multinational corporations.

Purpose - Conventional supply chains (SCs) must identify facilitating roles, such as port or terminal operators, shipping companies, and freight forwarders in executing the various logistical activities that support the organizational strategies of shippers. Meanwhile, supply chain collaborative practices can engender a willingness to share relevant and mutually helpful information. To this end, this study seeks to identify the impact of supply chain integration (SCI) on information sharing (IS) and the operational performance (OP) of Korea's container-shipping industry from the perspective of social capital. Design/methodology - We established the research model for this study based on previous studies. In administering the survey, we obtained 149 valid responses from employees working in liner-shipping companies and freight forwarders in Korea. With the collected questionnaires, the study's hypotheses were tested using SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 26.0 Findings - The results indicate the existence of a mediated relationship where the impact of SCI on OP is mediated by IS. The effect of external integration (EI) on OP is fully mediated by information quality (IQ) and information-sharing content (ISC). Furthermore, EI, IQ and ISC partially mediate the relationship between internal integration (II) and OP. Originality/value - This study expands SCI contexts, where ISC and IQ respectively serve as bridges between EI and OP which has crucial implications for container-shipping companies in terms of improving their performance.

Purpose - As a leading source of foreign exchange and investment, tourism has grown in importance as a component of international trade. Accordingly, in recent decades much attention has been directed toward attracting foreign tourists and, in turn, positively affecting the recommendation intentions of foreign tourists. Despite such interests, there remains a dearth of empirical research on this issue. Moreover, prior research has focused primarily on the simple main effect of a certain factor on recommendation intentions. Therefore, the present study aims to (1) investigate the effect of overall satisfaction on the recommendation intentions of foreign tourists, and (2) examine the potential moderating effects of personal factors (i.e., age and destination image) on the association between overall satisfaction and recommendation intention. Design/methodology - Using a moderated moderation analysis of the data drawn from the 2018 International Visitor Survey conducted by the Korea Tourism Organization, this study proposes the three-way interaction effects of overall satisfaction, age, and destination image on recommendation intention. Findings - The findings of the study indicate that overall satisfaction is positively associated with recommendation intention and this relationship becomes stronger among younger tourists. The findings further indicate that the moderating effect of age on the relationship between overall satisfaction and recommendation intention depends on changes in the image of the destination. Specifically, the destination image exerts a positive moderating impact on the influence of age that moderates the overall satisfaction and recommendation intention relationship. Originality/value - Considering that the tourism economy has been severely affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic, this study contributes to a more accurate understanding of the factors affecting the recommendation intention, especially in times of crisis.

Purpose - The study analyzed 90 online firms worldwise and observed them for ten years to investigate their investments and firm performance variabilities. This study attemped to verify the existence of agency problems in online firms. Through this, the paper intends to expand the scope of research in the fields of investment and firm value both empirically and in theory. This study also attempted to supplement the insufficient logic of previous studies by analyzing the relationship between investment and profitability. Design/methodology - In this study, the investment is subdivided into over-, under-, and neutral investments, and an empirical analysis of the firm performance was conducted. As investment generally has long-term effects, the impact of a firm's investment on future firm performance and variabilities in firm performance was considered over the short-and medium-term period. Findings - It was found that there was a negative relationship between firms with an overinvestment and future firm performance. Underinvestment has no clear statistically significant results on firm performance. This implies that overinvestment causes more reduction in future firm performance than underinvestment. It was also found that underinvestment and overinvestment significantly increased the variability of firm performance. A positive significance was found between under- and over- investment with a variability of 3 years and overinvestment with a variability of 4 years in the future. A negative relationship was found between neutral investment propensity and future performance variabilities. Neutral investment has less effect on the future performance variability of a firm than a firm's overinvestment and underinvestment. For online firms, underinvestment and overinvestment have a greater effect on the firm's future performance variability than neutral investment. Originality/value - The agency theory predicts that information asymmetry and adverse selection problems exacerbate conflicts of interest among stakeholders, thus firm performance. The study contributed to accumulating research on online firms that are currently underexplored by analyzing the investment behavior of major firms in the online industry.

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the market power of the Korea Container Shipping Market (Intra Asia, Korea-Europe, and Korea-U.S.) to verify the existence of collusion empirically, and to answer whether the joint actions of liner market participants in Korea have formed market dominance for each route. Precisely, it will be verified through the Lerner index as to whether the regional market of Asia is a monopoly, oligopoly, or perfect competition. Design/methodology - This study used a Lerner index adjusted with elasticity presented in the New Imperial Organization (NEIO) studies. NEIO refers to a series of empirical studies that estimate parameters to judge market power from industrial data. This study uses B-L empirical models by Bresnahan (1982) and Lau (1982). In addition, NEIO research data statistically contain self-regression and stability problems as price and time series data. A dynamic model following Steen and Salvanes' Error Correction Model was used to solve this problem. Findings - The empirical results are as follows. First, λ, representing market power, is nearly zero in all three markets. Second, the Korean shipping market shows low demand elasticity on average. Nevertheless, the markup is low, a characteristic that is difficult to see in other industries. Third, the Korean shipping market generally remains close to perfect competition from 2014 to 2022, but extreme market power appears in a specific period, such as COVID-19. Fourth, there was no market power in the Intra Asia market from 2008 to 2014. Originality/value - Doubts about perfect competition in the liner market continued, but there were few empirical cases. This paper confirmed that the Korea liner market is a perfect competition market. This paper is the first to implement dynamics using ECM and recursive regression to demonstrate market power in the Korean liner market by dividing the shipping market into Deep Sea and Intra Asia separately. It is also the first to prove the most controversial problems in the current shipping industry numerically and academically.

