• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.195-210
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• 2020

This study describes the structure of the capital markets for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startup companies in Korea, which is an emerging market that has experienced drastic changes. The overall capital market can be divided into private and public capital markets. In the private capital market, most of the demand for capital comes from non-listed private firms, including startups and SMEs. In the case of SMEs and startups, the KOSDAQ, the Korea New Exchange (KONEX), and primary collateralized bond obligations (P-CBOs) are part of the public capital market. SMEs and startups are generally incapable of raising sufficient capital owing to their low credit ratings, and they largely have limited access to primary markets to issue shares and borrow money. The Korean government has developed a systematic financial aid program to provide funds to these companies. The fund for SMEs has significantly contributed to the development of the venture capital market. Many Korean banks provide substantial lending to SMEs, but this lending is available only because of the Korean government's loan recovery guarantee. Furthermore, SMEs can issue corporate debt in the form of primary collateralized bond obligations through government guarantees, but such debt issuances have placed increasing pressure on public guarantee institutions.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.869-875
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• 2020

As a basic element for sustainable development, the residential housing industry is vital and fundamental for every country in the world. Therefore, this study examines the impacts of financial considerations on house purchase decisions by housing investors in Auckland, New Zealand. 110 completed questionnaires were statistically analyzed. For testing the proposed hypotheses, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used. The results show that house prices, income, and credit accessibility significantly influence housing investors' purchase decisions in a positive direction. It appears that more expensive houses offer more promising returns such that housing investors having higher levels of income and access to loans are brave enough to invest in such houses. This study aims to present the key factors influencing house purchase decisions from the viewpoint of housing investors as fundamental groups of stakeholders in the property market, which is rarely examined in previous studies. The implication of this study is to provide guidelines for housing regulators in New Zealand to develop affordable housing prices through the availability of land banks. This study also offers practical contributions to housing investors, particularly by providing key guidelines to make effective investment decisions.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.111-119
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• 2013

Face recognition has recently become one of the most popular research areas in the fields of computer vision, machine learning, and pattern recognition because it spans numerous applications, such as access control, surveillance, security, credit-card verification, and criminal identification. In this paper, we propose a simple descriptor called an ECSP(Extended Center-Symmetric Pattern) for illumination-robust face recognition. The ECSP operator encodes the texture information of a local face region by emphasizing diagonal components of a previous CS-LBP(Center-Symmetric Local Binary Pattern). Here, the diagonal components are emphasized because facial textures along the diagonal direction contain much more information than those of other directions. The facial texture information of the ECSP operator is then used as the input image of an image covariance-based feature extraction algorithm such as 2D-PCA(Two-Dimensional Principal Component Analysis). Performance evaluation of the proposed approach was carried out using various binary pattern operators and recognition algorithms on the Yale B database. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed approach achieved better recognition accuracy than other approaches, and we confirmed that the proposed approach is effective against illumination variation.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.105-115
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• 2020

The study empirically examines the effects of loan portfolio diversification on bank risk and return in the nascent banking market of Vietnam. Loan portfolio diversification is captured through the Hirschman-Herfindahl index and the Shannon Entropy with sectoral exposures. We access each bank's financial reports to collect the required data, especially the breakdown of sectoral loan portfolios, thus constituting a unique dataset. To compute bank return, we use the traditional accounting indicators, including return-on-assets, return-on-equity, and net-interest margin. For bank risk, we utilize the loan-loss provisions and non-performing loans relative to gross customer loans. Using a sample of 30 commercial banks over the period from 2008 to 2019 and the system generalized method of moments estimator for the dynamic panel, we indicate the downsides of portfolio diversification. Concretely, we observe that all diversification measures exhibit significantly negative signs in all regressions across different bank return proxies. At the same time, the estimates display the significant and positive impact of diversification on the non-performing loan ratio. Hence, sectoral loan portfolio diversification significantly hampers bank performance in both aspects of lower return and higher credit risk. The results are robust across a rich set of bank performance and portfolio diversification measures.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.7
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• pp.519-529
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• 2020

Livelihood capitals have a clear influence on livelihood development. As for the livelihood results, it has been pointed out in the analysis of the poor households that the ability of people to escape poverty depends especially on the access to livelihood capitals. This study aims to analyze the impacts of livelihood capital on poverty among mountain people who depend on forests through human capital, social capital, natural capital, physical capital and financial capital. This research employs the model of binary regression function. Independent variables x1, x2, …, xn are targets of livelihood strategy, vulnerability context, and livelihood capitals. These variables were selected to be included in the original model with dependent variable Y as poor and non-poor households. This study surveys households living in upland areas, near forests, and households of ethnic minorities. The results show that,out of the poor household rate, nearly 4% are newly-poor households or those falling back into poverty. Therefore, the government needs to pay more attention to this disadvantaged group and implements policies such as education and training policies, credit support policies, policies to support forest development, and payment for forest environmental services in the context of emerging countries like Vietnam.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.31-40
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• 2012

