• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2012.11a
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• pp.143-145
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• 2012

Overseas construction industry has performed the leading role in the economic development. In this study, effect of international oil prices, GDP and price index, on the regional international construction contract amount is compared and analyzed. Overseas construction market received a devastating effect due to the 1997's economic crisis. However, the market has remained stable since 1998, and since 2005, the trend has been a surge in new orders.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.41-70
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• 2005

The object of the study is to examine the change of social-economic structure and poverty-shape to escape poverty. In Korea, the working poor have been increased by flexibility and division of labor market since the economic crisis in 1997, and are faced with hard conditions due to the vulnerable welfare system. Especially the workers who engage in irregular jobs were increased by restructure of labor market. Besides they are in unstable employment terms such as low payment, low-skill and exclusion from welfare-benefit. Many small independent businessmen are also in danger of poverty for enterprises trend to move abroad by globalization. Poverty policy in our country was focused on the absolute poor class that has relation with old age, unemployment, disable, disease etc, so they were the object of welfare policy. The poverties, however, are increasing rapidly after the economic crisis, and they work so hard but are still poor, that is, participation in labor market doesn't become an element to escape poverty. Thus the emergence of new poverties whose core consists of the working poor becomes to need new poverty policy. The study is to survey change of their economic conditions, their welfare conditions, their experiences and responses of social dangers after the economic crisis, then to explore the policy to escape poverty. As the result of the study, it shows that the working poor experienced many kinds of social dangers like unemployment, decrease of income etc. In their welfare conditions as their responses to the social dangers, the benefit of social insurance, enterprise welfare like legal retirement pay and paid leave and private welfare such as private pension and insurance are low. The working poor are faced with social dangers, moreover, they don't have skill or education for adapting themselves to information society. The study says that it needs variable policies for the working poor to escape poverty, and suggests payment & tax policies as stable income policy, occupational discipline and skill-education for promoting the quality of employment, moreover, social insurance as expansion of social welfare policy and housing & education policies whose objects are the working poor.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.75-105
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• 2008

This paper examines the changes over lime in union relative wage effects during the period of 1988 and 2007. The union wage premium was 3.4 percent in average during the last 20 years. It has fallen in the boom years up to the mid-1990s, but has rapidly risen since the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Time series evidence suggests that the union wage premium is counter-cyclical, which means that it responds to economic conditions with a reverse direction. There has been also a fast increase in the unadjusted wage gap relative to regression-adjusted wage gap during the last 10 years in particular, implying favorable changes in the selection of workers into unionized companies.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.25-46
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• 2008

By using data envelopment analysis(DEA) this research measures the efficiency of Korea's five seaports and their Malmquist productivity from 1997 to 2006. Under the assumption of CRS(constant returns to scale) and VRS(various returns to scale), seaports' rankings of efficiency are measured. Busan port is confirmed as a best-performed port in the various measurements. Important finding facts are as follows. 1)Busan, lncheon and Ulsan seaports are efficient ports under the assumption of CRS and VRS. 2)Gwangyang port shows 4.3% lower efficiency level compared with efficient ports. 3)Pohang port shows 27.3% lower efficiency level compared with efficient ports. 4)Average total factor productivity of Korea's five ports has been lower at the rate of 3.1% during the period from 1997 to 2006. Main policy implications are 1)Busan port is more efficient than Gwangyang port, which reflects the difference of economic activities between two regional econmies. 2)During the period 1997-2006, Korea's five largest ports has experienced lower efficiency levels in the first half period because of the 1997 Korean Financial Crisis, but higher efficiency levels in the second half period because of economic recovery. In future research the more and better data will be expected to improve the understanding of Korean seaports' efficiency characteristics.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.119-133
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• 2014

Prior to the 2000s, internal control had not been among the high priority issues in the management's agenda. Since then, however, it has become one of the hottest issues, and has received a significant attention as the means of improving the transparency, sustainability, and competitiveness of a company. The objectives of this paper are to examine if there has been any noticeable changes in the level of internal controls of Korean companies before and after the 2010, and to analyze the underlying drivers and issues thereto. Accounting manipulation and moral hazard were among the factors to cause the Korean financial crisis in 1997 and 2008. Since then, the capital market has had a strong pressure on Korean companies to enhance the transparency of management and accounting while the government has made the laws, requirements, and recommendations to alleviate the moral hazard problems of management and enhance the accounting transparency. Both market and government have driven companies to put more priority on the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance of applicable laws and regulations. Thereby, the market and governmental forces has led companies to enhance the level of internal controls which contribute to the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance The pressure on companies to enhance the level of internal controls may be different across industries. The capital market and government experiencing the severe financial crisis in 1997 and 2008 put even more pressure on financial companies such as banks to upgrade the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance of regulations to the global level than on non-financial companies. A survey is performed on the changes in the level of internal controls of 54 major companies consisting of 10 financial and 44 non-financial companies in Korea. The survey results show that the average level of internal controls of Korean companies has noticeably improved and that the change in the level of control environment factor is higher than that of IT control factor. The analysis on the industry differences shows that financial companies increased the level of control environment factor more than non-financial companies did while non-financial companies upgraded the level of IT control factor more than financial companies did relatively. Among internal control categories, the most improved area since the economic crisis is "Risk Assessment." The global best practices for risk management have been developed primarily in the financial industry and then spread to other industries. The general level of control practices of Korean companies has been improving significantly, but still appears below the global advanced practices.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.193-218
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• 2006

