• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.33-41
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to analyse the state of the energy industry and to determine the efficiency of its functioning on the basis of energy conservation principle and application of innovative technologies aimed at improving the ecological modernisation of agricultural sectors of Kazakhstan. The research methodology is based on an integrated approach of financial and economic evaluation of the effectiveness of the investment project, based on calculation of elasticity, total costs and profitability, as well as on comparative, graphical and system analysis. The current stage is characterised by widely spread restructuring processes of electric power industry in many countries through introduction of new technical installations of energy facilities and increased government regulation in order to enhance the competitive advantage of electricity market. Electric power industry features a considerable value of creating areas. For example, by providing scientific and technical progress, it crucially affects not only the development but also the territorial organisation of productive forces, first of all the industry. In modern life, more than 90% of electricity and heat is obtained by Kazakhstan's economy by consuming non-renewable energy resources: different types of coal, oil shale, oil, natural gas and peat. Therefore, it is significant to ensure energy security, as the country faces a rapid fall back to mono-gas structure of fuel and energy balance. However, energy resources in Kazakhstan are spread very unevenly. Its main supplies are concentrated in northern and central parts of the republic, and the majority of consumers of electrical power live in the southern and western areas of the country. However, energy plays an important role in the economy of industrial production and to a large extent determines the level of competitive advantage, which is a promising condition for implementation of energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies. In these circumstances, issues of modernisation and reforms of this sector in Kazakhstan gain more and more importance, which can be seen in the example of economically sustainable solutions of a large local monopoly company, significant savings in capital investment and efficiency of implementation of an investment project. A major disadvantage of development of electricity distribution companies is the prevalence of very high moral and physical amortisation of equipment, reaching almost 70-80%, which significantly increases the operating costs. For example, while an investment of 12 billion tenge was planned in 2009 in this branch, in 2012 it is planned to invest more than 17 billion. Obviously, despite the absolute increase, the rate of investment is still quite low, as the total demand in this area is at least more than 250 billion tenge. In addition, industrial infrastructure, including the objects of Kazakhstan electric power industry, have a tangible adverse impact on the environment. Thus, since there is a large number of various power projects that are sources of electromagnetic radiation, the environment is deteriorated. Hence, there is a need to optimise the efficiency of the organisation and management of production activities of energy companies, to create and implement new technologies, to ensure safe production and provide solutions to various environmental aspects. These are key strategic factors to ensure success of the modern energy sector of Kazakhstan. The contribution of authors in developing the scope of this subject is explained by the fact that there was not enough research in the energy sector, especially in the view of ecological modernisation. This work differs from similar works in Kazakhstan in the way that the proposed method of investment project calculation takes into account the time factor, which compares the current and future value of profit from the implementation of innovative equipment that helps to bring it to actual practise. The feasibility of writing this article lies in the need of forming a public policy in the industrial sector, including optimising the structure of energy disbursing rate, which complies with the terms of future modernised development of the domestic energy sector.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.402-419
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• 1994

Telecommunication and intormation technology have been conceived as crucial as well as revolutionary elements for recent and future social and economic development, and their development have led to a spatial reorganization and locational change of economic activities. Information technology has resulted in important changes in the organization structure and location of firm. This study draws attention to the understanding of the relationship between the diffusion of information technology and changes in firm activities with the special reference to the service industry of the United States. Information technology has had a significant impact on the growth and changes of the service industry of the United States through changes in the organizational and employment structure, market structure, and locational changes. The impact of information technology on location changes of the service industry shows two opposite patterns, concentration and decentralization. Among these patterns, the location change in the service industry of the United States reveals predominantly the decentralization tendency such as suburbanization and transfer to lower ranking cities rather than concentration. In case of Korea, however, it is anticipated that the rapid development of information technology may lead to the concentration of the service industry in Seoul and Capital region.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.73
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• pp.56-91
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• 2015

This study examined changes in the independent production environment in the perspectives from flexible specialization of labor and media routines since January 2011, when comprehensive programming television channels (JTBC, MBN, Channel A, TV Chosun) emerged in Korea. In-depth interviews were conducted with thirteen individuals, including producers from independent production companies, broadcast writers, and individuals involved with these TV channels. The interview results indicated that a flexible specialization production system had been established by the comprehensive programming channels. This means that they were heavily dependent on independent producers, except in relations to their own news programs. Moreover, it was identified that the production of diverse programs could be difficult due to absurd contract practices such as those related to TV ratings and performance systems. Second, these channels have implemented some positive changes such as the payment of higher production costs and an incentive system, compared to terrestrial TV stations. However, the incentive system also helps to aggravate internal competition in the channel and also instigate contract competitions among independent companies, which can eventually result in the channels for holding exclusive rights to certain content and, hence, unfair business practices. Third, as a result of the newspaper and broadcast cross-owenership system of the comprehensive programming channels, hierarchical independent production practices can be established under the influence of newspaper proprietors and executives or managers who have previously worked for newspapers. Lastly, as a result of interviews with independent producers and individuals involved with the TV channels concerning the awareness of comprehensive programming channels, it could not be ascertained whether it is difficult to produce programs dealing with diverse items and genres, because programming autonomy has been distorted by capital or the advertisement market. In this circumstance, it is not surprising that some comprehensive programming channels mentioned that they prioritize profit and performance in programming. In conclusion, it is absolutely imperative that complementary and legal measures be implemented institutionally in order to redress the existing systematic dysfunctional routines in the independent productions of the comprehensive programming TV channels in Korea.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.157-183
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• 2008

