• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.49
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• pp.379-405
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• 2011

With the fast growing of international trade and ever-changing trade environment Korea is facing more risks in international trade and they are getting more diverse and happen more frequent with high severity. Big firms of international trade are ready and treat the risks quite well, but small and medium size firms have hard time to manage the risks due to their poor understanding, not much capital to spend, and weak skills of risk management. Holding significant size of international trade of Korea, the small and medium size firms need systematic and integrated risk management and the K-sure(former Korea Export Insurance) can make a significant contribution to help them manage risks in international trade business. This study is proposing the adoption of ERM(Enterprise Risk Management) for international trade business of Korea. Especially for small and medium size firms of international trade, the K-sure may set up integrated risk management system to help them and promote the export growth, which is a great mission of K-sure.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.258-265
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• 2003

In our study, we extracted the market, finance, and government factors determining R&D investment of individual firms in the IT industry in Korea. We collected the financial data of 515 individual firms belonging to IT and non-IT industries between 1980 and 1999 from the Korea Investors Service's database and investigated the empirical relationship between the factors using an ordinary regression model, a fixed effects model, and a random effects model. The main findings of our study are as follows: i) The Herfindahl Index variable representing the degree of market concentration is statistically insignificant in explaining R&D expenditures in the IT manufacturing industry. ii) Assets, which is used as a proxy variable for firm size, have a positive and statistically significant coefficient. These two results suggest that the Schumpeterian Hypothesis may be only partially applied to the IT manufacturing industry in Korea. iii) The dividend variable has a negative value and is statistically significant, indicating that a tendency of high dividends can restrict the internal cash flow for R&D investment. iv) The sales variable representing growth potential shows a positive coefficient. v) The subsidy as a proxy variable for governmental R&D promotion policies is positively correlated with R&D expenditure. This suggests that government policy has played a significant role in promoting R&D activities of IT firms in Korea since 1980. vi) Using a dummy variable, we verified that firms reduced their R&D investments to secure sufficient liquidity under the restructuring pressure during Korea's 1998 and 1999 economic crisis.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.10
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• pp.105-113
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• 2022

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the ratio of non-controlling shareholder interests (minority equity ratio, MER) and the measurement error in real activities manipulation (RM) proxy for Japanese firms. Many Japanese firms have practiced stakeholder-oriented corporate governance systems. Previous studies suggest that the higher the MER, the more Japanese businesses tend to employ management techniques for the group's sales growth while also reallocating resources inside the group to reduce principal-principal conflicts. Such differences in management strategies by firms could lead to measurement error in the RM proxy. The analysis uses 16,450 firm-years listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The results of our analysis show that there is a positive relationship between MER and the RM proxy, and high persistence of RM proxies, suggesting that the RM proxies may contain measurement error. We also find that MER is correlated with variables associated with management strategy and that controlling for these variables can reduce the measurement error of RM proxy in firms with large MER. This study extends previous research on measurement error in RM proxy by relating them to ownership structure and corporate governance. This paper would contribute to researchers examining issues related to RM.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.1159-1191
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• 2017

This study considered technology commercialization as a sort of external R&D of the licensee firm. Then, this study analyzed industrial characteristics of technology commercialization and interactions between internal R&D and technology commercialization from the licensee's viewpoint. Data from NTIS (National science and Technology Information Service) and KED (Korea Enterprise Database) were matched. 7,645 technology commercializations from 1,980 firms were extracted. Afterward, OLS and quantile regression were applied to the extracted data. The impact of technology commercialization on firm growth was concentrated to few high-tech and medium high-tech firms. Technology commercialization was effective in the growth in a year while internal R&D was effective in the growth in two years. The firm size was insiginificant variable. In analysis of 4 selected industries (automobile, electronics, semiconductor, chemistry), the impact was skewed among industries. Though the importance of technology commercialization is widely acknowledged, quantitative analyses like this study are uncommon. Therefore, this study can be useful for the tailored industry solutions for technology commercialization.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.23-38
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• 2022

Purpose - This research intends to find out whether R&D cost stickiness shows differentiated aspects depending on exports in Korea. A cost behavior that indicates a lower rate of costs decrease when sales decrease than the rate of costs increase when sales increase is called cost stickiness. This sticky cost behavior is caused by considering the adjusting costs. This study aims to empirically verify that R&D cost stickiness is greater in export firms than in non-export firms. We also investigate the effect of exports on R&D cost stickiness is nonlinear. Design/methodology - We obtain data for the analysis from Kis-Value and TS2000 from 2012 to 2020. This study tests for R&D cost stickiness of exports using the cost stickiness model developed by Anderson et al. (2003) that is used in a lot of prior literature. To explore the nonlinear behavior of R&D cost stickiness we include a quadratic term of exports in our model. Findings - The results of our analysis are as follows. First, we observed that R&D costs of export firms are more sticky than that of non-export firms. Our result indicated that export firms are less likely to reduce R&D costs in decreasing sales periods in preparation for future sales recovery. Second, our empirical evidence shows that export firms view R&D costs much favorably. However, we hypothesize that the effect of export intensity on R&D costs may not necessarily be linear. Our result shows the effect of exports intensity on R&D stickiness is thus nonlinear, forming a reverse U-shaped curve. When export intensity exceeds a certain threshold, the growth rate of R&D costs appears to be viewed negatively. Firms with relatively high export intensity do not support R&D costs, viewing them as taking away firms' resources from other more productive costs. On the contrary, those with export intensity under the threshold view R&D costs as beneficial and therefore promote further R&D costs when revenue decreases. Originality/value - The results of this research can contribute academically to the expansion of empirical research on R&D cost stickiness. R&D cost stickiness varies by industry. As a result of our research, the managers of export firms recognize the importance of R&D to lead innovation. We expected that this research contributes to further studies on R&D costs and cost stickiness. Second, this research has implications from a business perspectives. Our findings of export firms' R&D stickiness suggest that export firms' managers should consider keeping the stickiness of R&D when revenue decreases because it is essential for exporting firms to maintain their R&D stickiness to secure long-term competitiveness. R&D stickiness can be used on a practical basis to emphasize the need for continuous investment in exporting firms' R&D activities.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.360-375
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• 2019

