• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.23-44
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• 2022

Purpose - Recent issues such as vessel enlargement, strengthening of environmental regulations, and port smartization are expected to increase costs and intensify competition in the port industry. In the new normal era, when external growth has reached its limit, the efficient operation of ports is becoming indispensable for achieving sustainable growth. This study aims to identify the determinants of inefficiency by examining the cost structure and efficiency of container terminals in Korea and furthermore propose the political implications to derive the maximization of efficiency. Design/methodology - This study estimates the cost function of container terminal operators and identifies the efficiency of container terminals using stochastic cost frontier (SCF) in the first stage. In the second step, the SCF results are compared with the data envelopment analysis (DEA). Last, this paper proposes efficiency determinants on container terminal operation to establish appropriate strategies. Out of the 29 container terminal operators in South Korea, 13 operators participated in the survey. The translog cost function was estimated utilizing a total of 116 observations collected over the 2007-2017 period. Findings - Empirical analysis shows that economies of scale exist in Korea's container ports, which provides a rationale for the government's policy to establish the global terminal operator by integrating small terminal operators to enhance competitiveness. In addition, as a result of the determinants analysis, container throughput, weight of direct employment costs, and labour cost share have positive effects on improving cost efficiency, while inefficiency increases as the length of quay increases. More specifically, cost efficiency improves as the proportion of direct employment costs to outsourcing service costs increases. Originality/value - This study contributes to analyzing the inefficiency factors of container terminals through efficiency analysis with respect to a cost function. In addition, this study proposes the practical and political implications, such as establishing a long-term manpower pool, the application of the hybrid liner terminal system, and the construction of a statistical data system, to improve the cost inefficiency of terminal operators.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.247-254
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• 2014

A study on the superconducting RF linac is underway in order to increase the beam energy up to 1 GeV by extending the Proton Engineering Frontier Project (PEFP) 100-MeV linac. The operating frequency of the PEFP superconducting linac (SCL) is 700 MHz, which is determined by the fact that the frequency of the existing normal conducting linac is 350 MHz. A preliminary study on the beam dynamics showed that two types of cavities with geometrical betas of 0.50 and 0.74 could cover the entire energy range from 100 MeV to 1 GeV. An inductive output tube (IOT) based RF system is under consideration as a high-power RF source for the SCL due to its low operating voltage and high efficiency. As a prototyping activity for a reduced beta cavity, a five-cell cavity with a geometrical beta of 0.42 was designed and fabricated. A vertical test of the prototype cavity at low temperatures was performed to check the performance of the cavity. The design study and the prototyping activity for the PEFP SCL will be presented in this paper.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.256-265
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• 2013

A local map-based exploration algorithm for mobile robots is presented. Segmented frontiers and their relative transformations constitute a tree structure. By the proposed efficient frontier segmentation and a local map management method, a robot can reduce the unknown area and update the local grid map which is assigned to each frontier node. Although this local map-based exploration method uses only local maps and their adjacent node information, mapping completion and efficiency can be greatly improved by merging and updating the frontier nodes. Also, we suggest appropriate graph search exploration methods for corridor and hall environments. The simulation demonstrates that the entire environment can be represented by well-distributed frontier nodes.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.1-14
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• 2017

This study empirically analyzes the impact of inventory management performance on the energy efficiency in Korean petrochemical companies. The concept of the distance function is used to define the energy efficiency and the estimation of the distance function is performed using the stochastic frontier analysis. The inventory turnover is selected as the variable indicating the inventory management performance of the company. The main results of this study are as follows. First, the inventory turnover has a positive impact on energy efficiency. Second, during the period over 2011~2015, while the gap in energy efficiency among the companies expanded, the average energy efficiency decreased. Third, the average energy efficiency in upstream process companies was greater than downstream process companies and the gap in energy efficiency among downstream process companies was greater than upstream process companies. Fourth, the average marginal effect of inventory turnover on energy efficiency increased gradually from 2011 to 2015. Finally, the average marginal effect of inventory turnover in downstream process companies was greater than upstream process companies, and the gap in the marginal effect of inventory turnover among downstream process companies was greater than upstream process companies. These results together imply the importance of inventory management in terms of energy efficiency.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.73-83
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• 2018

