• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.274-288
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• 2023

While the integration into global value chains has garnered attention as a rural development strategy, less is known about why some integrations are successful while others are not. This study draws on rent theory and on empirical examples from Jinju and Nonsan, the two biggest strawberry production regions in South Korea, to explore the mechanisms of Jinju creating and exclusively retaining monopoly rents from the exports. Based on five months of fieldwork and in-depth interviews with stakeholders, the findings show that a producer-driven chain integration into the overseas markets was possible in Jinju due to the natural barriers to entry based on an exportable variety, as well as the region's climate conditions being suitable to the variety. Moreover, the farmers have attempted to retain the monopoly rents and extra profits from public supports by associating producers. The horizontally associated farmers stabilized their positions by enhancing their bargaining power against exporters, as well as by managing access to the public supports by controlling memberships.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.79-100
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• 2023

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the market power of the Korea Container Shipping Market (Intra Asia, Korea-Europe, and Korea-U.S.) to verify the existence of collusion empirically, and to answer whether the joint actions of liner market participants in Korea have formed market dominance for each route. Precisely, it will be verified through the Lerner index as to whether the regional market of Asia is a monopoly, oligopoly, or perfect competition. Design/methodology - This study used a Lerner index adjusted with elasticity presented in the New Imperial Organization (NEIO) studies. NEIO refers to a series of empirical studies that estimate parameters to judge market power from industrial data. This study uses B-L empirical models by Bresnahan (1982) and Lau (1982). In addition, NEIO research data statistically contain self-regression and stability problems as price and time series data. A dynamic model following Steen and Salvanes' Error Correction Model was used to solve this problem. Findings - The empirical results are as follows. First, λ, representing market power, is nearly zero in all three markets. Second, the Korean shipping market shows low demand elasticity on average. Nevertheless, the markup is low, a characteristic that is difficult to see in other industries. Third, the Korean shipping market generally remains close to perfect competition from 2014 to 2022, but extreme market power appears in a specific period, such as COVID-19. Fourth, there was no market power in the Intra Asia market from 2008 to 2014. Originality/value - Doubts about perfect competition in the liner market continued, but there were few empirical cases. This paper confirmed that the Korea liner market is a perfect competition market. This paper is the first to implement dynamics using ECM and recursive regression to demonstrate market power in the Korean liner market by dividing the shipping market into Deep Sea and Intra Asia separately. It is also the first to prove the most controversial problems in the current shipping industry numerically and academically.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.627-638
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• 2008

With the shift of the electric power industry from a regulated monopoly structure to a competitive market environment, the focus of the transmission expansion planning has been moving from reliability-driven transmission expansion to market-based transmission expansion. In market-based transmission expansion, however, a growing demand for electricity, an increasing number of transmission bottlenecks, and the falling levels of transmission investment have created the need for an incentive to motivate investors. The expectation of profit serves as a motivational factor for market participants to invest in transmission expansion in a competitive market. To promote investment in transmission expansion, there is an increasing need for a systematic method to examine transmission expansion for investment incentives from multiple perspectives. In this paper, the transmission expansion problem in a competitive market environment is formulated from ISO and investors' perspectives. The proposed method uses parametric analysis to analyze benefits for investors to identify the most profitable location and amount for transmission addition. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.55-98
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• 2003

This paper examines the hypothesis that states consolidation and concentration within Korean banking industry have impaired competition and escalated market power of banks. Competition is measured using Bresnahan-Lau method, which estimates a structural model consisting of a demand function and a supply function of banking services, based on aggregate monthly data of January 1996 to December 2002. Estimations indicate that pricing behavior of Korean banks during the period is consistent with perfect competition, and they behave more competitively even after the increase in concentration ratio. The results imply that, contrary to the concerns over the potential for monopoly power, bank competition may not be damaged by the consolidation.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.31
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• pp.113-165
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• 2005

The research focused on the return of class analysis of the media soctor. It is told that class is a determining factor of media industry. This article is divided in to four sections that represent class analysis of media. In this study, I claimed that class analysis is necessary of understanding the nature of media industrial capital and its nature. With their domination of the media, big corporations seek to control political power and information. This article has demonstrated that the media power of corporations should be curved.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1999.07c
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• pp.1101-1103
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• 1999

Deregulation and restructuring of electric industry change the fundamental nature of electric business which will be coordinated by the evolved market structures such as spot market with pool and bilateral transaction structure, forward market and future market. Introduction of competition can significantly change the system operation in near-terms as well as long-run generation expansion planning Previous centralized planning by monopoly utilities which was guided for the public service purpose will be replaced by decentralized investments plan by individual generation companies in response to commercial incentives. This paper reviews WASP model as a centralized planning tool and presents a methodological analysis of generation expansion planning in deregulated power systems. It stresses how affects the process of planning new generation investments by the introduction of competition and how maintains proper fuel mix and continuously sustains system reliability under deregulated environments.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.3-27
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• 2009

