• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.149-172
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• 2009

Service industries nowadays have become the subject of a scientific research. However, unlike research on manufacturing, there has not yet been a broader presentation of important aspects theoretically and methodologically. The importance of service sector in both national and global economies has grown significantly. An active participation of service industries in the internationalization process, notably by licensing and FDI, has occurred over time. But a few sub-sectors still dominate on this process, for example, financial institutions such as banks, securities, and insurance as well as producer services in advertising and accounting. On the other hand, personal services that are owned by small- and medium- sized firm have limited capabilities in their transnational transfer. This paper attempts to examine various factors influencing decisions for these small- and medium- sized Korean beauty firms in entering to the foreign markets. Determining factors for these firms in the engagement of internationalization depends largely on competitive advantages in both domestic and host countries, and they may be different from those in the sub-sectors mentioned above. Based on previous researches, i identified three categories of independent variables(characteristics of firms, managers, and competition) that can influence decisions to enter to the foreign markets. Seven hypotheses have been tested by using a sample of beauty firms in Daegu city and Kyungbuk province. The results show that the intention of these firms to enter to the foreign markets is significantly influenced by the factors of the innovative character of CEO's, the competitiveness of firms, and size of firms.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.75-106
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• 2015

The primary goal of this paper is to explore the microeconomic foundation of Korean firms' adoption of foreign technologies. The paper also reviews the overall trend of international technology transfers to Korea. The period covered in this paper is Korea's high growth era, from the 1960s to the 1990s. The works of this paper center on the two questions of what characterizes foreign technologies which had been imported through licensing contracts, and which driving forces expedite technology adoption by firms. The Korean experience provides the context of success in the catch-up growth. The co-movement of technology imports with capital goods imports manifests Korea's effort to improve the technical efficiency toward the world frontier. Underlying this trend are firms' decisions to adopt new technologies. The paper shows that firms respond proactively to wage increases by adopting newer technologies and thus, in turn, increasing employment, which implies the existence of a virtuous interactive mechanism among these factors.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.406-414
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• 2020

Exporting plays the important role in reducing dependence on the domestic market by creating the new foreign markets. As a business strategy, exporting contributes to the national growth and provides firms with opportunities which enable economies of scale, economies of scope, and experience curve effects. Because of both the growth limitation of the domestic market and development of information technology, many firms enter in foreign markets by increasing exporting. Using firms located in Taegu, this study examined the factors of firms' exporting with industrial organization theory and strategic perspective. In the empirical results on industrial organization theory, systematic cooperation and governmental supporting positively affect firms' exporting and only systematic cooperation positively affects exporting performance. In the empirical results on strategic perspective, product differentiation foreign exporting network, and foreign entry nation positively affect firms' exporting, and foreign exporting network, and foreign entry nation positively affect exporting performance.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.115-130
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• 2019

Purpose - This paper examines the impact of labor market regulations on FDI and the production of foreign firms. Design/methodology - We use an index of employment protection along with data on the FDI and production of foreign affiliates that are provided by the OECD. Findings - The empirical results show that strict employment protection discourages both the production and initial entry of foreign firms, with its impact on production being larger than that on the initial entry decision. The result is robust to various specifications in which instrumental variable estimations are used by applying a unionization rate and a severance pay for redundancy dismissal as instruments, respectively. Therefore, policymakers should not limit their focus to tax incentives, cash grants, and relaxation of market regulations, but they should also extend their attention to labor market deregulation and decreasing non-wage cost to attract more foreign firms into their countries. Originality/value - This paper attempts to answer the question on the impact of employment protection rules on the foreign firm's decisions regarding production as well as initial entry.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.38
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• pp.377-408
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• 2008

Globalization of R&D activities of multinational firms is becoming important in compared with the past, because of increasing globalization of world economy. So, every country tries to attract foreign investment including R&D activities. In this paper, effects of several factors, which determine the scale of foreign subsidiary's R&D activities in local market, are analyzed. Through the review of previous literature, I found that three groups of determinant factors. The first one is the factor which is related to characteristics of local market, such as competitive situation of local market, accessability to research institutions, etc. The second group is the factor which is related to relationship between foreign subsidiary and its mother company. The dominant factors of this group are operation strategy of foreign subsidiary, competitiveness of mother firm, and equity structure of foreign subsidiary. Finally the characteristics of industry affect to the scale of foreign subsidiary's R&D activities. Among these factors, 6 factors are chosen to investigate empirically. For the empirical investigation, 107 foreign subsidiaries among KOITA(Korea Industrial Technology Association)'s list are chosen. Each subsidiary has more than 50% of foreign equity and implement R&D activities in Korea. The results show that sales volume of foreign subsidiary is dominant influencing factor in determining scale of R&D activities in Korean market. And also I found that currently established firms are implementing more R&D activities than old established firms. This is quite interesting finding. However, R&D activities of foreign subsidiary are not vitalized in Korean market. It probably means that Korean government and Korean business partners have to make effort to enhance foreign firms/ R&D activities, because it could contribute technological and economic development of Korean market.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.195-204
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• 2020

