• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.201-219
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• 2018

This paper suggested a theoretical model, in which a security-based(secured loan, non-secured loan) credit agreement determines the form of corporate cost function through a loaning company's cost minimization in the light of a company which behaves monopolistically in product markets. Also, this paper analyzed the influence of a corporate credit agreement on market equilibrium, and economic welfare in product markets. As a result, it was found that in case a company, whose equity capital is small, implements borrowing based on a secured loan from a financial institution, the company comes to face borrowing restraints, in which the company has no choice but to get a loan within the scope of securities. When a company offers its capital goods, i.e. a production factor, as a security, there occurs a distortion to the production factor input ratio. Meanwhile, when a company comes to get a loan based on an unsecured loan, for which the interest rate is high, marginal cost rises; accordingly, the company comes to choose a credit agreement aiming at maximizing its profits. However, a company's choice of a credit agreement is not quite desirable from a consumer's viewpoint, and from the whole economic point of view; overall, such a choice is likely to aggravate economic welfare.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.301-311
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• 2023

This research aims to identify the role that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can play in achieving the economic goals of the vision of Saudi Arabia 2030. The study relied on descriptive analysis, designing a standard model, and analyzing it using the Eviews9 program. The study also adopted the questionnaire as a tool for data collection. The study area covered Alkharj and Hawtat Bani Tamim governorates. The sample size of the study was 142 participants. The study's results confirmed the existence of a significant impact of changes in independent variables (X1, X2, X3, X4), which are (GDP, non-oil exports, number of employees, and public revenues), respectively. The dependent variable (Y) represents the number of small and medium-sized businesses in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Additionally, it was found that 61.3% of small and medium-sized enterprises in the governorates of Al-Kharj and Hawtat Bani Tamim operate in the commercial sector. Most study participants concur that SMEs significantly lowered the unemployment rate and helped boost the GDP rate in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The obstacles and difficulties facing the establishment of these enterprises were financial problems, marketing problems, and corporate monopoly. Furthermore, most of the small and medium l enterprises faced financing problems.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.273-294
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• 2023

Background: Most developed countries are working to improve their universal health coverage systems. This study investigates regional disparities in unmet healthcare needs and their causes in South Korea. Additionally, it compares the unmet healthcare needs rate in South Korea with that of 33 European countries. Methods: The analysis incorporates information from 13,359 adults aged 19 or older, using data from the Korea Health Panel. The dependent variables encompass the experience of unmet healthcare needs and the three causes of occurrence: "burden of medical expenses," "time constraints," and "lack of care." The primary variable of interest is the region of residence, while control variables encompass 14 socio-demographic, health, and functional characteristics. Multivariable binary logistic regression analysis, accounting for the sampling design, is conducted. Results: The rate of unmet healthcare needs in Korea is 11.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.0%-13.3%), which is approximately 30 times higher than that of Austria (0.4%). The causes of unmet healthcare needs, ranked in descending order, are "lack of care," "time constraints," and "burden of medical expenses." Predictive probabilities for experiencing unmet healthcare needs and each cause differ significantly between regions. For instance, the probability of experiencing unmet healthcare needs due to "lack of care" is approximately 10 times higher in Gangwon-do (13.5%; 95% CI, 13.0%-14.1%) than in Busan (1.3%; 95% CI, 1.3%-1.4%). The probability due to "burden of medical expenses" is approximately 14 times higher in Seoul (4.1%; 95% CI, 3.6%-4.6%) compared to Jeollanam-do (0.3%; 95% CI, 0.2%-0.4%). Conclusion: Amid rapid sociodemographic transitions, South Korea must make significant efforts to alleviate unmet healthcare needs and the associated regional disparities. To effectively achieve this, it is recommended that South Korea involves the National Assembly in healthcare policy-making, while maintaining a centralized financing model and delegating healthcare planning and implementation to regional authorities for their local residents-similar to the approaches of the United Kingdom and France.

• 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.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.41-52
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• 2010

Even though REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are listed on the stock market, REITs have characteristics that allow them to invest in real estate and financing for real estate development. Therefore REITs is related with stock market and construction business and real estate business. Using time-series analysis, this study analyzed REITs in relation to construction businesses, real estate businesses, and the stock market, and derived influence factor of REITs. We used the VAR (vector auto-regression) and the VECM (vector error correction model) for the time-series analysis. This study classified three steps in the analysis. First, we performed the time-series analysis between REITs and construction KOSPI(The Korea composite stock price index) and the result showed that construction KOSPI influenced REITs. Second, we analyzed the relationship between REITs and construction commencement area of the coincident construction composite index, office index and housing price index in real estate business indexes. REITs and the housing price index influence each other, although there is no causal relationship between them. Third, we analyzed the relationship between REITs and the construction permit area of the leading construction composite index. The construction permit area is influenced by REITs, although there is no causal relationship between these two indexes, REITs influenced the stock market and housing price indexes and the construction permit area of the leading composite index in construction businesses, but exerted a relatively small influence in construction starts coincident with the composite office indexes in this study.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.1-30
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• 2003

