• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.179-204
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• 2022

This study examines the extent to which policy-based loans to SME exporters affect their export performance (the intensive margin of exports). We also investigate the heterogeneous export effects of policy-based loans that may depend on firm- and industry-specific characteristics, such as credit ratings, debt-to-assets ratios, firm size and age. To do so, we conduct a survey, of 1,000 Korean SMEs, that collect information on firm-level exports and policy-based loans. The main empirical findings strongly support that SMEs that receive policy-based loans tend to increase their export volumes. However, these loans' positive impact on exports are only valid for SME exporters with credit scores of 12 or greater (that is, SMEs that have difficulty accessing the external financial market). The estimation results with respect to SMEs' dependence on external financing imply that policy-based loans for SMEs in sectors that are heavily dependent on external finance are effective in that they are instrumental in increasing these firms' exports. These empirical findings emphasize the importance of the external financial market to SME exporters who face various up-front investments that are related to their exporting activities.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.104-111
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• 2014

Due to the structure of advanced installment sales of houses which is a construction industrial structure unique to Korea and the Project Financing (PF) project structure that includes construction companies' debt guarantee agreements, the changes in accounting methods resulting from the introduction of K-IFRSs are expected to act in a direction to deteriorate construction businesses' financial statements. Therefore, K-IFRSs are an important issue that can seriously affect the entire domestic construction industry and construction businesses are conceiving strategies to respond to the introduction of K-IFRSs. From this viewpoint, this study was intended to empirically analyze the effect of the introduction of K-IFRSs on construction businesses utilizing financial data applied with the K-IFRSs recently announced. In the analysis, the EDFs were calculated by business using the existing accounting standards GAAP and using K-IFRSs and the results were compared with each other. The results of the analysis indicated that most construction businesses were adversely affected by the introduction of K-IFRSs. It is also considered that businesses with relatively good financial statements under the existing accounting standards GAAP would be affected more by the introduction of K-IFRSs than other businesses. In addition, the introduction of K-IFRSs is expected to have larger effects on large construction businesses that have been providing debt guarantees for PF projects than on small or medium sized construction businesses.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.699-711
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• 2011

This study is to perform several major analyses to find any differences in the leverage between the pre- and post-period of the currency crisis. Moreover, another aspect is to investigate a financial aspect which has received relatively little attention to the firms and/or industries in the emerging capital markets in comparison to those in the advanced markets. The purpose of this empirical study is to confirm whether or not, it is myth or reality that Korean business conglomerate, chaebol, firms with subsidized financing from government-owned domestic financial institutions in the pre-financial turmoil, may still maintain their higher leverage, even after the crisis. It was found that firms belonging to the chaebol in Korea maintained higher average book-value and market-value based debt ratios, relative to their counterparts not belonging to the chaebol across all of the tested models. There were positive relationships of IND3(=the chemical industry) and Ind5(=the construction industry) to the book-value leverage. This study identified that there were no differences in the explanatory variables included, between the tested models (that is, without and with including the present value of an operating lease) related to each debt ratio. Since the Korean government continue to improve the corporate governance of the domestic firms in terms of accounting transparency and corporate ownership, it would be more efficient, if utilizing this "new" ratio considering an operating lease as an effective measurement of the level of leverage. In terms of the capital structure, it may also be possible for foreign firms to utilize and benefit from the results obtained in this study when operating their new businesses in Korea, given the economic circumstances such as the ongoing progress of the Korea-America FTA or the Korea-China FTA.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.529-538
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• 2011

Recently, one of the critical issues in Korea is the huge debt and future role of Korea Land and Housing Corporation. In this regards, the purpose of this study is to get implications from other public housing agencies in Asian countries such as UR of Japan, HDB of Singapore and HA of Hongkong. The changes of housing policy since 1960s, business and financial structure of housing agencies in each nation are investigated and compared. As a result, some policy directions can be proposed as follows : review of current mass housing program, relaxing qualifications for public rental housing, promotion of urban renewal projects, reinforcing cooperation with private sector and local governments, more government's support to LH's financing and loss from businesses for public interests and re-evaluation of LH's debt. The contribution of this study is that suggestions to improve housing policy and to alleviate financial problem of LH are based on the actual conditions of public housing agencies in Asian countries where the housing policy implementation system is similar to Korea, not on the theoretical basis.

• Korean small business review
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.23-42
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• 2020

In this paper, it is analyzed that the financial factors of successful/unsuccessful companies in restructuring among Korean SMEs. For this purpose, the cases of 494 SMEs that had been subjected to workout programs due to financial distress between 2008-2014 were collected from A bank which is a SME financing bank, and had been subjected to logistic regression and t-test. And the sample cases are categorized into two groups, companies subject to external audit and the others, to provide more reliability. The result suggests; First, in all sample cases of SMEs, those are success factors for workout in connection with smaller total assets, lager sales amount, lower ratio of intangible assets, higher ratio of operating profit, lower ratio of short-term debt, higher ratio of long-term debt, and longer corporation history. Secondly, several factors have different influence on companies subject to external audit and the others. Lastly, the success factors for workout in Korean SMEs turned out to be different from those suggested in previous studies that are focused on large company. Some of the financial factors that led financially distressed firm to a successful restructuring showed the same results as large companies, but some of them were not related to them or even had the inverse influence on SMEs. This implies that SMEs have their distinctive success factors.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.129-138
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• 2014

