• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.1-16
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• 2019

Purpose - This research empirically proves that global shipbuilding industry leadership has moved to China from Korea. Design/Methodology - Competitiveness is measured by AHP for the weights of comprehensive competitiveness, which is the output mixture of three attributive factors: shipbuilding technology, shipbuilding contract price, and export credit. Findings - China is far ahead of Korea for standard vessels such as bulkers and containerships with competitiveness weights of 0.762 and 0.612, respectively, against 0.238 and 0.388 of Korea. Korea is maintaining its competitiveness only in LNG carriers (174k CBM) with a competitiveness weight 0.621. China and Korea have similar competitiveness for chemical carriers, complex vessels with a small hull size. The sources of Chinese competitiveness are shipbuilding contract price and export credit. With the majority share of standard vessel types in the world fleet, China will hold a bigger market share than Korea in the global shipbuilding industry in the forthcoming years. Implications - The swing factors of market power are shipbuilding technology and contract price. If China fails to further develop shipbuilding technology for shipowners worried about the reliability of the Chinese-built vessels, shipowners may swing back to Korea. The rising Chinese labor cost will expedite this swing in the forthcoming competition. Originality/value - To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first paper that quantitatively examines the competitiveness of shipbuilding between China and Korea by comparing attributive factors for competitiveness.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.283-304
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• 2008

According to globalization and localization of world economics international trade payment method was also changed. A traditional payment was Letter of Credit basis, however it is being increased to various methods such as remittance, documentary collection(D/P, D/A) and open account. In order to acquire a secure export payment, exporters prefer to L/C basis which is guaranteed by a reliable bank. However, the L/C should bear a security so that importers would rather documentary collection than L/C. The reasons for the preference of collection payment rather than L/C are a low commission cost, the conversion of buyer's market from seller's market due to severe competition in the world market, transaction increase between main office and branches and a right to control the goods until executing the payment by exporters. Besides of them, collection payment can handle safer and faster than open account basis. However, the collection payment has a risk which it isn't guaranteed by bank for the payment so that I would suggest countermeasures to minimize the payment risk utilizing the collection basis as follows; using export credit insurance system, a large domestic credit report provider such as D&B for absolutely fresh and new information, a collection proxy service for overseas deferred credit and suggestion specifying to order B/L not straight one on consignee in order to transfer the right of ownership with endorsement without problem.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.395-423
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• 2014

This study examines the role of trade finance in the trade collapse of 2008-09 from the perspective of the Korean economy. We use two approaches. Firstly, as background to a more formal analysis, we make a casual observation on the behavior of aggregate data on trade finance, on which Korea has relatively abundant data. Aggregate data do not convincingly support the view that trade finance played an active role in causing the trade collapse. The measures of trade finance and the value of trade both dropped sharply, but the ratio of trade finance over trade was stable and in some cases increased during the crisis period. Secondly, using quarterly data on listed firms in Korea, we conduct panel estimations to test whether firms that are more dependent on external finance experienced greater export contraction during the crisis. Our regression analysis suggests that the financial vulnerability of firms, measured by various financial ratios, did not contribute to export contraction during the financial crisis. This observation largely applies even to smaller firms, who are usually thought of as being more vulnerable financially. However, we find that small exporters that relied heavily on cross-border trade payables or receivables suffered larger drops in export growth during the crisis.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.50
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• pp.215-250
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• 2011

Korean won overseas construction projects worth 71.6 billion US Dollars in 2010, which exceeded that of 2009 by 45.6%. An overseas construction project is a transaction of large scale, long term project, many parties participating, deferred payment, and of high-technology. It contributes to foreign currency earning, and also leads the nation's export restructuring work towards high value-added one. There are various kinds of risks towards the relevant parties respectively, which are key elements in successfully performing the overseas construction project. There are completion risk, financing risk, operating risk, revenue risk etc, in an employer's place. A contractor may be confronted with payment risk, issuance risk of performance bond, financing risk, performance risk of sub-contractors, and exchange rate risk. In lenders place there are repayment risk, completion risk, and political risk in the host country. In order to mitigate risks, the parties shall take relevant measures or require relevant securities. A contractor needs to evaluate the credibility of an employer in respect of payment risk, and can also request export insurance cover by the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation(the former 'Korea Export Insurance Corporation"). An employer can require a contractor to provide performance bond in respect of completion risk, and employ a well-known first class bank as a mandated arranger to arrange financing with regard to completion risk. Lenders needs to evaluate the credibility of an employer and accomplish feasibility study of the project. Lenders can request insurance cover from export credit agency. Once the parties assess the respective risks and obtain relevant securities, the project will be successfully completed. The success of the project will be sure to bring the parties involved enormous profits and another opportunity to participate in overseas construction project afterwards.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.47-55
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• 2020

Purpose: The issue of access to credit for private enterprises has been given an increased amount of attention given their crucial role in fueling economic growth. Vietnamese small and medium-sized businesses, however, face many obstacles in accessing financing for profitable investment opportunities, with up to 70% unable to access or obtain bank loans. This paper aims to address the factors affecting the credit accessibility of Vietnamese enterprises, and provide further insights of this issue under the new context of Basel II. Research design, data and methodology: We adopt a pooled sections approach to construct a sample of 155 firm observations before and after the implementation of Basel II accord in Vietnam and employing binary logistic regression and interaction terms for data analysis. Results: We find that firm characteristics (export participation, female ownership) and proxies for bank-borrower relationship (deposit, overdraft facility) have significant and positive effects on firm's access to credit. Notably, the sign of interaction coefficient shows that the implementation of Basel II tends to benefit small-sized firms in terms of credit accessibility. Conclusions: The finding further emphasizes the important role of relationship lending in Vietnam's credit market, which is even more critical for small firms when Basel II is universally applied as the new banking standards in the coming years.

