• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.113-132
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• 2003

Using nonradial data envelopment analysis(DEA) under assumptions of strong disposability and variable returns scale, this paper annually estimates productive. technical and allocative efficiencies of three publicly-owned rail transit properties which are different in terms of organizational type: Seoul Subway Corporation(SSC, local public corporation), the Seoul Metropolitan Electrified Railways sector (SMESRS) of Korea National Railroad(the national railway operator controlled by the Ministry of Construction and Transportation(MOCT)), and Busan Urban Transit Authority (BUTA, the national authority controlled by MOCT). Using the estimation results of Tobit regression analysis. the paper next computes their true productive, true technical and true allocative efficiencies, which reflect only the impacts of internal factors such as production activity by removing the impacts of external factors such as an organizational type and a track utilization rate. And the paper also computes an organizational efficiency and annually gross efficiencies for each property. The paper then conceptualized that the property produces a single output(car-kilometers) using four inputs(labor, electricity, car & maintenance and track) and uses unbalanced panel data consisted of annual observations on SSC, SMESRS and BUTA. The results obtained from DEA show that, on an average, SSC is the most efficient property on the productive and allocative sides, while SMESRS is the most technically-efficient one. On the other hand. BUTA is the most efficient one on the truly-productive and allocative sides, while SMESRS on the truly-technical side. Another important result is that the differences in true efficiency estimates among the three properties are considerably smaller than those in efficiency estimates. Besides. the most cost-efficient organizational type appears to be a local public corporation represented by SSC, which is also the most grossly-efficient property. These results suggest that a measure to sort out the impacts of external factors on the efficiency of rail transit properties is required to assess fairly it, and that a measure to restructure (establish) an existing(a new) rail transit property into a local public corporation(or authority) is required to improve its cost efficiency.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.70-79
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• 2010

There has been some research conducted that addressed immoral consumer behaviors in Korea; however, most of this research focused on purchasing counterfeits or shoplifting. High return rates of apparel and used apparel returns have been acknowledged as problem areas within the fashion industry. However, very few researchers have addressed this issue. Therefore, the goal of this research was to explore consumer's retail borrowing experience using a mixed methods approach. In study 1 Korean consumer's retail borrowing experiences was explored through focus group interviews. Findings informed study 2 an examination of apparel consumers' attitudes toward retail borrowing behavior via an online survey. Findings assist both researchers' and practitioners' understanding of retail borrowing behaviors and provide insight into retail borrowing issues in the apparel retail industry. For study 1, five focus-group interviews were conducted with seven panels of individuals that had retail borrowing experience within the past year. Thirty-five Korean consumers who lived in a metropolitan area participated in the focus group interviews. Most of consumers were in their 20's (n=21) and were women (n=24). Most participants purchased apparel items from a retail store and returned the worn items for either a full refund or exchanged the worn item for another item. Motives underlying retail borrowing behavior included social needs, job-related needs, fashion needs, and "smart shopping." Similar to existing research findings from other countries, social needs were the most frequently mentioned cause of retail borrowing in fashion stores. Consumers' moral values, attitude toward large corporations, and prior retail borrowing experience were mentioned as possible factors affecting consumers' retail borrowing behavior. For study 2, the questionnaire used to gather the data was developed based on the findings of part I and existing research. Questions concerning consumers' moral beliefs, sensation seeking tendencies, self-worth, past retail job experience, retail borrowing experience, and some demographic characteristics were included in the questionnaire. The data were collected via an online survey using an online panel provided by a commercial online research company located in Seoul, Korea. In order to obtain various consumers, a quota sample was (male: female=1:1, 20's:30's:40's=1:1:1, retail experience: no retail experience=1:3) obtained from the company. A total of 401 consumers who had shopped for apparel items during the prior 6 months participated in the online survey. The results indicated that 19.7% of the respondents reported they had experience borrowing fashion merchandise. Among these individuals, male borrowers (57%) outnumbered female borrowers. In terms of age distribution, x2 revealed that there was a statistical difference between respondents with and without retail borrowing experiences: 41.8% of the respondents with retail borrowing experience were in their 40's, while respondents without retail borrowing experience were evenly distributed between their 20's to 40's. There was also a significant difference between respondents with and without retail borrowing experience in terms of income: respondents with retail borrowing experience tended to have higher incomes than those without retail borrowing experience. T-tests were performed to compare respondents' fashion shopping behavior, moral beliefs, sensation-seeking tendencies, and attitudes toward retail borrowing behavior between participants with and without retail borrowing experience. As compared to those with no borrowing experience, respondents with experience tended to shop for fashion items more frequently and spent more on shopping for fashion items. Consumers with experience borrowing tended to have higher sensation-seeking tendencies than consumers without retail borrowing experience. A regression analysis revealed that attitudes toward fashion retail borrowing were negatively related to consumers' moral beliefs, but positively related to monthly fashion shopping frequency, sensation-seeking tendencies, and past fashion retail borrowing experience. Among these variables, past retail borrowing experience was the most significant predictor, followed by moral beliefs. This research serves as an initial attempt to address the motives that underlie retail borrowing behaviors and the factors affecting those behaviors. The findings of this study may facilitate an understanding of the consumer's retail borrowing, which will provide a basis for approaches that may help decrease retail borrowing and inappropriate returns at fashion retail stores. The findings may also provide materials for consumer education over the long term. In order to better understand fashion retail borrowing behavior, more research is needed in the future.

