Corruption in China became increasingly serious during the early period of its social transition, resulting in severe economic losses and huge challenges to China's government institution, as well as gradually becoming socially widespread. Recently. China's political corruption is an outcome of the attenuated political control, which has been caused by a systemic change from planned economy to market economy since 1978, and the lack of institutionalization to relieve such transition. Besides, the immature market system and state's intervention in the economy are other factors for the corruption. In short, current China's corruption can be regarded as a structuralized phenomenon. This article identified such circumstance by analyzing the scope, degree, and scale of the corruption. Overall assessment of the some factors suggests that present economic modernization is a principal cause for Chinese corruption while the other factors-monopoly power system in the Chinese Communist Party and the transformation of connection-are important but secondary.
Research on democratic transitions has relatively ignored the question of why some countries experience a regressive form of political pacts, while others do not. This paper develops a simple game-theoretic model to explain the phenomenon of collusive pacts in the process of democratization. Trasformismo is a term that refers to a system of political exchange based on informal clientelistic politics. The existing studies of the politics of trasformismo have emphasized the timing of industrialization and the tradition of strong state as conditions of the politics of trasformismo. However, not every late industrializers and not every strong states experienced some variants of collusive political pacts in their trajectories of democratization. In this paper, I contend that the politics of trasformismo is rather a generalizable pattern of political elites' behavior under particular circumstances. By developing a simple game theoretic model, this paper suggests the conditions under which political actors are likely to collude to a regressive form of political pacts. The model shows that the likelihood of collusion to a regressive form of political pacts is a function of a set of parameters. First, a higher level of incumbency advantage in electoral competition is likely to be associated with a higher probability of collusive political pacts. Second, a higher degree of the monopoly of political representation of political parties without a close link with a variety of societal forces is likely to induce collusive behavior among politicians. Third, the ruling party leader's expectations about the likelihood of a safe extrication are related to collusive political pacts. This paper then engages in a case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea. The 1990 Korean case is interesting in that the ruling party created a new party after having merged with two opposition parties. This case can be considered a result of political maneuver in a context of democratization. The case study suggests the empirical relevance of the game-theoretic model. As the game of trasformismo and the case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea have shown, the collusive political pact was neither determined by a certain stage of economic development nor by a particular cultural systems. Rather, it was a product of the art of trasformismo based on party leaders' rational calculations of the expected likelihood of taking governing power.
This study analyzes the determinants of wage premium, defined as the excess of actual wage rate over opportunity wage, for the average worker in a Korean bargaining unit. Average wage premium of a firm is decomposed into quasi-rent per worker and rent-sharing rule. Per capita quasi-rent, representing a firm's ability to pay, is defined as the difference between sales revenue and the opportunity cost of mobile factors, divided by the number of employees. Rent-sharing rule, a measure of workers' bargaining power, is defined as the average wage premium divided by the per capita quasi-rent. Empirical results show that the differences in wage premium among Korean bargaining units are much better explained by the differences in quasi-rent than by the differences in bargaining power. Also, comparing the results of 1986 with those of 1988 show that the wage settlement mechanism in 1988 was not quite different from that of 1986, in spite of the drastic change in industrial relation system in 1987. It may simply yield higher opportunity wages, by raising the bargaining power of overall workers. The tendency of Korean labor market in 1988 to show a dual structure of high & low wage premium sectors, is not due to the fact that the differences in bargaing powers across firms tend to expand, but to the fact that unions tend to reduce the wage differences among the workers within an enterprise by pursuing more equal distribution of total wage premium. Hence, the policies for reducing the wage differentials across firms should focus on rent-regulating industrial policies, e.g. eliminating monopoly rents by deregulation.
This paper performs a historical analysis on the various factors contributing to the current carbon lock-in of Korean electricity industry by using techo-institutional complex. The possibilities of the industry's carbon lock-out toward more sustainable development are also investigated. It turns out that market, firm, consumer, and government factors are all responsible for the development of the carbon lock-in of Korean power industry; the Korean government consistently favoring large power plants based on the economy of scale; below-cost electricity tariff; inflation policy to suppress increases in power price; rapid demand growth in summer and winter seasons; rigidities of electricity tariff; and expansion of gas-fired and imported coal-fired large power plants. On the other hand, except for nuclear power generation and smart grid, environment laws and new and renewable energy laws are the other remaining factors contributing to the carbon lock-out. Considering three key points that Korea is an export-oriented economy, the generation mix is the most critical factor to decide the amounts of carbon emission in the power industry, and the share of industry and commercial power consumption is over 85%, it is unlikely that Korea will achieve the carbon lock-out of power industry in the near future. Therefore, there are needs for more integrated approaches from market, firm, consumer, and government all together in order to achieve the carbon lock-out in the electricity industry. Firstly, from the market perspective, it is necessary to persue more active new and renewable energy penetration and to guarantee consumer choices by mitigating the incumbent's monopoly power as in the OECD countries. Secondly, from the firm perspective, the promotion of distributed energy system is urgent, which includes new and renewable resources and demand resources. Thirdly, from the consumer perspective, more green choices in the power tariff and customer awareness on the carbon lock-out are needed. Lastly, the government shall urgently improve power planning frameworks to include the various externalities that were not properly reflected in the past such as environmental and social conflict costs.