'New Universities for Regional Innovation(NURI)' is a financial aid program designed to promote the development of universities as a major component of Regional Innovation System (RIS). In particular, this program emphasizes the role of regional universities to provide the qualified graduates for the regional economy. This paper is to evaluate the effect of NURI, focusing on the change of graduates' employment. The effect of the program can be evaluated by the quality of graduates' accumulated human capital, and graduates' employment performance represents the graduates' quality evaluated in the labor market. This is also believed to be a good performance indicator of the NURI program. We utilize the graduate employment survey of Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), and calculate the graduates' employment rates of the departments that received the financial support of NURI (treatment group). We also calculate the graduates' employment rates of the departments that applied for the support of the NURI program but were not selected (comparison group). By using difference-in-differences method, we compare the change of graduates' employment rates in treatment and comparison groups before and after the program came in effect. Compared with the employment rates in 2004 before the NURI program started, the graduates employment rates improved in both groups in 2005 and 2006. The improvement of the employment rates in the treatment group is larger than that in the comparison group. Moreover, the difference of improvement gets larger in the year 2006 than in 2005, which means those students who were affected more years by the NURI program are more likely to be employed. However, the difference is not statistically significant, and we cannot definetely conclude that NURI showed the desired effect on the quality of the college graduates. We calculate employment rates in two ways; whether to treat going on to graduate education as an employment or not. The result was qualitatively the same in both cases. We also tracked quality of employment by investigating the firm size where the graduates of the treatment group were employed. By utilizing data from the Employment Insurance Fund, we measure the firm size by the number of employees. We did not find any deterioration of employment quality between 2005 and 2006, though it deteriorates in 2007. Therefore, the improvement of employment rates until 2006, though not statistically significant, does not seem to come at the cost of employment quality. The interpretation of this result cannot help being very limited. First, this evaluation covers such a short time period. It only covers two years after the program started, 2005 and 2006. Second, the extent of the improvement in employment rates is not satisfactory considering the amount of financial support, even though it can be argued that the employment has improved since the inception of the program. Subsequent evaluation of the program is required to certify the NURI programs' longer term effectiveness.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.85-98
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• 2021

In accordance with planning to construct culture park on Songhyeon-dong (district) near Gyeongbokgung Palace, This study analyzed literature and drawings from the early Joseon Dynasty to today for the district, known as 'Songhyeon (pine hill)' to identify historical and cultural landscapes during essential times. The following are the results; First, the owners of significant lots were identified, and land use and landscape components were extracted for a diachronic examination of the landscape of the whole area of Songhyeon-dong. Songhyeon district had been regarded as the 'Inner Blue Dragon (Spot) of Gyeongbokgung Palace' in terms of geomancy since the foundation of Joseon in 1392 in that the government created and managed a 'pine forest' in the district. A state warehouse called 'bungam' was constructed, and small fruit stores, 'ujeon,' opened due to the complete reformation and urban planning led by King Taejong in 1410. From the 19th century, mansions of the upper class, such as 'Gaseonggak', 'Changnyeongwuigung' and 'Byeoksugeosajeong' were in the district. A prominent official residential complex called 'Sigeun Sataek' was constructed in 1919 after Chosen Siksan Bank purchased the site. Later, it was transferred to America in 1948 and used as the 'US Embassy Staff Quarters'. Second, the changes in the site view, associated with the aspects of society by the times, were examined by estimating the location and the time the landscape components lasted in each period extracted and identifying the physical entity. The pine forest, regarded as the 'Inner Blue Dragon' that guards the left side of the palace within the geomantic world view, was located in the highlands in the west of the site. In the same period, the flat area in the east was regarded as the 'commoner's district', the streets adjacent to various government facilities and the market, packed with people from different walks of life. From the 19th century, the gardens of the aristocrats of the capital city were created in the pine forest, turning the place into the forest in the middle of the city. The whole area of Songhyeon-dong, which existed as a large lot in the city center for a long time, was developed by Japanese imperialists in the 20th century based on the concept of 'Ideal Healthy Land,' which interrupted the placeness of Songhyeon-dong that had adhered to the traditional geomatic view of the Joseon Dynasty.

• Economic Analysis
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.1-33
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• 2020

Recent discussions about a minimum wage increase (MWI) and its influence on the economy have mainly focused on the quantitative aspects, such as labor costs and employment. However, concerning the qualitative aspects, an MWI could have positive effects by enhancing firm productivity and crowding out marginal firms from the market. These positive effects of an MWI can offset, to some extent, its potential negative effects - increasing labor costs and decreasing employment, among others. In this regard we empirically examine the impact of an MWI on firm productivity (total factor productivity). Using firm level panel data from the manufacturing industry in Korea, we calculate the influence rates of a minimum wage by sector and by firm size (number of workers), and analyze its effects on firm productivity. In particular, the production functions of the firms are estimated by taking into account endogeneity among the input factors, in order to resolve the drawbacks of existing studies - underestimating the capital factor coefficient and overestimating the labor factor coefficient. This study finds that the influences of an MWI on wages, employment, and productivity are substantially different across sectors and firm sizes. While an MWI has shown to have positive influences on productivity growth in the manufacturing industry as a whole, each sector demonstrates a different direction of effect, and the degree of productivity change also varies by sector. The impacts of an MWI on firm productivity are generally estimated to be more negative for smaller firms, but in some sectors the effects are found to be positive. In addition, the wage increases resulting from an MWI seem to cause a productivity enhancement across all sectors in the manufacturing industry. The policy implications of this study are as follows. Considering the empirical findings that an MWI causes an increase in productivity in many sectors of the manufacturing industry, it would be desirable to take into consideration not only the negative side effects but also the positive effects of an MWI when designing any future minimum wage policy. Moreover, in spite of there being a uniform minimum wage, this study finds that the diverse influence rates of a minimum wage across firms have different impacts on wages, employment, and productivity across sectors or firm size. This finding could be conducive to discussions about differentiation among minimum wage schemes by sector or firm size.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2010

Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.