• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.137-157
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• 2017

As unemployment rises and economic growth slows, interest in startups, which is considered to be the driving force of job creation, is increasing. This study aimed to analyze the employment effects of knowledge-based startups in South Korea. In particular, startups were divided into three categories (knowledge-based manufacturing, knowledge-based service, and other industries) and the region were divided into the capital region and the other regions. The result of the analysis, which used census on Establishments Data from Statistics Korea(KOSIS), showed that the employment effects of startups change in three steps over time. When new firms were created, employment increases instantly. However, as the competition among firms increases, some firms exit the market and employment decreases. In the long-term, some firms will survive the market competition and increase their firm size and the number of jobs they offer. The total employment effect was greater for knowledge-based startups than the other industries startups. The total employment effect of knowledge-based startups are 2.84%p for the period of 6 years. Startups in the Capital region showed higher employment effect than startups in other regions. This implies that in the capital region, employment increases more after the startups are created, but due to fierce competition, employment also decreases relatively more than it does in other regions. However, companies that survive competition create more employment. This study may give some policy implications that startup policies should be tailored to the startup's type and regional characteristics in order to achieve more effective job creation performance.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.137-165
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• 1994

Structural adjustment of industry (or industrial restructuring) seems to be inherent in the process of capitalist economic development, which tends to be proceeded with shifts from one stage to another in order to overcome structural crises generated in each stage. The structural adjustment of industry is necessarily accompanied with regional restructuring, since it is not only projected on spece, but also mediated by space. Such a restructuring necessitates industrial and uneven regional devlopment through which capital can seek excessive profits over the rate of socio-spatial average. The industrial restructuring and uneven regional development in the 1980s in Korea can be seen as a process in which capital attempted with a strong support of the govenment to overcome the crises in the end of 1970s and hence to go on rapid economic growth. In this process, capital, especially monopoly capital concentrated into few conglomerates, pursued both extensive expansion and intensive development of industry simultaneously. In results, the Korean economy could eliminate some of peripheral characters and maturate the Fordist accumulation system. The extensive expansion of the Korean industry in the 1980s was stimulated mainly through the enlargement and adjustment of investment for equipment facilities which was planned to exclude or rationalize traditional light industries on some places, and to continue rapid growth of key heavy-chemical industries, especially of fabricated metal industry, on other places. In this process, keeping mainly the existing developmental axis which polarized the Seoul Metroplitan region and the Southeast region in Korea, the enhancing spatial mobiiity of capital and the further differentiating division of labour enforced a tendency of concentration of all types of industry in the Seoul Metropolitan region, and at the same time provoked the diffusion of some industries over Jeolla and Chungchong regions in a considerable extent. The intensive development of industriai structure in the 1980s was pursued through the strategic encouragement of subcontracting small firms mainly which produced assembling components, the technical enhancement and factory (semi-) automation, and the enrichment of service industries for estate management, finance, distribution and retailing which supported and complemented the production of goods. In this process, enabling capital to extend and elaborate its domination over space through the reorganization of regulating systems, the Fordist division of labour generated a socio-spatial hierarchy in the nation-wide scale that characterized: the Seoul Metropolitan region as an overmaturated (or overarching) Fordist region performing the conceptive functions of management, research and development, in which all types of industry (including service industries) tended to be reconcentrated; Kyungsang region as a maturated Fordist region with excutive branches of large conglomerates and with subcontracting firms around them which produced standardized products through the automized production processes in secialized Fordist industries or rationalized traditional industries; and Jeolla and Chungchong regions as newly devloping Fordist regions with newly migrated branches and some subcontracting small firms-in relatively older Fordist industries or partly rationalized traditional industries. From these analyses, it can be argued that the structural adjustment of the Korean industry in the 1980s, which had carried out both through the extensive expansion and the intensive deveiopment, strengthened further uneven regional development process, even though it appears to have reduced apparently the economic and regional disparity by balancing numerically large and small firms and by extending the Fordist industrial space nation-wideiy. And it seems more persuasive to see that the Korean industrial structure in the 1980s maturated the Fordist system of accumulation, but not yet transformed towards the post-Fordist (or the so-called flexible) accumulation system, even though the Korean economy in the 1990s seems to be under a pressure of restructuring towards the latter system.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.123-147
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• 1990

