• Human Ecology Research
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.131-148
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• 2020

This study examined the dual mediating effects of preschoolers' executive function and counterfactual thinking in the relationship between maternal reflective functioning and preschoolers' higher-order thinking. Participants included 293 preschoolers and their mothers in Daegu city and Gyeongsang province. The mothers completed questionnaires regarding their reflective functioning, preschoolers' executive function, and creative thinking. Teachers completed questionnaires regarding preschoolers' critical thinking and caring thinking. Preschoolers' counterfactual thinking was measured by interviews. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation analysis with SPSS 25.0. Path analysis and bootstrapping were used with AMOS 25.0 program. Also, specific indirect effect were analyzed using AMOS user-defined estimand function. The primary results of this study are as follows. Maternal reflective functioning had an indirect effect on preschoolers' critical thinking and caring thinking through preschoolers' executive function and counterfactual thinking; however, maternal reflective functioning had no indirect effect on preschoolers' creative thinking through preschoolers' executive function and counterfactual thinking. This study revealed that maternal reflective functioning and preschoolers' executive function and counterfactual thinking need to be considered simultaneously to explain the level of preschoolers' higher-order thinking. The results highlight the dual mediating effects of preschoolers' executive function and counterfactual thinking in the relationship between maternal reflective functioning and preschoolers' higher-order thinking.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.69-94
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• 2024

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions across industries worldwide. This paper aims to analyze the economic impact of the pandemic on the sales performance of basic commercial areas in Seoul, Korea. Using a regression analysis with credit card transaction data, the study underscores the critical nature of determining the reference point for comparison. Firstly, in comparison to the revenue in the same quarter before the onset of the pandemic, a significant decrease in revenue was observed across most categories during the pandemic periods. Secondly, when compared to the counterfactual revenue in the same period, extrapolated by an exponential smoothing forecasting, the overall revenue decrease during the periods was less pronounced, except in a few categories. Interestingly, certain categories appeared to witness marginal increases in sales after the pandemic. The paper discusses some policy implications of these findings.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.303-311
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• 2023

Traditional mediation analysis, which relies on linear regression models, has faced criticism due to its limited suitability for cases involving different types of variables and complex covariates, such as interactions. This can result in unclear definitions of direct and indirect effects. As an alternative, causal mediation analysis using the counterfactual framework has been introduced to provide clearer definitions of direct and indirect effects while allowing for more flexible modeling methods. However, the conceptual understanding of this approach based on the counterfactual framework remains challenging for applied researchers. To address this issue, the present article was written to highlight and illustrate the definitions of causal estimands, including controlled direct effect, natural direct effect, and natural indirect effect, based on the key concept of nested counterfactuals. Furthermore, we recommend using 2 R packages, 'medflex' and 'mediation', to perform causal mediation analysis and provide public health examples. The article also offers caveats and guidelines for accurate interpretation of the results.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.265-289
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• 2015

The idea that an effect counterfactually depends on its cause is simple and intuitive. However, this simple idea runs into various difficulties. The active route account, in order to avoid the difficulties, analyzes causation in terms of counterfactual dependence under certain control. In her recent article, Seahwa Kim criticizes Sungsu Kim's earlier attempt to defend the active route account from its counterexamples. Her criticisms are convincing, and defenders of the active route account or counterfactual analysis of causation in general need another defense. In response, a two-step defense is proposed. First, the scope of the active route account is restricted to 'proximate' causal relation. Second, a control over factors that are in proximate causal relation is offered to figure out 'distant' causal relation. The result is that with proper control, an effect indeed counterfactually depends on its cause.

• Language and Information
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.47-65
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• 2011

A Korean adverb '거의(geoui)' modifies predicates to generate complex predicates which have meanings of 'nearly' complete or typical properties of the modified predicates in quantities, degrees, and frequencies. The modified predicates 'complete' or 'typical' properties are referred counterfactually as standards for the generated predicates' meanings of deficiencies. These counterfactual standards can be formalized by a counterfactual conditional operator of the intensional semantics in Cresswell(1990). The deficiencies in the quantities, degrees, or frequencies of the properties can be expressed formally introducing a world-independent measure of comparison. The measure can be manufactured out of relations between intensional things at indices and their equivalence classes. The world-independent measure of comparison has a semantic structure under-specified in quantity, degree, and frequency, and seems very well-suited in describing lexical meaning of '거의(geoui)'. The lexical-semantic analysis of '거의(geoui)' shows explicitly the plausibility of the indispensable existence of the comparing measure which works across real and counterfactual worlds in natural language meaning. On the other hand, we examined Kim, young-hee(1985)'s proposal of a transition of quantificational meaning for Korean degree adverbs, where he tried to explain the quantificational meaning of Korean degree adverbs in general including '거의(geoui)' with several syntactic and semantic constraints of 'contextual deletion'. But it is shown that the quantificational meanings of the degree adverbs which Kim(1985) discussed are also explained better by their under-specified meanings in quantities, frequencies and degrees with the world-independent measure of comparison applied to their paradigmatic lexical constraint rather than Kim(1985)'s transition of meaning.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.25-33
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• 2018