Internet commerce has been growing at a rapid pace for the last decade. Many firms try to reach wider consumer markets by adding the Internet channel to the existing traditional channels. Despite the various benefits of the Internet channel, a significant number of firms failed in managing the new type of channel. Previous studies could not cleary explain these conflicting results associated with the Internet channel. One of the major reasons is most of the previous studies conducted analyses under a specific market condition and claimed that as the impact of Internet channel introduction. Therefore, their results are strongly influenced by the specific market settings. However, firms face various market conditions in the real worlddensity and disutility of using the Internet. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various market environments on a firm's optimal channel strategy by employing a flexible game theory model. We capture various market conditions with consumer density and disutility of using the Internet.
shows the channel structures analyzed in this study. Before the Internet channel is introduced, a monopoly manufacturer sells its products through an independent physical store. From this structure, the manufacturer could introduce its own Internet channel (MI). The independent physical store could also introduce its own Internet channel and coordinate it with the existing physical store (RI). An independent Internet retailer such as Amazon could enter this market (II). In this case, two types of independent retailers compete with each other. In this model, consumers are uniformly distributed on the two dimensional space. Consumer heterogeneity is captured by a consumer's geographical location (ci) and his disutility of using the Internet channel (${\delta}_{N_i}$).
shows various market conditions captured by the two consumer heterogeneities.
(a) illustrates a market with symmetric consumer distributions. The model captures explicitly the asymmetric distributions of consumer disutility in a market as well. In a market like that is represented in
(c), the average consumer disutility of using an Internet store is relatively smaller than that of using a physical store. For example, this case represents the market in which 1) the product is suitable for Internet transactions (e.g., books) or 2) the level of E-Commerce readiness is high such as in Denmark or Finland. On the other hand, the average consumer disutility when using an Internet store is relatively greater than that of using a physical store in a market like (b). Countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria, or the market for "experience goods" such as shoes, could be examples of this market condition.
summarizes the various scenarios of consumer distributions analyzed in this study. The range for disutility of using the Internet (${\delta}_{N_i}$) is held constant, while the range of consumer distribution (${\chi}_i$) varies from -25 to 25, from -50 to 50, from -100 to 100, from -150 to 150, and from -200 to 200.
summarizes the analysis results. As the average travel cost in a market decreases while the average disutility of Internet use remains the same, average retail price, total quantity sold, physical store profit, monopoly manufacturer profit, and thus, total channel profit increase. On the other hand, the quantity sold through the Internet and the profit of the Internet store decrease with a decreasing average travel cost relative to the average disutility of Internet use. We find that a channel that has an advantage over the other kind of channel serves a larger portion of the market. In a market with a high average travel cost, in which the Internet store has a relative advantage over the physical store, for example, the Internet store becomes a mass-retailer serving a larger portion of the market. This result implies that the Internet becomes a more significant distribution channel in those markets characterized by greater geographical dispersion of buyers, or as consumers become more proficient in Internet usage. The results indicate that the degree of price discrimination also varies depending on the distribution of consumer disutility in a market. The manufacturer in a market in which the average travel cost is higher than the average disutility of using the Internet has a stronger incentive for price discrimination than the manufacturer in a market where the average travel cost is relatively lower. We also find that the manufacturer has a stronger incentive to maintain a high price level when the average travel cost in a market is relatively low. Additionally, the retail competition effect due to Internet channel introduction strengthens as average travel cost in a market decreases. This result indicates that a manufacturer's channel power relative to that of the independent physical retailer becomes stronger with a decreasing average travel cost. This implication is counter-intuitive, because it is widely believed that the negative impact of Internet channel introduction on a competing physical retailer is more significant in a market like Russia, where consumers are more geographically dispersed, than in a market like Hong Kong, that has a condensed geographic distribution of consumers.