This paper examines the changing geography of producer service industries in the 1980s. The foci of this study are to analyze the regional distribution of each producer services, and to reveal the spatial linkage of producer services. Further this paper asserts the potential role of producer services for reducing the potential endogenous development in the periphery. During the 1981-86 period, producer service industries grew more rapidly than other service sectors and manufacturing sector. The main reason of the raid growth of producer services is attributable to an increase in demand for intermediate services from manufacturing firms. In order to compete an increasingly complex business environment, firms have expanded the amount of effort devoted to activities such as planning, coordination and control, and consequently have increased their use of producer services. The most distinctive feature of the location of producer services is spatial concentration into Seoul and surrounding region. Especially the degree of the concentration o business services into the Capital Region has been accelerating during the 1990s. The pattern of employment growth and regional distribution of producer services show a clear core / periphery disparity. Much of the regional inequality in producer services is largely due to variation in demand associated with the pattern of corporation headquarters with the pattern of corporation headquarters and branch plants location with large manufacturing firms. The analysis of spatial division of labor reflects that producer services are related to the location of headquarters in manufacturing industry. Headquarters in manufacturing firms and business service firms tend to cluster each other. Most of the headquarters spatially separated from branch offices are clustered heavily in Seoul. Especially headquarters of business services and insurance services are overwhelmingly concentrated into Seoul. The firms whose headquarters are located in Seoul have a linkage pattern on a nationwide scale. It is viewed have little potential for generating local multiplier effects and regional development. In the light of the result of this study, producer services are not likely to disperse soon to peripheral regions. Consequently the absence of policies directed at enhancing producer sevice in the periphery, concentration tendency would continue to reinforce the core's dominance at the expense of peripheral regions. From a regional perspective, the quality of a region's producer service sector is a key determinant of economic growth, since manu industrial location decisions are influenced by the differential availability of producer services among regions. Poor performance of producer services in peripheral regions seemed to be linked to the region's manufacturing base. Low-wage, standardized branch plants are not likely to induce the growth in knowledge intensive services associated with high-technology corporate headquarters. Producer services may help to create and attract new business including manufacturing firms, and also to enhance the productivity and competitiveness of local firms. Therefore the provision of service producing activities would be lead not only to generate and retain endogenous development but also to attract external firms, especially small and medium sized firms which have a lower propensity of internalized services. Hence, it may be more efficient to create and expanse new locally owned producer services rather than to attract branch plants of mult-locational firms in order to make indigenous economic development.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.679-687
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• 2017

This study examines financial factors affecting cash holdings of firms in the domestic capital markets. Specifically, this study focuses on regional firms with headquarters in Chungcheong province, the Republic of Korea, which features little previous research concentrating on the firms in the particular region. Three primary hypotheses were empirically tested utilizing robust econometric models, including static panel data, Tobit regression, and logistic models.Results reveal only five explanatory variables, including DSO, LIQUID, LEVERAGE, PMARGIN, and SIZE, showed statistically significant effects on the level of cash holdings among the nine variables studied. In addition two IDVs, LEVERAGE and FOS, showed significant differentiated effects between firms with headquarters in North and South Chungcheong regions. With continued debate among interested parties on the optimal level of cash reserves, the study provides a new vision for the optimal cash reserves for firms with headquarters in Chungcheong Province, where unprecedented socio-economic factors are driven.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.627-644
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• 2009

In the knowledge-based economy highlighting the importance of human capital, there has been a growing interest in human capital externalities as a fundamental engine of growth and development of a region. The purpose of this study is to analyze human capital externalities using 3-level hierarchical linear model(3-HLM), decomposing determinants of wages into three levels involving workers(level-1) nested within firms(level-2) nested within regions(level-3). This study separately estimates the effect of the average education level on the wages by three different schooling groups on the assumption that the intensity of knowledge spillovers varies with each group's schooling level. The main results are as follows; First, the coefficient of the average education level of a region shows 0.044, indicating that one-year increase in the average level of schooling could increase average individual earnings by 4.4%. Secondly, the external effects of human capital on three different schooling groups are considerably different, raising less than high school graduates' wages by 3.0%, college graduates' wages by 4.7%, and graduate schools' wages by 11.8%, respectively. Thirdly, well educated workers are much more sensitive to the variation of the regional education level than less educated ones when we apply the shares of each schooling group as alternative measures for the average level of education. Such findings of this study draw an implication that local governments could speed up regional economic growth in the knowledge-based economy by not only raising total human capital stock in a region but building the close networks that promote productivity-enhancing human capital external effects.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.8
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• pp.473-483
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• 2020