• The Journal of Information Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.159-176
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• 2005

The Purpose of this Article is to analyze the special settlement and electronic settlement system in the international trade. First, Factoring is a fast, easy and flexible way to improve a company's cash flow and generate working capital for the company. Factoring can be short-term or part of an ongoing financing program. New companies can benefit as well, since there is no requirement for a long-term credit history. Second, Forfaiting is a method of trade financing that allows exporters to obtain cash and be free of all risks by selling their medium term receivables on a 'without recourse' basis. Forfaiting can be an alternative to export credit or insurance cover, especially for those transactions in which the export credit agency is not open to a particular country and/or bank. Third, The Bolero System is jointly financed by SWIFT(Society for World International Financial Telecommunications) which handles most of the electronic funds transfer for banks, and the Through Transport Mutual Assurance Association(the TT Club), a mutual insurance association most of whose members are drawn from the Multimodal transport industry or transport intermediaries. Fourth, TradeCard is a payment and settlement system that is an alternative to letters of crdeit. That is, TradeCard is a business-to-business e-commerce infrastructure that enables buyers and sellers to conduct and settle international trade transactions securely over the Internet.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.99-119
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• 2006

The recent trend in the payment terms of international trade shows the gradual shift toward more diversified payment methods (from L/C to not L/C) in order to cope with the increasingly dynamic international transactions in a more flexible manner. The reasons behind this recent shift are as follows : first, the global trade market is breaking away from the traditional L/C methods based on letters of credit toward a not L/C methods. nother reason for the changing trade payment methods is the increasing volume of intra transactions between headquarters and their foreign subsidiaries based on collection payment methods. Having mentioned the above problems that impede the Korean export insurance system, some suggestions can be put forward through a comparative analysis with foreign export insurance system. First, inducing private investments is one way of strengthening financial health of the KEIC. The KEIC also needs to diversify its insurance coverage adapting to the changing international trade environments.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.87-103
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• 2019

L/C(Letter of Credit) is a common payment term designed to prevent credit risk in international trade. However, most companies prefer T/T (Telegraphic Transfer) payment due to its time and cost efficiency. According to related statistics, more than 70% of international trade contracts are based on T/T rather than other payment terms. The time required from the export negotiation to the completion of the export transaction and collection in international trade is very long. In this process, disputes related to settlement are continuous, so caution should be exercised. Therefore, whether or not the export payment is recovered in a timely manner is the core issue of trade transactions for exporters. The purpose of this study is to identify problems that cause delayed payments during settlement by the remittance (T/T) method, which can lead to settlement risk, in order to investigate those factors which can lead to delays in payments and increased risk as well as to determine ways to prevent such factors in advance. According to empirical findings, trading experience, transaction duration, and contract contents can be important determinants in terms of payment delays. Industry uniqueness and market uncertainty were found to be in opposition to the hypothesized relationships. The results of this study will be useful for trading companies to reduce their payment risk.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.11-20
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• 2016

This study examines the possibility of implementing the technology financing for export-import based small and medium sized enterprises. Our sample consists of 2,753 small and medium sized enterprises, receiving financial support from the Export-Import Bank of Korea for the period of 2011-2013. We find that only 400(200) firms reserve IPs(patents) annually. Given that IPs are likely to concentrate on manufacturer industries such as electronic components, computers, video, sound and communication equipment manufacturing(KSIC 26), other machinery and equipment manufacturing(KSIC 29), manufacture of motor vehicles and trailers(KSIC 31). We also find that the total assets, sales and R&D expenses of IP holding companies greatly exceeds those of companies without IPs. In addition, IP holding companies' liquidity seems slight edge and the leverage ratio is somewhat lower. However, profitability ratios of IP holding companies are rather than harsh or similar level. 20~30% of IP holding firms show very week credit scores, implying that banks' default risk is expected to be significant.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.63-82
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• 2022

Purpose - Drawing on relational institutional theory, we explored how demographic similarity between board members of a firm and newly emerged political elites led to firms' increased financial resource acquisition such as leverage ratio and decreased export intensity amidst the Asian financial crisis. We also studied how a firm's leverage ratio and export intensity can further affect firm profitability and financial credit rating. Design/methodology - We revisited and explored a unique, unprecedented crisis that affected most Korean firms: the Asian financial crisis that coincided with a governmental shift from a conservative to a liberal party. We collected demographic information from 432 listed Korean firms' board members and 43 political elites of the Blue House from 1998-2000 to create a demographic similarity measurement. We collected firms' financial information, built panel data, and used ordinary least squares regression to test our theory. Findings - Our results showed that demographic similarity between a firm's directors and newly emerged politicians had a positive association with a firm's leverage ratio but a negative association with a firm's export intensity. A firm's leverage ratio had a negative relationship with firm performance measured by firm profitability and financial credit rating. A firm's export intensity showed a positive effect on firm performance. Originality/value - We highlighted that during an economic crisis that coincided with a governmental shift and change of leading political actors, firms exerted efforts to survey the environment and build new external stakeholder relationships to cope with the changing landscape. We proposed that in an emerging market like Korea where low levels of trust and favoritism are prevalent across society, one of the relational institutional strategies that firms can employ is the selection of directors with similar demographic characteristics to political elites based on factors including birthplace and school affiliations. We examined the efforts of firms to build political networks with newly empowered political elites during a financial crisis, and the consequences of establishing such networks. We highlighted that during a financial crisis, the demographic similarity between a firm's board members and newly emerged politicians can provide firms with access to financial resources but can also result in poor management and reduced effort to enhance its international competitiveness.