• Korea Trade Review
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.133-154
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• 2022

The Baltic Capesize Index (BCI), which is used as an indicator for marine transportation of steel raw materials, is one of the key economic indexes for managing the risk of loss due to rapid market fluctuations when steel companies establish business strategies and procuring plans for raw materials. Still, the conditions of supply and demand of steel raw materials has been extremely affected by volatility shocks from drastic events like the financial crisis such as the Lehman Brothers incident and changes in the external environment such as COVID-19. And, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, endeavors to predict the market conditions of the steel raw material is becoming more and more arduous for the deepening uncertainty and increased volatility of BCI, which has been used as a leading indicator of the real economy. This study investigates the correlation between the steel raw material market and the marine transportation market by estimating the spillover effect of information between markets. The vector error correction model (VECM) was used to analyze information transfer based on the correlation between the BCI and crude steel production, capesize fleet supply, raw material price, and cargo volume.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.139-158
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• 2023

Purpose - The study of co-movements between stock markets is a crucial area of finance and has recently received much interest in a variety of studies, especially in international finance. Stock market co-movements are a major phenomenon in financial markets, but they are not necessarily independent of the real market. Several studies support the idea that bilateral trade linkages significantly impact stock market correlations. Motivated by this perspective, this study investigates whether real market integration due to trade agreements brings about financial market integration in terms of stock market co-movement. Design/methodology - Over the 10 free trade agreements (FTAs) signed by the United States, using a dynamic conditional correlations (DCC) multivariate GARCH (MGRACH) model, we empirically measure the degree of integration by finding DCCs between the US market and the partner country's market. We then track how these correlations evolve over time and compare the results before and after trade agreements. Findings - According to the empirical results, there are positive return spillover effects from the US market to eight counterpart equity markets, except Jordan, Morocco, and Singapore. Especially Mexico, Canada, and Chile have large return spillover effects at the 1% significance level. All partner countries of FTAs generally have positive correlations with the US over the entire period, but the size and variance are somewhat different by country. Meanwhile, not all countries that signed trade agreements with the United States showed the same pattern of stock market co-movement after the agreement. Korea, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Singapore show increasing DCC patterns after trade agreements with the US. However, Canada, Australia, Bahrain, Jordan, and Morocco do not show different patterns before and after trade agreements in DCCs. These countries generally have the characteristic of relatively lower or higher co-movements in stock markets with the US before the signing of the FTAs. Originality/value - To our knowledge, few studies have directly examined the linkages between trade agreements and stock markets. Our approach is novel as it considers the problem of conditional heteroscedasticity and visualizes the change of correlations with time variations. Moreover, analyzing several trade agreements based on the United States enables the results of cross-country pairs to be compared. Hence, this study provides information on the degree of stock market integration with countries with which the United States has trade agreements, while simultaneously allowing us to track whether there have been changes in stock market integration patterns before and after trade agreements.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.56
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• pp.57-76
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• 2012

As globalization accelerates and the trade environment rapidly changes, a more prepared trade workforce is required for the business world. The trade department is an important educational institution that educates and trains future trade talent. Thus, in the evolving trade environment, their role has significant implications for the economic growth of Korea. The present paper is a comparative study of the importance of the university education system in terms of the trade work force through the Person-Organization fit (P-O fit) perspective. We observe that the American trade education system is more oriented to meet and reflect the needs from the real world. It contains a support structure through various governmental organizations that offer financial incentives as well as educational opportunities through internships and other hands-on experiences. The trade education systems in universities in Korea are still static by comparison and are recommended to implement changes that will give students more practical exposure to trade. The governmental and business sectors are also encouraged to support universities in achieving these goals through building a strong cooperative network with university trade departments.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.39-55
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• 2016

The rapid expansion of China's trade surplus since the mid-eighties and picking up until the onset of 2008-09 global financial crisis has been a key development in the world economy. While growing trade surplus of China has been viewed with cynicism borne out of an undervalued Yuan and for having being a member of WTO since 2001, many others argue that China's trade surplus reflect changes in China's economic and trade structure and associated shifts in its role within regional and global production chains. We address this issue by analyzing: (i) China's growing and changing trade structure as well as changing structure of trade surplus with the rest of the world, USA, Europe, Japan and rest of Asia, (ii) China's revealed comparative advantage (RCA) with the rest of the world, and (iii) how China's trade policies resulted into a shift in China's trade structure. We find that, not only China has made significant inroads in the world trade since its admission to WTO, but also there has been a noticeable shift in China's trade structure with specialization in high-end technology industries wherein China's exports aided by a well calibrated FDI policy.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.97-115
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• 2012