Purpose - This study focused on the effect of counter-factual thinking on post-purchase behavior producing consumer regret at HMR selection and purchase. We have analyzed the factors that HMR production and distribution businesses should consider because distribution and marketing strategy reflecting consumers' demand. Research design, data, and methodology - For the purpose of carrying out this research, we conducted a direst structured questionnaire to students at 'J' college. A total of 237 valid questionnaires were collected for students and their parents at 'J' university. For the hypothesis test, exploratory factor analysis, t-test, regression and structure equation path analysis were performed. Results - The consumers who often resented HMR purchase did counter-factual thinking on post-purchase behavior were likely to do switching purchases. Counter-factual thinking on post-purchase behavior had a negative influence upon consumer's satisfaction with HMR safety and marketing characteristics. Conclusions - Consumers who had been satisfied to a certain degree might have cognitive dissonance of minor mistakes of HMR product were likely to have downward counter-factual thinking through contrast effects. Therefore, HMR producer and distribution businesses that had production, distribution and marketing strategy to satisfy consumers by raw material, freshness and safety were likely to switch to another product at one time mistake of selection, purchase and use.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.41-60
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• 2022

Purpose - The policy implications of free trade agreements have traditionally been a matter of debate among economists. The official signing of the Korea-China Free Trade Agreement provides economists with a quasi-natural experiment to analyze the FTA's policy effects. This article aims to more accurately understand the impact of Korea's FTA accession on the macro economy. Design/methodology - This study adopts the counterfactual method based on panel data to find common factors in the generation process of macro data to fit the counterfactual path, to accurately evaluate the effect of the macro policy. Findings - Our research results show that the signing of the Korea-China FTA has a relatively significant short-term positive effect on Korea's economic growth. On average, Korea's real GDP growth rate has increased by 2.1%. This study finds evidence in support of FTA signing not having a significant impact on Korea's GDP growth in the long run. Additionally, we evaluated the impact of the FTA on Korea's imports and exports and found that it had a significant positive impact in the short term, but the trade effect of the FTA is significantly affected by the external macro-environment. Originality/value - First, this study uses macro panel data at the national level to examine the impact of the Korea-China FTA on Korea, and more accurately describes the policy effect of the FTA. Second, our empirical results show that the Korea-China FTA policy impact is subject to occasional changes in the external environment, such as the geopolitical conflict (crisis) between Korea and China, and the US-China trade war. Finally, the analysis shows that the short-term effect of FTA is significant but the long-term is uncertain, which provides empirical evidence for the debate on whether joining FTA can promote national economic growth.

• STI Policy Review
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.41-54
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• 2013

R&D is inherently an uncertain endeavor, yet now more than ever those performing R&D with public funding are called upon to clarify the utility of their research. Calls for public accountability are mounting with the increase in constraints on government budgets due to the recent worldwide economic recession, in response to which both policymakers and researchers pay much more attention to rigorously assessing publicly funded R&D. A key issue complicating R&D evaluation in these circumstances is how to adequately account for the nature and degree of risk involved in a given R&D program or project. This study deliberates on certain issues involving the measurement of ex-ante risk in public R&D evaluation: (i) information asymmetry between R&D sponsors and performers, (ii) ambiguity in the measurement of returns in both prospective and retrospective evaluation, and (iii) the dilemma between measurement error and omitted variable bias for empirical estimation of R&D performance. The study then presents an analysis of hypothetical evaluation results that apply risk-relevant weights to the annual evaluation outcomes of South Korea's national R&D programs funded during 2006~2012. In this counterfactual re-evaluation of public R&D program performance, high-risk R&D programs turn out to receive higher evaluation than non-high-risk programs. The current study suggests that R&D evaluation ignoring ex-ante risk is not only conceptually invalid since R&D activities are intrinsically uncertain endeavors, but unfair as R&D performers are asked to be accountable for the results that were in fact out of their reach.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.71-102
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• 2014

This paper examines the possibility of 'parallel reimportation', the reimportation of goods originally produced in the country and exported to another country by profit-pursuing arbitrageurs. The chance of parallel reimportation implies unusually high level of market power of domestic enterprises, and promoting parallel reimportation can be an effective welfare-enhancing, competition-generating policy for the situation. Motivated by the finding, this paper proposes a methodology to measure the welfare effects of parallel reimportation. Specifically, this paper makes use of a structural empirical model to estimate the demand and supply system of Korean automobile market for performing a counterfactual experiment to measure the welfare effects of the parallel reimportation. The results indicates that parallel reimportation can enhance social welfare considerably by increasing consumer surplus and government tax revenue altogether, though it reduces the producer surplus.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.251-272
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• 2012

Recently Professor Lee has suggested the analysis of the indicative conditional based on Sellars-Brandom's inferentialism. In this paper, I raise three questions. First, Professor Lee seems to misunderstand Sellars-Brandom in that he considers only the analytically valid arguments as materially valid inferences. Second, Professor Lee seems to misunderstand Sellars-Brandom in that whereas Sellars-Brandom talks about the common features of all kinds of conditionals including counterfactual conditionals, Professor Lee takes it as the analysis of the indicative conditional only. Third, either Professor Lee's analysis is incompatible with Sellars-Brandom inferentialism or his analysis is too general.