This paper measures market power in the Mongolian banking sector using bank level panel data for commercial banks over the period of 1999 - 2006. In the literature, studies on banking competition have largely focused on the banking sectors of developed economies. However, banking competition in developing countries such as Mongolia has been largely neglected. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap. We find that both the monopoly hypothesis and the perfect competition hypothesis are rejected and that the Mongolian banking sector is instead characterized by monopolistic competition. We thus find that the Mongolian banking sector is more competitive than market concentration measures may suggest. We infer that the entries of new banks have strengthened market competitiveness.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.163-202
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• 2020

This paper examines how Japanese society produced and reproduced a distinctively gendered history and memories of the experience of WWII and colonialism in the postwar era. We argue that these gendered narratives, which were embedded in postwar debates about the Peace Constitution and comfort women, have engendered contradictions and made the historical conflicts with neighboring countries challenging to resolve. On the one hand, this deepens conflict, but on the other, it also generates stability in East Asia. After Japan's defeat in WWII, the American Occupation government created the Peace Constitution, which permanently "renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes." The removal of the state's monopoly on violence - the symbol of masculinity - resulted in Japan's feminization. This feminization led to collective forgetting of prewar imperialism and militarism in postwar Japan. While collectively forgetting the wartime history of comfort women within these feminized narratives, the conservative movement to revise the Peace Constitution attempted to recover Japan's masculinity for a new, autonomous role in international politics, as uncertainty in East Asia increased. Ironically, however, this effort strengthened Japan's femininity because it involved forgetting Japan's masculine role in the past. This forgetting has undermined efforts to achieve masculine independence, thus reinforcing dependence on the United States. Recurrent debates about the Peace Constitution and comfort women have influenced how Japanese political elites and intellectual society have constructed distinctive social institutions, imagined foreign relations, and framed contemporary problems, as indicated in their gendered restructuring of history.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.12
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• pp.245-252
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• 2009

The electrical power industry has been recognized as a natural monopoly industry for its technological and industrial characteristics. However, a competitive market system has been introduced to that industry in Europe, North America and Australia to overcome the inefficiencies originated from the monopolistic system for decades. In Korea, the power industry is expected to be placed in a competitive market system within several years after separation and privatization of vertically integrated industry in progress. Hence, there is a need for a research on the increase of customer value in that industry, however, existing studies have little dealt with that problem and there is no research on the price policy to consider churn and retention of customers. Therefore, this study provides a methodology for increasing customer loyalty and lifetime value by presenting the lowest pricing plan which leads to diminishing customers' cost. It is verified through an empirical examination that firms can enhance customer loyalty using a price element in that industry and maximize their profit by finding out customers whose lifetime values would increase.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.47-57
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• 2016

Purpose - This study's purpose is to investigate the market structure of the Korean duty free shop industry that has received recent attention from researchers and practitioners. By raising the question of whether or not the Korean duty free shop industry is unequivocally monopolistic, a wider viewpoint is provided. The study seeks to offer insights and managerial implications for marketers and policy makers who are in charge of regulating major Korean duty free shops. Research design, data, and methodology - The authors use secondary data from various sources, including Korea Customs Service and the Moodie Report, to investigate the structure of the duty free shop industry of Korea. Based on several theories, they present various criteria and statistical evidence such as K-firm concentration ratio, HHI, consumer substitutability, excess profit, and marketing costs. Results - In terms of consumer substitutability, it is difficult to confirm whether or not the Korean duty free shop industry is monopolistic. Notwithstanding monopoly characteristics in terms of market share, neither the company Lotte nor Shilla appear to have market dominating power. It is not easy for either of them to control prices or to achieve a much lower operational profit ratio due to a dominant bargaining power. Moreover, the license is not an economic rent. In this situation, it is not easy for these companies to obtain an excessive profit. Conclusions - Considering that most global duty free shops are trying to go upscale to improve bargaining power, it does not seem likely that rigid regulations are needed in the industry. Even though the Korean duty free industry ostensibly has a monopolistic structure, government and policy-makers should look beyond the surface. They should take global and other reasonable criteria into consideration when they establish or change regulation policies. Thorough understanding and appropriate support are needed for the Korean duty free shop industry. Additionally, duty free shops should position themselves as global companies struggling against unlimited international competition, rather than Korean domestic companies. At the same time, they need to give customers appropriate information about the benefits they provide.