Purpose - Korea became a trillion-dollar trading country in 2011. With the exponential increase in Korea's trade volume over the past decades, trade-related administrative burdens per capita for Korea Customs became enormous, for which the government established the Single Window, a trade-facilitating system, in 2004 to enhance the efficiency of customs-clearing procedures for traders. This paper focuses on finding whether the Korean Single Window system affects the country's trade facilitation positively through an empirical methodology. Design/methodology - To find empirical evidence that Single Window affects trade facilitation for the customs-clearing procedure, this study assumes that a time-efficient environment enables the handling of the increase in trade volume, under which four independent variables related to import customs-clearing procedures and two dependent variables to import were adopted for empirical analysis. The import customs procedures are classified into four steps from port entry to declaration acceptance. To understand the relationship between variables, scattered plots and correlation coefficients were calculated. Eight hypotheses were set and underwent simple linear regression. The data for analysis were collected by Korea Customs, and were about the lead time of import, the volume of imports in million USD, and the number of import declarations reported to customs offices on a monthly basis from 2005 to 2013. Findings - Six of the eight hypotheses showed the statistically significant result that lead time in the import customs-clearing procedure positively affects the number of import declaration reports and import volume. Specifically, Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2, and Hypothesis 3 strongly support the assumption lead time in import customs declaration has an inverse relationship with the number of import declarations, which means that the shorter the import lead time, the more import declaration increases. Research Limitations/Implications - With limited data accessibility to the government's custom-sclearing procedures, only the import lead time for customs clearance were adopted as independent variables. This paper, however, successfully found that the Single Window system contributed to trade facilitation. Originality/value - This study found that the time-saving Single Window system of Korea Customs enables itself to manage an exponentially-increasing trade volume by creating a trade-facilitating environment for customs personnel and traders, which may be a unique implication found through quantitative methodology.

Purpose - This research is to empirically explore the differences in apparel consumption among male and female teenagers and college students in Korea and China. By conducting a survey to understand customers' needs and behaviors, fashion businesses will be able to improve their customer satisfaction and avoid redundancy, inventory, and the waste of resources, effort and money. Design/methodology - The research design considers the consumption patterns of male and female high school and college students in Korea and China. To analyze the data, the study employs decision trees, a type of machine learning algorithm. A decision tree model was developed to examine the relationship between the explanatory and response variables, which can be either quantitative or qualitative in nature. Findings - The main findings of this study indicate that there are differences in shopping behavior among different customer segments. The results show that men have a simpler shopping behavior compared to women. Additionally, cultural factors and the difference in fashion needs between students and non-students have a significant impact on the shopping choices of Chinese and Korean individuals. Originality/value - Existing studies often assume that the shopping behavior of high school and university students is similar and that there are no significant differences in clothing purchases between men and women across countries. The results provide valuable insights into the unique shopping behavior of different customer segments, and can inform fashion businesses in their efforts to meet the needs of their customers.

Purpose - The study of co-movements between stock markets is a crucial area of finance and has recently received much interest in a variety of studies, especially in international finance. Stock market co-movements are a major phenomenon in financial markets, but they are not necessarily independent of the real market. Several studies support the idea that bilateral trade linkages significantly impact stock market correlations. Motivated by this perspective, this study investigates whether real market integration due to trade agreements brings about financial market integration in terms of stock market co-movement. Design/methodology - Over the 10 free trade agreements (FTAs) signed by the United States, using a dynamic conditional correlations (DCC) multivariate GARCH (MGRACH) model, we empirically measure the degree of integration by finding DCCs between the US market and the partner country's market. We then track how these correlations evolve over time and compare the results before and after trade agreements. Findings - According to the empirical results, there are positive return spillover effects from the US market to eight counterpart equity markets, except Jordan, Morocco, and Singapore. Especially Mexico, Canada, and Chile have large return spillover effects at the 1% significance level. All partner countries of FTAs generally have positive correlations with the US over the entire period, but the size and variance are somewhat different by country. Meanwhile, not all countries that signed trade agreements with the United States showed the same pattern of stock market co-movement after the agreement. Korea, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Singapore show increasing DCC patterns after trade agreements with the US. However, Canada, Australia, Bahrain, Jordan, and Morocco do not show different patterns before and after trade agreements in DCCs. These countries generally have the characteristic of relatively lower or higher co-movements in stock markets with the US before the signing of the FTAs. Originality/value - To our knowledge, few studies have directly examined the linkages between trade agreements and stock markets. Our approach is novel as it considers the problem of conditional heteroscedasticity and visualizes the change of correlations with time variations. Moreover, analyzing several trade agreements based on the United States enables the results of cross-country pairs to be compared. Hence, this study provides information on the degree of stock market integration with countries with which the United States has trade agreements, while simultaneously allowing us to track whether there have been changes in stock market integration patterns before and after trade agreements.