The aim of this study is to estimate the impact of ownership structure on the performance of listed firms in transition economy. Buiding upon agency theory, hypotheses on such relationship are proposed. A detailed panel data of 502 non-financial companies listed on Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange and Hanoi Stock Exchange over the period from 2013 to 2018, and the system generalized method of moment estimation are employed to test the proposed hypotheses. To ensure the reliability of data, this study excludes companies that violate information disclosure regulations or that are subject to special supervision by the State Securities Commission of Vietnam. Some firms with inadequate information, firms that lack the financial data required for creating variable or firms that have inconsistent construction are also re-screened. We only collect the data of enterprises that have ownership structure of two or more components. Estimation results reveal that state ownership has an U-shaped relationship with the performance of Vietnamese listed firms, while foreign ownership and the degree of ownership concentration have an inverted U-shaped relationship with listed firms' performance. The article provides governance implications that Vietnamese listed firms should decrease state ownership and foreign ownership to improve firm performance in order to boost investors' confidence.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.19-38
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• 2021

This study aims to analyze the foreign asset leverage effect on Korean oil & gas companies' foreign profits and to maintain the appropriate foreign asset volume for reducing exchange risk. For a long time, large Korean companies, including oil companies, overheld foreign currency liabilities. For this reason, most large companies have been burdened to hedge exchange risk and this excess limit holding deteriorated total profit and reduced foreign currency asset management efficiency. Our paper proceeds in presenting a three-stage analysis considering diversified exchange risk factors through estimation on transformation of foreign transactions a/c including annual trends of foreign asset and industry specifics. We also supplement incomplete the estimation method through a practical hedging case investigation. Our research parts are differentiated on the analyzing four periods considering period-specifics The FER value of the oil firms ranged from -0.3 to +2.3 over the entire period. The results of the FER Value are volatile and irregular; those results do not represent the industry standard comparative index. The Korean oil firms are over the credit limit without accurate prediction and finance high interest rate funds from foreign-owned banks on the basis on a biased relationship. Since the IMF crisis, liabilities of global firms have decreased. Above all, oil firms need to finance a minimum limit without opportunity losses on the demand forecast and prepare for uncertainty in the market. To reduce exchange risk from the over-the-limit position, we must consider factors that affect the corporate exchange risk on the entire business process, including the contract phase.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.127-158
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• 2016

Multinational corporations' overseas R&D activities bring host countries positive effects such as knowledge spillover, technology transfer, job creation and etc. For this reason, many countries have made efforts to attract foreign firms' R&D investment in their national territories. Korean government have also implemented some policy measures to expedite foreign firms operating in Korea to increase R&D activities. However, the firms' R&D investment in Korea has still been unsatisfactory, and only few studies have examined this issue. Therefore, this study attempts to explain the R&D investment of foreign firms operating in Kore, from the perspective Dunning's eclectic paradigm. Utilizing linear regression and Tobit model, this study analyzes the influence of OLI advantages on R&D intensity of foreign firms in Korea. The result shows that locational advantages of Korea (such as revealed technological advantage) had positive influences on foreign firms' R&D intensity. However, the influence of other OLI advantages were different by foreign firms' nationalities. For instance, internalization advantages had influences on R&D intensity, but the directions were different between Japanese and other nationalities. Based on the results, we provided some discussion and attempted to draw implications for Korean government's FDI and R&D policy.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.195-213
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• 2019

This paper investigates the effects of firms' foreign market focus on the optimistic bias of analysts' earnings forecasts. Based on a sample of 852 U.S. manufacturing firms between 1994 and 2015, our empirical results suggest that higher growth of foreign market focus is associated with greater levels of analysts' forecast optimism. Drawing on the CEO career horizon and the upper echelon theory literature, we find evidence that CEOs' career horizon and functional background as a CFO moderates the relationship between the growth rate of foreign market focus and analysts' forecast optimism. This shows that while financial analysts perceive internationalization strategies as signaling growth potential, such perception can vary depending on CEOs' individual characteristics.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.1-29
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• 2009

As foreign investors' share holdings in Korean firms have dramatically increased since 1998 following the financial deregulation on the limit of foreign stock investment, the concern over the negative impacts the foreign investors would bring on the firms' financial policy has been growing too. Foreign investors were perceived to require the firms of excessive payments of cash dividends sometimes with threat of hostile takeover trials detering the firm from investing its cash flow in the physical facilities and RandD eroding their potential growth capabilities. We examine the impact of foreign investment on the firms' dividend policy using 234 listed firms' panel data over the sample periods of 1998 to 2005 employing various panel regression methodology. Foreign shareholders are found not to be related or even negatively related to the payout ratio(dividend/net income), but positively and statistically significantly related to the ratio of cash dividends to book of asset, negatively to the dividend yields. Considering the payout ratio is the most appropriate measure for the dividend payment, we can not support the arguments that the foreign investors' holdings have induced the excessive dividend level in Korean firms.