• 한국노년학
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.551-567
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• 2018

Demographic and socio-structural information is useful to identify potential welfare recipients who are in need of disease-prevention and intervention services. Thus, the present study aims to explore the differences in grip strength among middle and old-aged adults by living conditions and by living area. The 5th wave data of Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging was utilized. The dependent variable was grip strength, and the independent variables were living alone (living alone or not) and living area (city or non-city). Covariates were age, education, log-transformed household income, spouse existence, body mass index, self-rated health conditions, depressive symptoms, cognitive function, smoking, regular exercise, frequency of meeting with friends, and the number of social participation. Regression analysis was performed for middle-aged men, middle-aged women, old-aged men, and old-aged women, respectively. ANOVA and Chi-test were additionally used to specifically discuss significant results. Cross-sectional weight was applied to all analyses. According to the results, living alone and living area did not have significant effects on grip strength among middle-aged men, old-aged men, and old-aged women. In middle-aged women, however, living alone and living area were significantly associated with grip strength. To be specific, middle-aged women who lived alone in rural areas had the lowest grip strength compared to other middle-aged women. Additional analysis showed that middle-aged women who lived alone in rural areas had risk factors, such as low education level, low income, or high depressive symptoms. It implies that middle-aged women living alone in rural areas may have physical health risks, so they might be in need of disease prevention. This study is meaningful in that it can provide reliable information on the latent welfare recipients by using representative panel data and applying weight values.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.68 no.2
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• pp.107-130
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• 2016

This study is aimed at the exploratory research on the influence of the obligation of extension of the retirement age on the baby boom generation. The basic question of this study is about which of the baby boom generation can get how much benefit according as the extension of the retirement age becomes compulsory. The extension of the retirement age is the system that can be applied to regular full-time workers. Accordingly, this study is intending to analyze the characteristics of the workers having a high likelihood for benefits from extension of the retirement age by tracing the economic activity state and labor history of the baby boomers. For this purpose, this study looked into the change of the economic activity state by age cohort of the male baby boomers based on the data for the Korea Labor Panel's 4th(2001) & 17th(2014)year. Using Survival analysis, this study also analyzed who will continue to remain as a regular full-time wage earner. As the result of the analysis, it was found that the more the cohort ages of baby boomers increased, the smaller the probability of remaining as a regular full-time wage earner, and the group who can get benefits from extension of the retirement age was predicted to account for only 11.4% level among the baby boomers. In addition, the result showed that there was a high likelihood of getting more benefits from extension of the retirement age when the baby boomers worked for the government-invested institution, corporate bodies, and government organizations rather than working for private enterprises. Thus, it can be safely said that there might appear a generational conflict due to extension of the retirement age in that such jobs coincide with the ones favored by the rising generation.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.223-249
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• 2005