Internationalization of SMEs has gathered pace in recent times with falling trade barriers and rising world trade encouraging small firms to seek profits and growth in foreign markets. This has attracted the attention of researchers, and several studies have been conducted in Western nations on the factors influencing the process of SME internationalization. However, hardly any study has been done on SME internationalization in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) region, thus leaving a gap in the literature. This study investigates the influence of four factors, namely, human capital, network competency, entrepreneurial orientation, and market volatility on the degree of internationalization of SMEs in Oman. The study employs survey data collected from 150 SME owners and managers using a structured questionnaire having 27 items, and has been analyzed using correlation and logistic regression, as the dependent variable is binary in nature. The results reveal the impact of the chosen variables on the degree of internationalization of SMEs. The findings of the study suggest that network competency has the highest impact on degree of internationalization of Omani SMEs, followed by human capital and entrepreneurial orientation, while market volatility, though insignificant, moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and degree of internationalization of Omani SMEs.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.49-68
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• 2002

Recently, the venture industry in Korea has grown so rapidly because of the economic restructuring and the governmental inducement policies. This study first attempts to investigate the governmental policies for venture business development. Secondly, this study probes into the characteristics and the locational conditions of the venture business in the Chungbuk region. Lastly, this study tries to formulate the policies to develop the venture industry in the Chungbuk region. This study finds that the governmental inducement policies for venture business are various and extensive. From the cross-sectional and spatial-distributional analyses of venture business statistics for the Chungbuk region, it is found that the most venture businesses in the Chungbuk region are concentrated in the manufacturing sector rather than the information technology sector and they are geographically concentrated around the Joongbu expressway. Since the vicinity of the Joongbu expressway provides fast access to the capital region and cheap land, many manufacturing firms have moved from the capital region to that area in the Chungbuk region.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.323-344
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• 2023

This study investigates the resilient structural characteristics of a region by assessing the impact of the financial crisis. Utilizing panel data at the prefecture level for metropolitan cities across pre-shock (2006-2008), shock (2009), and post-shock (2010-2019) periods, we calculated an employment resilience index by combining the resistance and recovery indices. The panel logit regression measures the influences of the region's industrial structure and external economic factors in response to the global financial crisis. The results revealed that the diversity index of industries contributed to the post-shock recovery bounce-back. Additionally, the presence of large firms and industrial clusters within the region positively contributed to economic resilience. The specialization and the proportion of manufacturing industries showed negative effects, suggesting that regions overly reliant on manufacturing-centered specialization might be vulnerable to external shocks. Furthermore, excessive capital outflows for market expansion were found to have a detrimental impact on regional economic recovery.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.319-333
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• 2008

Government R&D policies generate diverse intended and unintended effects including innovator-specific and spatial effects. The Korean government has promoted R&D policies throughout the industrializing period, resulting in R&D networks focused on government research institutes geographically concentrated in the Capital region and Daedeok. This research aims to review the development of the Korean national R&D projects and analyze the recent composition of participants and spatial effects of the Korean national R&D projects. The results show that, in terms of the participants, the R&D networks generated from the Korean national R&D projects have been diversified from dominance of the government research institutes to strategic collaboration between the Korean private firms, universities, and government research institutes. Spatially, the R&D networks are not regionalized, and many private firms in most of the regions have nationwide R&D networks or still rely on the R&D networks in the Capital region.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.526-543
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• 2008

Based on the social network analysis(SNA), this study examines the structural and spatial characteristics of the actor networks of the manufacturing industries for the elderly. In the field of economic geography, former researches on network have mainly focused on the network governance. However, this study focused on the social network analysis. Centrality indexes are used to analyze the topological structure of actor networks of firms and organizations. In order to investigate the spatial structure of actor networks, not only the regional distribution of actors but also the correlation between centrality index and distance are analyzed. Network matrixes among actors are transformed to network matrixes among regions using block modeling method to reveal the spatial characteristics of the actor networks. In spite of the importance of the Capital Region, networks in the non-Capital Region like Chungnam and Pusan were showed high network density. This suggested that some kinds of policy project operating in the non-Capital Region had the influence on this network in the initial stage of industry.