Purpose - This paper empirically investigates the relationship between born global strategy and the accounting- and market- based financial performance of Korean firms. Further, this study identifies the characteristics of born global firms (BGs) in comparison with non-BG counterparts in terms of size, R&D, and liability. Design/methodology - Using a database of listed Korean SMEs in the manufacturing sector from 2010 to 2020, this study applies panel generalized least squares (GLS) estimation and logistic regression techniques. Findings - This study finds that BG strategy is negatively related to the firm's accounting-based financial performance, while it is positively related to the market-based financial performance. This study also finds that BGs have higher sales volume and more total assets compared to their non-BG counterparts. In addition, Korean BGs spend more on R&D, and at the same time have higher liability. Originality/value - BGs, by definition, are firms that are actively penetrating foreign markets from the early stages of their establishment. Previous studies of Korean BGs have tried to identify the determinants of BGs' rapid internationalization and their superior performance. However, most of these studies have utilized either qualitative case- or survey-based analyses with relatively limited numbers of observations. From a different perspective, this study provides more objective evidence by investigating how the BG strategy affects the financial and market performance of firms, and by characterizing BGs in terms of financial data.

Purpose - When recovered through arbitration a contractual penalty that is disproportionately high can become grounds for challenging an arbitral award or an obstacle to its enforcement within Russian jurisdiction. This article investigates how violation of the principle of proportionality can affect the enforcement and challenging of arbitral awards in Russia. Based on the examination of the current legislation, along with the analysis of recent court cases on the subject, the ultimate object of this article is to discern practical recommendations for Korean practitioners who are looking to challenge and/or enforce arbitral awards in Russian courts. Design/methodology - The research process included the reviewing of current Russian legislation conducted in concurrence with academic literature review, searching and analyzing recent court cases where the relevant legal provisions and concepts were applied, and formulating practical implications of the research at its final stage. Findings - Through its relation to the principle of fairness/justice the authors establish the connection between the principle of proportionality and the public policy of Russia. Analysis of recent court cases showed two conflicting trends of whether a disproportionate penalty can be considered a public policy violation. The authors offer practical recommendations on how to substantiate a relevant claim regarding contractual penalty reduction by the court, depending on the desired outcome. Originality/value - The article contains an up-to-date summary of the legal provisions on the principle of proportionality of civil liability in Russia and identifies the most recent trends in court practice on the issue that is not covered by existing studies.

Purpose - Vietnam has the fastest growing digital economy in Southeast Asia and is emerging as a critical overseas market for Korean banks in the post-COVID-19 era. Accordingly, many Korean banks entered the Vietnamese market to overcome the limitations of the saturated domestic financial market and create new revenue sources. This study examined the current status of digital finance in Vietnam and the cases of Korean banks that have succeeded in the Vietnamese market. Then, importance-performance analysis (IPA) was conducted on local customers, managers and staff members of Korean banks in Vietnam. Design/methodology - In this study, we analyzed the importance and satisfaction factors of mobile banking app usage in Vietnam through IPA. In particular, we identified the differences between the two groups by considering the viewpoint of customers who use mobile banking apps and that of managers and staff members who provide mobile banking services. Findings - The IPA results from the customer group and managers and staff members group were generally similar, but differences were observed in Ease of Use (Technology), Innovativeness (Organization), and Increase in Revenue (Economic). In the case of the customer group, Ease of Use (Technology) is located in the second quadrant, which shows low satisfaction compared to high importance. However, in the managers and staff members group, Ease of Use (Technology) is located in the first quadrant, which indicates high importance and high satisfaction. This difference in perception can cause complaints from local customers; thus, it is necessary to change the perception of the technological aspect for ease of use of mobile banking apps in consideration of the customer's position. In addition, it is necessary to allocate the resources invested in the Innovativeness (Organization) and Increase in Revenue (Economic) to Ease of Use (Technology). Originality/value - In this study, based on the HOTE framework, factors for using mobile banking apps were derived, and IPA was conducted targeting local customers (app user) and managers and staff members (app provider) of Korean banks in Vietnam. Through this, we presented the results of empirical analysis that can help Korean banks efficiently utilize limited resources and budgets.