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between regional financial development and corporate investment efficiency as well as the relationship between firm-level characteristics and corporate investment efficiency. Using a large sample of A-listed companies in China from CSMAR database between 2003 and 2016, this paper explores corporate investment efficiency and its influencing factors in emerging market on the basis of heterogeneous stochastic frontier model. The results show that: (1) the average investment efficiency of Chinese listed companies is 74.5%, and the investment efficiency of large enterprises, state-owned enterprises and enterprises with relatively high financial development level is significantly higher; (2) compared with average corporate investment efficiency in the year 2003, the investment efficiency of different types of enterprises in 2016 is significantly higher, and the gap is gradually widening; (3) enterprise heterogeneity namely firm size, nature of property right, and institutional environment reflected by the level of regional financial development indirectly affects corporate investment efficiency by influencing the financing constraints and uncertainty. The findings suggest that to improve corporate investment efficiency in emerging market, financial market should be accelerated, regional balance should be restored and the differences among regions, industries and differences between public and private sectors should be eliminated.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.75-97
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• 2012

The purpose of the paper is to estimate the functions of the energy input efficiency and the energy intensity efficiency, and measure their energy efficiencies for the reduction of greenhouse gases focusing on OECD countries. The efficiency of the traditional energy intensity was rarely connected with the energy efficiencies of the stochastic frontier function. It seems that the energy efficiency by the function of energy input efficiency sensitively responds to the order of GDP, capital stock, labor, and energy input quantity as explanatory variables. In the future, we need to reduce energy quantities by the optimal mix of inputs, and pursuit low-carbon economic growth through the production of the goods consuming small energy.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.79-98
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• 2004

Despite its contribution to the Korean medical service industry the question of how efficiently the Korean public hospitals have operated has been unresolved. This study gauges and analyzes the overall efficiency and the Malmquist productivity index in the industry over the period 1992 through 2001. In addition to cost efficiency. we also measure technical, allocative, pure technical and scale efficiencies. Furthermore. the Malmquist index is decomposed into efficiency and frontier changes. We identify several important factors which seem to have strong relationship with various inefficiency estimates. The results indicate that on average the public hospitals has wasted a significant amount of resources and costs over the period. Unlike many other industries, the low level of cost efficiency of the public hospital industry is mainly due to allocative inefficiency rather than technical inefficiency. The Maimquist productivity indices seem both due to the frontier change and efficiency change, but with more effect by the former. The results also indicate that the turnover of hospital beds has played an important role in determining efficiency and productivity of this important industry.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.111-121
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• 2020

The study measures the resource use efficiency of diesel based power generation in the Maldives and analyses factors which influence efficiency levels. Stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) technique is applied to data on 30 plants over two year period from 2016 to 2017. The study finds that technical efficiency scores varies from 0.44 to 0.98 across power plants. About 33 percent of the plants have scores below the mean technical efficiency score of 0.87. Empirical results indicate ownership and use of solar photovoltaic (PV) have an influence on improving efficiency levels. Privately owned power plants in resort islands obtained higher technical efficiency scores compared to public and community owned power plants. This is a significant finding as the first study that used power plants in tourist sector in a comparative study. Size of the power plants was not found significant, but relatively small installed capacities can also be efficient. This finding is important because in many inhabited islands installed capacities remain oversized compared to the load. The benchmarking exercise offers model power plants that are relatively efficient, for other power plants and policy makers in small islands to learn from.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.23-45
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• 2018

The Korean government has provided various policy devices to boost technology transfers between academia and industry since the establishment of the Technology Transfer Promotion Act in 2000. Along with the enactment of the law, the Korean government mandated the establishment of a technology transfer office at national and public universities and encouraged technology transfer activities. Despite the quantitative expansion of technology transfer offices (TTOs), operational inefficiency was brought up. As a supplementary policy, the Korean government implemented a line of projects to support the labor and business expenses of leading TTOs. This research questions whether the project greatly affected the technical efficiency of TTOs. We analyze publicly available university panel data from 2007 to 2015 using a one-step stochastic frontier analysis. The results suggest that the program was marginally effective at shifting the technical efficiency distribution to the right on average, but it failed to maximize its impact by diversifying the policy means based on targets. The marginal effects of the program on technical efficiency differ according to the research capability and size of each school. We also compare technical efficiency against the licensing income at the start and end of the program. Technical efficiency increased for the leading TTOs, and both measures show improvements for unsupported TTOs. Our empirical results imply that diversifying the program for universities with different characteristics may have improved the effectiveness of the policy.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.752-765
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• 2012

We analyze the relation empirically between regional labor market characteristics and job matching efficiency with the adaption of stochastic frontier production function. Our empirical results suggest that, as both the ratio of 50 years-old-job seekers and the level of spatial density increase, job matching efficiencies also rise. In contrast, an increase in the ratio of firms which offer permanent contracts lowers job matching efficiencies. And the job matching efficiency is relatively higher in metropolitan areas. Finally, We find a negative relation between total industrial production and job matching efficiency, which implies that job seekers tend to accept uncongenial jobs in the recessions.