• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.3-21
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• 1992

By localizing the production of core parts and intermediate goods previously imported from Japan, Korean firms have been striving to increase their market share and profit in the final goods market in which Japanese firms are dominating. Korean producers' efforts, however, have often been thwarted by Japanese suppliers' "strategic" behavior. This competitive strategy involves Japanese exporters supplying parts and intermediate goods at very high prices until Korean firms must locally develop them, and then setting the prices far below the previous level so that the profitability of localization is dramatically reduced, or even means a loss for the Korean manufacturer. This paper intends to explain the strategic behavior of Japanese firms through the concepts of strategic interactions and joint economies. Strategic interactions can be aggressive or accommodating depending on whether competitors are dealing with strategic substitutes or complements. Joint economies exist in multi-stage competition when competition in the previous state favorably influences "profits" of the ensuing stage. Competiton between Korean and Japanese firms (a two-stage game involving production and technology rivalries) can be characterized by joint economies and strategic substitutes: joint economies since technological improvement results in more profits in the production stage; and strategic substitutes since an increase in marginal profits of one firm brings about a decrease in marginal profits of the other in a duopolitic production stage. This implies that the flood of "low price" Japense substitutes is an almost "natural" phenomenon in the context of the duopolistic market described in this paper. In the technology competition stage, on the other hand, technology development and technology transfer can be either strategic complements or substitutes. This implies that, in typical comparative static analyses, the effect of changes in exogenous variables cannot be expected a priori. Thus it becomes very difficult to determine the desirability of applying various policy measures such as countervailing duties, R&D subsidies, and creating demand for localized products. For these reasons, it is indeed likely that the measures suggested as means of circumventing the strategic behavior of Japanese firms (and enhancing technological development of Korean firms) may not work.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.113-122
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• 2001

This study is to examine the effect of layoff on shareholders' wealth. Firms make layoff decisions by reason of cost cutting, lower performance, demand decline, restructuring. Therefore, I think that stock market responds to layoff positively, since the firm's labor productivity and profitability is improved after execution of layoff, I find that layoff variables effect on abnormal return positively in regression analysis. This means that layoff sends positive signal to the stock market for the firm's future performance. Therefore, layoff has a good effect on shareholders' wealth.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.53-61
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• 2008

It is expected that the market of residential facility for retired seniors will be a new investment field for construction firms. This study describes the questionnaire survey analysis results of potential customers' demand for the facility. For comparison purpose, direct construction cost was estimated by estimation experts. In addition, a case analysis was conducted to compare direct cost and indirect project cost with the experts' estimation. According to the questionnaire survey analysis, it is observed that there were significant differences in demand between groups which are classified by the regions, living expenditures, the level of property ownership and the scales of residence. From an investor's perspective, investment decision on residential facility for retired seniors should be made considering bothe the level of returns which can be generated from the investment and the customers' needs.

• IE interfaces
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.280-290
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• 2003

Many firms are trying to optimize their production and distribution functions separately, but possible savings by this approach may be limited. Nowadays, it is more important to analyze these two functions simultaneously by trading off the costs associated with the whole. In this paper, I treat a production and distribution planning problem for single-period inventory products comprised of a single production facility and multiple customers, with the aim of optimally coordinating important and interrelated decisions of production sequencing and vehicle routing. Then, I propose a hybrid genetic algorithm incorporating several local optimization techniques, HGAP, for integrated production-distribution planning. Computational results on test problems show that HGAP is effective and generates substantial cost savings over Hurter and Buer's decoupled planning approach in which vehicle routing is first developed and a production sequence is consequently derived. Especially, HGAP performs better on the problems where customers are dispersed with multi-item demand than on the problems where customers are divided into several zones based on single-item demand.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.29-64
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• 2013

This paper documents the recent changes in wage density and decomposes them. Middle group is found to have shrunk, one-third of which reflects the changes in worker composition. The rest mostly reflects insufficient supply response to the rising skill demand within jobs. The pattern is more pronounced among manufacturing, large and unionized firms, and production workers.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.13
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• pp.141-162
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• 2003