This paper investigates the relationship between financial markets and output growth for a panel of 27 Asian countries over 1960-2009. It utilizes the recently-developed panel cointegration techniques to test and estimate the long-run equilibrium relationship between real GDP and financial development proxies. Real GDP and financial development variables are found to have unit roots and to be cointegrated, based on various panel unit root tests and panel cointegration tests. We find that there is a statistically significant positive bi-directional cointegrating relationship between financial development and output growth by three distinct methods of panel cointegration estimation. Empirical findings suggest that financial market development promotes output growth and in turn output growth stimulates further financial development.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.21-26
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• 2016

We analyze how firms' global production activities affect their inventory supply and financial performance in regards to its production location. For the analysis, we use information on global production quantities of 3,076 Korean multinational firms that operate business in Europe and Asia through foreign direct investment (FDI) from 2006 to 2013. Our estimation results show that an increase in global production ratio, measured by global production/total production, decreases inventory supply and financial performance of firms that produce in European countries, while it decreases financial performance of firms that produce in Asian countries. Although our results indicate that global production decreases financial performance of firms that produce in Europe and Asia, we find that its negative effects on financial performance are different based on the market demand uncertainty.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.41-53
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• 2019

Building a target capital structure is one of the most important decisions in corporate financial management. The purpose of this article is to identify the determinants of capital structure and adjustment mechanism toward the target leverage. The partial adjustment model was applied on a sample of 306 non-financial companies listed on Vietnam stock exchange market during the period of 2008-2017. By the fixed effect model estimation method, the research results have discovered the factors of growth opportunities, firm size, tangible fixed assets and firm's unique characteristics have a positive effect on the target capital structure of enterprises. Besides, profitability and dividend payment have a negative effect on the target capital structure of enterprises. Accordingly, the research results show that the average adjustment speed toward target leverage of the firms is 90.03%. Research results also demonstrate firms have higher or lower debt ratio than the target debt ratio, capital surplus or capital deficit also have an impact on the adjustment rate toward the target capital structure. The research results are consistent with the Dynamic Trade-off Theory. From this result, this article has provided policy implications for non-financial companies listed on Vietnam's stock market in building a reasonable target capital structure according to operating timeline to maximize enterprise value.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.303-324
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• 2020

The objective of this study is to verify the effect of the market orientation, CEO capacity, and environmental characteristics of overseas markets on the performance of overseas expansion among the success factors of domestic overseas expansion companies. For this purpose, employees of domestic overseas companies based in the Seoul metropolitan area were surveyed, and the hypothesis test was conducted. As a result of the verification, among the contributors to overseas advancement of domestic overseas companies, the factors of CEO capacity, overseas business_education ability, market environment and market size have a significant positive effect on the financial performance of overseas expansion. However, market-oriented factors were found to have no significant effect on the financial performance of overseas expansion. Among the contributors to overseas advancement of domestic overseas companies, the market-oriented factor, the customer-oriented factor, has a significant positive effect on the non-financial performance of overseas expansion. However, factors in CEO competency and environmental characteristics in overseas markets do not have a significant positive effect on the non-financial performance of overseas expansion.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.327-346
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• 2023

In the recent 20 years, the capital flows between Korea and European Union have increased and diversified. In particular, the business cycles of two economies have shown similar patterns since the Global Financial Crisis. This study examines both trends and investigates the roles of finance and trade on business cycle co-movements between two economies. The empirical results show that the business cycles can diverge due to either the common shocks or the country-specific shocks. Furthermore, financial integration increases the business cycle co-movements driven by both the country-specific shocks and the common shocks between two economies.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.14
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• pp.237-256
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• 2000

Electronic commerce has been threatening to address the transaction inefficiencies in international trade that is conducted through letters of credit(L/Cs) and other forms of traditional paper-based financial instruments. The replacement of traditional paper documets with electronic alternatives is becoming more of a relity within a number of business sectors. The conceptual model of electronic L/Cs presented in this paper is intended to provide a framework for discussing the development of a paperless credit. The TradeCard network provides a business-to-business e-commerce infrastructure that enables buyers and sellers to conduct and settle international trade transactions securely over the Internet. Sellers and Buyers should select the best payment methods of traditional L/Cs, electronic L/Cs, TradeCard, Bank Credit Card etc. in consideration of their business circumstances.