This paper tries to study the ecosystem after constructing the network of the continuing transactions associated with distribution industry with the data of more than 50 thousands firms provided by the Korean enterprise data (KED) for 2015. After applying the clustering method, one of social network analysis tools, we find the firms in the network grouped into 732 clusters occupying about 80% of whole distribution industry sales in KED data. The firms in a cluster have most of their transactions with other firms in the cluster. But the clusters have smaller firm numbers in the cluster and sales portion of the biggest firms in the industry than the case of the manufacturing industry. The Input-output analysis for the biggest distribution firms show that the small and medium size enterprise(SME)s have very high sale dependency on a main firm in some clusters. This fact implies more efficient fair transaction policies within the clusters. And small number of big distribution firms have very high rear production linkage effects on SMEs or on the 10th or 31th group with high portion of SME employment. They should be considered important in the SME growth and employment policies.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.86-98
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• 2011

Venture capital companies and funds play the following roles: to find small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) which face equity gap but possess high-growth potential, to make equity investment in such SMEs, and to intensively support the invested firms' growth in order to gain the maximum profits from the investment via maximization of the firms' values. This work discusses the issue of how such roles of venture capital can be used in a stable manner within individual non-Capital regions of Korea for fostering the start-up and growth of promising SMEs and thereby advancing local/regional economic development. The principal portion of my discussion deals with Regional Venture Capital Fund(RVCF) of UK and its policy implications for the Korean context. Additionally, the work conceptually explores roles of venture capital and local/regional development, and it empirically examines how such venture capital's functions are recently used for the business start-up and growth in the non-Capital regions of Korea.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.752-762
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• 2009

This paper aims to investigate the characteristics of location and business-services networks of venture firms in Daegu region. The regional venture firms are small scale and consist of mainly R&D investment and license new-technology in the category of soft-ware. Since the mid-1990's the firms that were founded by people with higher education and career experience seek diverse growth strategies. those firms concentrate in some regions of dalseo-gu and buk-gu. There are a few difference by types of firm-business, but, on the whole, the princepal location factors of venture firms are accessibility of research institute and university, easy information availability, and use of moderate land. In regard to networks with client firms, the venture firms determine whether to transfer. The result of the characteristics of networks between regional venture firms and business-service enterprises is as follows; the regional venture firms utilize small number of business-service enterprises and use mainly information processing and other computer operation related services and professional, scientific and technical services. In business-service be used by regional venture firms, the frequency of information processing and other computer operation related services, research and development, business support services is much, while the frequency of professional, scientific and technical services is little. Business-service enterprises are distributed mostly in Daegu region and are used owing to lack of technology and knowledge.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.175-200
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• 2018

Since the 1990s rising intangible asset has become one of the main driving forces of investment stagnation and jobless growth in advanced income countries. We investigate how does the impact of firms' profitability on employment growth depends on the intangibility and whether the relationship between profitability and tangibility has complementarity. With data on Korean firms over the period 1988~2017 we investigate the effects of intangibility and profitability on employment growth based on the econometric approach of system GMM. The empirical results are as follows. (1) the profit rate has gradually led to lower employment growth, while it had positive effect on employment before the period of financial crisis. The estimated values and signs of profit rate coefficients varies from traditional industries to high/medium tech. industries. (2) the effect of increasing asset intangibility ratio on employment growth is negative and statistically significant. (3) the coefficients of interaction term of (profit rate ${\times}$ intangibility ratio) have significant negative values. It means employment effect of profit rate are becoming higher(lower) as intangibility ratio is at the lower(higher) level; profits rate and intangibility are not complement with each other. The results imply that to boost employment industrial policy which has the capacity to coordinate business intangibility is preferred to expansionary demand policy.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.98-123
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• 2002

This study develops a Korean R&D Scoreboard which has originated from the R&D Scoreboard in United Kingdom. The Scoreboard contains details of the R&D investment, sales, growth, profits and employee numbers for Korean companies which are extracted from company annual reports and key ratios calculated, with some movements over time. Companies are classified by the Korea Standard Industrial Classification. The Scoreboard contains 190 companies which consist of 100 largest companies and 30 middle-or small-sized firms listed in Korea Stock Exchange (KSE), and 30 ventures and 30 other firms listed in KOSDAQ. The overall company R&D intensity (R&D as a percentage of sales) is 2.1% compared to the international average of 4.2%. Korea has an unusually large R&D percentage of sales in IT hardware (4.9%) and telecommunication (3.7%). R&D intensity is positively correlated with company performance measures such as profitability, sales growth, productivity and market value. For largest companies listed in KSE and ventures listed in KOSDAQ, the ratio of operating profit to sales is greater for high R&D intensity companies. Sales growth is in proportion to R&D intensity for all companies. Plots of value added per employee or sales per employee vs R&D per employee rise together for the sectors studied, especially for the chemical sectors and automobile sectors, demonstrating a correlation with productivity. The average market value of high R&D companies in the KSE has risen more than 1.6 times that of the KOSPI 200 index. Given the correlation between R&D intensity and company performance and given that R&D is a smaller percentage of surplus (profits plus R&D) than international level (both overall and in several sectors), the challenges facing Korean companies are to maintain the leading position in IT hardware and telecommunication, and to increase the intensity of R&D in many medium-intensive R&D sectors where Korea has an average intensity well below international or US levels.