This paper examines the macroeconomic structural differences of the free floating exchange rate regime and the managed float exchange rate regime focusing on the Korean economy, and compares it to the two benchmark economies, Japan and Australia. Korea's shift to the free floating exchange rate regime from the managed float exchange rate regime came after the 1997 economic crisis. Korea's exchange rate policy provides a unique opportunity to study the different behaviors or roles, if any, of managed float and free floating exchange rate regimes. Based on a simple monetary model, we find that the exchange rates of Korea are more sensitive to the economic fundamentals under the free floating regime than under the managed float regime. Impulse response analysis shows that exchange rate pass-through into domestic variables, especially inflation rate, has a bigger short-term impact under the floating regime than under the managed regime. This finding is consistent with the view that the managed (or fixed) regime provides the domestic price stability necessary for the economic growth for the developing countries.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.35-66
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• 2001

This study first attempted to measure the job instability of Korean labor market by exploiting the data sets of 1998 and 1999 Korean Labor Panels. In order to compare the degrees of job instability of Korea with the one of U.S., we followed the same empirical methods used by Jaeger and Stevens(1999), Neumark et al.(1999), Bemhardt et al.(1999) recently published in the Journal of Labor Economics (vol. 17). Our empirical results suggest that the job retention rate of the Korean labor market during the IMF economic crisis was decreased to the level that the U.S. labor market has never experienced during the past two decades. One noticeable point regarding our estimated four year retention rate is that it takes a form of plateau peaked around 9 and 15 tenure year, which is in sharp contrast with the four year retention rate of u.S. showing a monotonically decreasing tendency over tenure periods. The comparison of 2-year retention rates before and after the economic crisis suggests that job stabilities has been conspicuously aggravated especially for cohorts of long tenure, irregular job, old age, service and sales jobs.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.119-135
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• 2018

Currently, Korean firms are making a lot of effort to invest in research and development (R&D) by spending a lot of development costs in order to cope with the 4th industrial revolution. On the other hand, the capital market of Korea, which is the main source of funding, has caused a lot of cost of capital for firms by its reorganization mainly with safe assets in the experience of foreign exchange crisis at the end of 1997, the sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2007 and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Thus, this study empirically analyzed the effect of development expenses on credit rating and firm value. The credit rating was measured by commercial paper(CP) credit rating which is sensitive for investors in terms of risk because it is issued only by the credit of the firms. Firm value was defined as Tobin's Q, which has been widely used in prior studies. The results of the analysis are summarized as follows; Firstly, development expenses did not affect credit rating. Development expenses are recognized as intangible assets for uncertainty of economic benefits and long-term investment. Thus, it seems that there is no effect of development expenses on CP credit rating as CP credit rating is evaluated by short-term credit rating.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2010

Business entrepreneurs reflect their views of domestic and foreign economic activities on their operation for the growth of their business. The decision, forecasting, and planning based on their economic sentiment affect business operation such as production, investment, and hiring and consequently affect condition of national economy. Business survey index(BSI) is compiled to get the information of business entrepreneurs' economic sentiment for the analysis of business condition. BSI has been used as an important variable in the short-term forecasting models for business cycle analysis, especially during the the period of extreme business fluctuations. Recent financial crisis has arised extreme business fluctuations similar to those caused by currency crisis at the end of 1997, and brought back the importance of BSI as a variable for the economic forecasting. In this paper, the meaning of BSI as an economic sentiment index is reviewed and a GUIDE regression tree is constructed to find out the factors which affect on BSI. The result shows that the variables related to the stability of financial market such as kospi index(Korea composite stock price index) and exchange rate as well as manufacturing operation ratio and consumer goods sales are main factors which affect business entrepreneurs' economic sentiment.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.82-103
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• 2007

Neoliberalism can be seen as a path-dependent, hybrid and contradictory project that operates actually (not just ideologically) through intervention of the state that has been not weakened in its strength but different in its strategies, especially through neoliberal policies of remaking urban space. This paper seeks to characterize the development of neoliberalism and urban policies in S. Korea, by examining the trajectory of neoliberalism generated in its contextually specific way since the late 1980s, by illuminating the intersection between new neoliberal programs and the existing developmentalism of the state and changes in spatial policy with its effects, which can be divided into two phases: the first from the late 1980s to the economic crisis in 1997, and the second from the crisis to the present. This paper finally identifies several paths in which the state and the market would be interrelated, and argues that the vision of national development and spatial policy should be welfare(i.e. human)-oriented, not industry(i.e. capital)-oriented.