• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.79-97
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• 2003

R&D expenditure of Korean firms has been increasing drastically since 1980 and occupied 84% of total R&D expenditure in 1994. After 1994, however, the growth rate of industry R&D expenditure has dropped below single digit. R&D concentration rate of upper 20 companies declined from 61.9% in 1999 to 49.8% in 2001. The technology trade balance has diverged by 2.8 billion dollars in 2000 compared to around 0.3 billion dollars in 1985. We find several reasons on declining the industry R&D growth rate in Korea. First, we carefully say there might be an crowding out effect in increasing government R&D investment from Granger causality test between industry R&D and government R&D. Second, the decreasing benefit of tax credit since 1992 on industry R&D expenditure has caused the decrease of industry R&D growth rate. Third, the type of R&D cost becomes to similar to matured countries type of cost, which means the portion of capital expenditure has been decreased since late of 1980s. Therefore, industry R&D growth rate gets to saturation point. We draw several policy implications from the changing structure of business R&D of Korean company. Firstly, to stimulate industry R&D investment Korean government needs to strengthen tax credit policy. Secondly, to induce foreign direct investment Korean government needs to establish technology infrastructures and high quality of manpower. To utilize foreign technology resources Korean government need to introduce global R&D program executed by foreign scientist as an Project Leader.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.149-179
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• 2003

This study is analysing the factors determining individuals' behavior of selecting self-employment not only at the micro-level but also at the macro-level to put a particular emphasis on the financial constraint and unemployment rate representing business cycle. The data used in this study are "Korean Labor and Income Panal Study" of the Korea Labor Institute and "Economically Active Population Survey" of National Statistical Office. The main findings are as follows. First, human capital such as educational attainment and job experience has positive effects on male's selection of self-employment. The effects of job experience, however, changed negative for female's selection of self-employment. Second, real estate is significantly enhancing the selection probabilities of employer selection while the income from financial assets has negative effects. Third, entrepreneurial culture and environment are also raising the self-employment selection probability. Lastly, the regional unemployment rate representing the business cycle has positive effects on the self-employment selection after the financial crisis in 1997 both at the micro and macro level. Moreover, the coefficient of regional unemployment rate has changed positive in the structural model of self-employment selection controlling for selection bias and income opportunities, which means that individual's behavior of self-employment selection is rather complex when accounting for the uncertainties of income opportunities and diverse characteristics of self-employment workforce.