Face recognition refers to the process of identifying individuals based on their facial features. It has recently become one of the most popular research areas in the fields of computer vision, machine learning, and pattern recognition because it spans numerous consumer applications, such as access control, surveillance, security, credit-card verification, and criminal identification. However, illumination variation on face generally cause performance degradation of face recognition systems under practical environments. Thus, this paper proposes an novel face recognition system using a fusion approach based on local binary pattern and two-dimensional principal component analysis. To minimize illumination effects, the face image undergoes the local binary pattern operation, and the resultant image are divided into two sub-images. Then, two-dimensional principal component analysis algorithm is separately applied to each sub-images. The individual scores obtained from two sub-images are integrated using a weighted-summation rule, and the fused-score is utilized to classify the unknown user. The performance evaluation of the proposed system was performed using the Yale B database and CMU-PIE database, and the proposed method shows the better recognition results in comparison with existing face recognition techniques.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.643-655
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• 2021

This study investigated the effect of the Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) microfinancing on the economic, social, and household empowerment of women borrowers in Malaysia. The study used a quantitative approach based on primary data. For this study, the participants comprised 384 AIM borrowers from Terengganu, Kelantan, and Pahang in the east coast region of Malaysia. Purposive stratified random sampling was used as well as the Krejcie and Morgan method to count the number of samples. Descriptive statistics and the Women Empowerment Index (WEI) were used in the analysis. The study findings reveal that AIM microfinancing affects the economic, social, and household empowerment of women borrowers in Malaysia. However, in comparing the three categories, women enjoyed more freedom in social and household decision-making than in economic decision-making. The present study recommends policies for the successful and effective operation of microfinance programs by providing the necessary guidelines for the control of AIM loan for women borrowers; increasing income-generating activities, sufficient access of credit, and proper education for the borrowers; and giving economic freedom of choice with necessary skill training policymaking options for the government and NGOs with the aim to improve the total household income and empowerment of the microcredit borrowers in Malaysia.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.10
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• pp.227-234
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• 2022

The proportion of people living in poverty in Soc Trang is comparatively large. 27,154 households in this province are considered to be poor, which represents 8.4 percent of all households. The gap between rural and urban areas, between farmers and other social classes in this province, tends to increase, and the living standard of people in the countryside remains difficult. This paper aims to investigate the determinant factors of poor households' income in rural areas of Soc Trang province, Vietnam. Data from 120 poor households in Vinh Chau district and Ke Sach district of Soc Trang province collected in the year 2019 is employed to test the proposed hypotheses in this study. By applying the descriptive statistical method and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, the results show that the factors of production land, number of income generation activities, access to credit, means of transportation, and means of production positively affect the income per capita of poor household in the study area, whereas household size has a negative impact on the household income per capita. Considering the empirical findings, several solutions and recommendations are proposed to improve the income of poor households in Soc Trang province.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.161-167
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• 2021

Nowadays, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are placed among the key components of the economy in both developed and developing countries. They are internationally known as the driving force based on their enormous contributions to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and generating new employment. They are generally presumed as the leader of environmental sustainability, economic prosperity, and innovation, particularly for the economy of developing countries such as Vietnam. However, SMEs have difficulty in raising capital, as well as access to credit. One of the reasons is that there are inadequacies in accounting information quality in SMEs as well as the provision of accounting information and accounting information confidentiality. The main objective of this study was to identify, evaluate, and measure the attributes of accounting information quality of SMEs in Hanoi. The study was based on a field survey using a semi-structured questionnaire on a sample of 150 accountants. The study has identified and measured six (6) attributes of accounting information quality of SMEs that have great effects on accountants. There is, statistically, no significant difference in the level of accounting information quality of SMEs in Hanoi from these different business areas. There is no, statistically, significant difference in the level of accounting information quality of SMEs in Hanoi between the mentioned three groups of the job description. Based on the findings, some recommendations are given for SMEs to improve accounting information quality.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.191-203
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• 2022

The ecosystem for digital payments in India has expanded quickly during the last decade. A synthesis of technical advancements and progressive governmental laws and regulations has fuelled this expansion. Particularly, the UPI system has assisted India in transitioning from a nation heavily reliant on cash for daily transactions to one with fewer cash transactions. The study attempted to determine how Financial Inclusion (FI) through a socio-techno-ecosystem impacts digital payment systems. FI involves ensuring financial services, products, and an adequate amount of credit without discrimination against the weaker section of society. The study has established that FI impacts the UPI. The finance infrastructure thus helps to develop an ecosystem where financial access and the awareness level help people to transit to new channels of payment. We have used secondary data of 27 banks for sixteen quarters and four years, i.e., for the financial years 2016-17 to 2019-20. It is observed from the current study that the offsite_ATM plays a significant role in the value creation of the UPI. Our study implies that it will help retailers, individuals, and business houses to use UPI platforms for swift payments without hassle. Also helpful for industries that are still not digitally disrupted and industry-specific UPI transactions.