This article discusses the issues of the estimated size and characteristics of irregular employment work force in Korea after IMF economic crisis in 1997. The issues of the estimated size of irregular employment work force originated from different concepts and its operationalizations among the labor economists, despite their utilization of the same labor force data, 'Economically Active Population Survey(EAPA)' collected from Korea National Statistical Office(KNSO). And the issues contribute toward the understandings of the irregular employment and the limits of the EAPA, despite its various usefulness. This article also describes the summary characteristics of irregular employment work force from both sides of labor supply and its demand. The major characteristics of irregular employment work force on the labor supply side appears in the concentration of social minorities, i.e. woman, the aged, lower educated and skilled populations. On the labor demand of irregular employment work force, the majority of it concentrated on the establishments under 10 employees, and probably the important incentives for irregular employment work force of the firms is labor cost efficiency. Finally, this article propose an alternative against the discrimination between the regular and irregular work force.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.217-229
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• 2013

As customers' demands for diversified small-quantity products have been increased, there have been great efforts for a firm to respond to customers' demands flexibly and minimize the cost of inventory at the same time. To achieve that goal, in SCM perspective, many firms have tried to control the inventory efficiently. We present an mathematical model to determine the near optimal (s, S) policy of the supply chain, composed of multi suppliers, a warehouse and multi retailers. (s, S) policy is to order the quantity up to target inventory level when inventory level falls below the reorder point. But it is difficult to analyze inventory level because it is varied with stochastic demand of customers. To reflect stochastic demand of customers in our model, we do the analyses in the following order. First, the analysis of inventory in retailers is done at the mathematical model that we present. Then, the analysis of demand pattern in a warehouse is performed as the inventory of a warehouse is much effected by retailers' order. After that, the analysis of inventory in a warehouse is followed. Finally, the integrated mathematical model is presented. It is not easy to get the solution of the mathematical model, because it includes many stochastic factors. Thus, we get the solutions after the stochastic demand is approximated, then they are verified by the simulations.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.121-148
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• 2018

This paper examines the role of accounting conservatism on investment expenditure for non-financial Korean listed firms around the 2007-2008 global financial crisis using a differences-in-differences design. Specifically, this paper examines the association between an ex ante classification of firms by their level of accounting conservatism prior to the credit crisis and the ex post magnitude of the decline in investment. Consistent with prior literature, this study found that firms experienced a decline in their investment when hit by the financial crisis (Campello et al. 2010). And also this study found that firms with more conservative financial reporting experienced a smaller decline in investment activity following the financial crisis than did firms with less conservative financial reporting. Together, the results suggest that negative shocks to the supply of external finance hampers firm-level investment and that conservative financial reporting can lessen the sensitivity of firms' investment to such negative shocks. Next, this study shows that the magnitude of our findings is greater for firms more likely to suffer from underinvestment (as opposed to overinvestment). Firms that are financially constrained or have greater demand for external finance are more likely to experience underinvestment. Consistent with the predictions, this study finds stronger benefits of conservatism for firms that face relatively greater costs in raising external capital (i.e., financially constrained firms) or that have a relatively greater need to do so (i.e., firms that lack internal financial resources). This study also finds that the role for conservatism is greater in firms with a higher level of information asymmetry, consistent with the notion that conservatism mitigates financing frictions arising from information problems.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.37-56
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• 2016

The purpose of this research is to present the implication for Korean firms' entry into the power market in Myanmar. This study investigated the characteristics of the Myanmar power market and analyzed SWOT, focusing on energy policy, power supply and demand, energy relations with neighboring countries and climate change issue. Opportunity factors are changes in energy strategies, the launch of an energy integration organization, changes in the power energy portfolio, rapid economic and power demand growth, and a clean development mechanism. The threats are high nonfulfillment of a contract, high power loss rates and low electricity distribution rates, increased energy exports to neighboring countries, and vulnerability to climate change. We suggest the use of CHP (Combined Heat and Power), Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and Multilateral Development Bank (MDB).

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.