The recent experience about self-employment shows three main trends: first, its share out of the total workers has steadily increased, recording 37.6% in 2001, implying its prevalence and importance; second, its share out of male workers has caught up female workers', implying its importance to males as well as females; and finally, during the recent Economic Crisis when there was mass layoff and large scale bankruptcy, its share rapidly increased, reflecting its role of a buffer to economic fluctuation. However, there have been few studies on self-employment, mainly focusing on what makes someone choose it as an alternative to being employed. This study analyzes the determinants of the duration to terminate self-employment, by applying the proportional hazard model to the Korea Labor and Income Panel Survey(KLIPS) by the Korea Labor Institute. The KLIPS started the first wave in 1998 with the 5,000 household sample (and about 12,000 individual sample of household members aged 15 and more). In this study, the first four waves are used for analysis. The average duration of 5,357 spells of self-employment is 130 months. It shows slight difference between males(124 months) and females(138 months) while it widely ranges over industries (296 months for agriculture industry while 50 months for restaurant and hotel industry). Estimates of the proportional hazard model of the self-employment duration show that females are more likely to terminate self-employment while it is not statistically significant. The effect of age at starting self-employment on the hazard shows the inverse V-shape, which implies that, until a certain age(47 years), the hazard become higher as aging while, since then, it become lower as aging. The level of education has a positive effect on the hazard, implying that more education is related to the higher probability to be employed. The measures of economic performances, annual sales and earnings, are positively related to continuing self-employment while hardship at the start of self-employment measured by several ways has a negative effect. Training before opening business has a positive effect on keeping on self-employment and its effects are different over its providers, significantly positive for public providers while insignificant for private providers. More and further research on self-employment is urgent in the rapidly ageing society. To help workers to be self-employed, more public assistance is necessary for education, training, financing, marketing, management, and human resource management in order to make the olders consider self-employment as a good alternative rather than an inevitable one.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.29-43
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• 2019

The calibration of microscopic traffic simulation models has received much attention in the simulation field. Although no standard has been established for it, a genetic algorithm (GA) has been widely employed in recent literature because of its high efficiency to find solutions in such optimization problems. However, the performance still falls short in simulation analyses to support fast decision making. This paper proposes a new calibration procedure using a dual GA and central composite design (CCD) in order to improve the efficiency. The calibration exercise goes through three major sequential steps: (1) experimental design using CCD for a quadratic response surface model (RSM) estimation, (2) 1st GA procedure using the RSM with CCD to find a near-optimal initial population for a next step, and (3) 2nd GA procedure to find a final solution. The proposed method was applied in calibrating the Gipps car-following model with respect to maximizing the likelihood of a spacing distribution between a lead and following vehicle. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, a conventional calibration approach using a single GA was compared under both simulated and real vehicle trajectory data. It was found that the proposed approach enhances the optimization speed by starting to search from an initial population that is closer to the optimum than that of the other approach. This result implies the proposed approach has benefits for a large-scale traffic network simulation analysis. This method can be extended to other optimization tasks using GA in transportation studies.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.33-57
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• 2020

Although cryptocurrency which can promote innovation in the blockchain ecosystem is published for many useful purposes, in Korea, cryptocurrency is recognized only as a means of investment for the profit. The fact emphasizes only the speculative nature of the cryptocurrency, so investor negates the fundamental purpose of cryptocurrency and hinders innovation in the blockchain ecosystem. The purpose of this study is to investigate the cause of cryptocurrency perception and speculative behavior of domestic cryptocurrency investors from an academic perspective. We use a model that reflects the traditional considerations and cryptocurrency's characteristics in investment. Using the model, we can explain the cause of misperception of cryptocurrency through the theory of bounded rationality. In building the research model, we use variables of venture and angel investor's consideration used in investment decisions and collect the keywords from indexes of whitepaper to reflect the properties of cryptocurrency. This study mentions that, due to the imitations presented by Simon, individuals are forced to perceive cryptocurrency as a means of speculation and to make irrational decisions that impair ecosystem health. We analyze whether there is a significant difference in rationality in decision made by the sample under limited knowledge and imperfect information constraints. As a result, imperfect information constraints led investors to consider only irrational criteria in decision making. From this result, this study suggests that information asymmetry needs to be relaxed so that investment can be pursued together with rational investment and development of blockchain ecosystem. In addition, the industry can capture strategic insights for successful financing through ICO by enabling better understanding of investor decision-making.

• 한국벤처창업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.83-112
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• 2008

In this study, the effects of the founder's characteristics on venture's business success factors for pet business was investigated focused on the pet hospitals. The effects of the founder's background and psychological characteristics, the business start-up preparing procedure characteristics, and service factor characteristics for customers on the business performance was analyzed by classifying it into financial business performance and non-financial business performance for the he pet hospitals. The questionnaire survey for 150 pet hospitals located in Seoul and Gyunggi-do area was performed, and the main conclusions was drawn as follows. First, as a result of research model analysis for financial business performance among the business performance, it was analyzed that the founder's academic background factor among the founder's background factors had a statistically significantly negative Influence on the financial business performance, on the contrary, the control locus factor among the founder's psychological factors, and the financing factor among the business start-up preparing procedure factors had a statistically significantly positive influence on the financial business performance. Second, as a result of research model analysis for non-financial business performance among the business performance, it was analyzed that the danger acceptance propensity factor among the business start-up preparing procedure factors and the intangible service quality factor among the service quality factors had a statistically significantly positive influence on the non-financial business performance.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.103-121
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• 2017

The domestic ESCO project was introduced in 1992 as one of the energy efficiency improvement programs. In recent energy market, the changes in the market conditions such as smart grid, renewable energy, and the importance of demand response became important issues. As the diversified business models are required, examples of overseas exercises are examined. Business areas in Europe or the US where the ESCO industry has been active include measures to improve the efficiency of energy facilities in all areas, ranging from energy supply facilities and energy services to end users. This type of ESCO overseas business model can be classified into various types such as project execution method, supplier demand management, financing method, climate change and emission rights, new and renewable energy, and other criteria. In this study, we propose to adopt IEC (Integrated Energy Contracting) contract method in domestic ESCO market for additional business models. Current convention of listing the specific individual business types being allowed by regulation turned out to be obstacles to the revitalization of the related market. In order to achieve the goal of energy conservation, it is recommended, instead, to revise the current funding guidelines to be a negative system.