After global economic crisis, China has become one of the two pillars in the global economies and the country contributing to the Korean economy. Nevertheless, the research on Chinese financial market, particularly capital market, is rare to date. This study examined the growth enterprise market that emergedat the Shenzhen stock exchange and made comparative analysis on before and after listing for the Chinese small and medium sized firms and venture firms. The listing requirements at the Chinese growth enterprise market for the technologically innovative venture firms and fast-growing small and medium sized firms with financing purpose were more alleviated than the main board of Shenzhen stock exchange. Moreover, the listing procedures are simplified as well. Accordingly, many Chinese enterprises tend to list and the competition for listing is also intense. In particular, with the 36 initially listed firms at growth enterprise market as the research target, the investigation for the business performance before and after listing reveals that the three indexes including return on common equity, debt ratio and operating profit growth rate dropped dramatically for most all the firms. That is, the profitability and growth for the venture firms and small and medium sized firms listed on the Chinese growth enterprise market decreased rapidly after going public, only the stability improved due to the great financing. Taking a step forward, this phenomenon may result from the exaggerated reporting for the business performance before listing with the purpose of going public by the venture firms and small and medium sized firms. Thus, Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission should strengthen the accounting evaluation standard and regulation for the listing firms before going public. In addition, strict sanctions should be imposed on the firms with fraudulent accounting to establish healthy capital market.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.157-180
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• 2010

We try to check empirically whether the Korean banks produce valuable information for the firms listed in KOSDAQ. The sample covers 164 KOSDAQ firms which disclosed long-term bank loans for the period of October 2004 and March 2006. The result shows no abnormal stock returns from bank loan disclosures while the bond issuance indicates a negative abnormal return. In addition, when we control the effect of different debt levels of sample firms, we could not find any statistically significant effect of all types of borrowings. Results suggest that bank borrowings do not convey any favorable information on stock return and, as a result, bank loan is just one of several financing tools rather than a special event conveying good news for the firm under asymmetric information situation.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.31-39
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• 2014

Purpose - This study investigates the following two issues. First, we attempt to find the important determinants of housing investment and to identify their significance rank using survey panel data. Recently, the expansion of global uncertainty in the real estate market has directly and indirectly influenced the Korean housing market; households demonstrate a sensitive reaction to changes in that market. Therefore, this study aims to draw conclusions from understanding how the impact of financial strength of the household is related to house investment. Second, we attempt to verify the effectiveness of diverse indices of financial strength such as DTI, LTV, and PIR as measures to monitor the housing market. In the continuous housing market recession after the global crisis, the government places top priority on residence stability. However, the government still imposes forceful restraints on indices of financial strength. We believe this study verifies the utility of these regulations when used in the housing market. Research design, data, and methodology - The data source for this study is the "National Survey of Tax and Benefit" from 2007 (1st) to 2011 (5th) by the Korea Institute of Public Finance. Based on this survey data, we use panel data of 3,838 households that have been surveyed continuously for 5 years. We sort the base variables according to relevance of house investment criteria using the decision tree model (DTM), which is the standard decision-making model for data-mining techniques. The DTM method is known as a powerful methodology to identify contributory variables for predictive power. In addition, we analyze how important explanatory variables and the financial strength index of households affect housing investment with the binary logistic multi-regressive model. Based on the analyses, we conclude that the financial strength index has a significant role in house investment demand. Results - The results of this research are as follows: 1) The determinants of housing investment are age, consumption expenditures, income, total assets, rent deposit, housing price, habits satisfaction, housing scale, number of household members, and debt related to housing. 2) The impact power of these determinants has changed more or less annually due to economic situations and housing market conditions. The level of consumption expenditure and income are the main determinants before 2009; however, the determinants of housing investment changed to indices of the financial strength of households, i.e., DTI, LTV, and PIR, after 2009. 3) Most of all, since 2009, housing loans has been a more important variable than the level of consumption in making housing market decisions. Conclusions - The results of this research show that sound financing of households has a stronger effect on housing investment than reduced consumption expenditures. At the same time, the key indices that must be monitored by the government under economic emergency conditions differ from those requiring monitoring under normal market conditions; therefore, political indices to encourage and promote the housing market must be divided based on market conditions.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.3870-3881
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• 2015

This study examined one of the contemporary issues on debate to identify any significant financial determinants on the cash holdings of the cheabol firms in the Korean domestic capital markets. Several important findings on the financial characteristics affecting the cash holdings were evidenced by utilizing various methodologies for statistical estimations. Financial or managerial implications with discussion were provided for the pronounced factors such as CASHFLOW, MVBV, REINVEST, and AGENCY. Assuming that the chaebol firms were overall subject to the financial constrains, they may increase or stockpile cash reserves as internal capital for future investment opportunities or repayment of existing debt, rather than external financing burdened by a high cost of capital. Given the on-going controversy on the optimal level of corporate cash holdings coupled with any foreseeable capital transfer among the associated nations through the investment vehicles such the FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) or TPP (Trans-Pacific Pacts), any empirical findings of the study may shed new light on identifying financial determinants which may significantly affect the level of cash holdings for the business conglomerates, the 'chaebol' firms, in the Korean capital markets.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.179-190
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• 2019

To alleviate financing difficulties of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the government and municipal governments are providing a variety of SME policy funding programs. This study introduced the policy funding program of Gangwon-do and quantitatively analyzed the financial performance of companies supported by the Gangwon-do SME policy fund in the year 2014. Specifically, we compared the financial ratios for three years, from 2013 to 2015, between funded firms and non-funded firms. In addition, we applied a regression analysis to see if the policy funding program contributed to profitability (the operating profit growth and return on equity), stability (the interest coverage ratio and debt-to-equity ratio), and growth (the asset growth and sales growth) of the funded firms. The empirical results show that the firms that received the policy funds did not show any improvement compared to non-funded firms in terms of profitability, stability, and growth. This suggests that Gangwon-do should improve the policy funding program, that currently provides only an interest amount of 2-4% of the corporate loan principal, without any strategic selection criteria for the target funded firms, and without any follow-up management system, after support.