This study examines the hazard rate of reemployment by conducting the Cox regression analysis. In addition, two gender groups are subjected to comparative analysis to identify the effect of the factors related to the human capital and human capability perspective on reemployment. For this purpose, 1,871 cases are selected from the 5th year data from Korea Labor and Income Panel Study. The results of study are as follows. First, the factors of human capital, such as education, appropriateness of skill level, and job tenure hold negative impact on the probability of reemployment, while factors of human capability, such as basic learning ability, health insurance, social insurance, residential area(living in the Seoul metropolitan area) hold positive on the probability of reemployment. It is interesting note that there are different sets of factors that affect the probability of reemployment in the two gender groups. This trend is even more apparent in the case of factors that pertain to human capability. The results of this study imply that the factors of human capability, which stress the socio-institutional characteristics, should be considered as comparably significant compared to the factors that pertain to human capital when it comes to the estimation of reemployment. Also, results of this comparative study teach us that various perspectives, such as dual labor market theory and gender-segmented labor market theory, should be factored in for reemployment discussion as well. In conclusion, this research delivers several significant messages since it introduces the concept of human capability perspective, subjected to few empirical analyses in the past, and also heralds the way for comparative analysis on the impact of the factors pertaining to human capability on reemployment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.24 no.2 s.88
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• pp.65-78
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• 2006

This paper investigates the cost structure ot the Korea and Japan railroad industry with respect to density, scale and scope economies as well as productivity growth rate using a generalized trans)og multiproduct cost function model. The paper then assumes that the Korea and Japan railway companies pi·educe three outputs (incumbent railway passenger-kilometers. Shinkansen passenger-kilometers, ton-kilometers of freight) using four input factors (labor, fuel, maintenance, rolling stock and capital). The specified cost function includes foul other independent variables: track lengths to reflect network effects, two dummies to reflect nation and ownership effects, and time trend as a proxy for technical change. The simultaneous equation system consisting of a cost function and three input share equations is estimated with the Zellner's iterative seemingly unrelated regression. The unbalanced panel data used in the paper, a total of 154 observations. are collected from the annual records of the Korea National Railroad (KNR) for the yews $1977{\sim}2003$, Japan National Railways (JNR) for the years $1977{\sim}1984$. seven Japan Railways (JR's) for the years $1987{\sim}2003$. The findings show that the Korean and Japanese railways exhibit product-specific and overall economies of density but product-specific diseconomies of scale with respect to incumbent railway passenger-kilometers, Shinkansen-kilometers and ton-kilometers. However, the railways experience mild overall economies of scale which result from economies of scope associated with the joint production of incumbent railway/Shinkansen and feight, freight/incumbent railway and Shinkansen except Shinkansen/incumbent railway and freight. In addition, the economies of density and scale in the KNR, JR east, JR central, and JR west companies at the point of the years $1990{\sim}2003$ average is generally analogous to the above results at the point of sample average. There also appear to be economies of ssope associated with the joint Production of the incumbent railway and Shinkansen in JR central but diseconomies of scope in JR East and JR West. The findings also indicate that the productivity growth rate of the privately-owned JR's is larger than that of the government-owned KNR.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.60 no.3
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• pp.31-58
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• 2008

This study examines applying the elderly poverty labor hypothesis and skill-biased technological change hypothesis to labor force participation rate(LFPR) of older males in Korea. These hypotheses have hardly been examined on the this group. The analysis is based on the data "Summary of economically active population($1965{\sim}2007$)", "Population projection($1965{\sim}2007$)", "Report on wage structure survey($1993{\sim}2005$)" and "Korea Labor and Income Panel Study($1998{\sim}2006$)". The method employed for this study is logistic regression. The main results from this analysis are summarized in five points. Firstly, Korean older males' LFPR have been increasing since 1965 when industrialization was expanding at full steam. This trend has been different from the decreasing trend of industrialized countries. The second finding is that poor older males' LFPR is, on the average, 5.2% higher than that of non-poor older males from 1998 to 2005. The third result is that the non-elderly man has been increasingly positioned at higher grade occupations, while the elderly man has been held at lower grade occupations. The fourth is that labor demand for highly educated workers has exceeded the increased labor supply of the group, while the demand for low educated workers has decreased far beyond the declined labor supply. As a result, college premium has increased from 139% in 1993 to 157.8% in 2005. The final main implication of this study is that the industrialization theory and modernization hypothesis still holds for the LFPR of Korean older males. However, the elderly affluence hypothesis of the LFPR of older males are hardly persuasive in explaining Korean phenomenon. Especially, we find that the elderly poverty is the main mechanism in determining the Korean LFPR in old ages. This supports the elderly poverty labor hypothesis presented in this study. Skill-biased technological change hypothesis partially explains the LFPR of older man. However, we believe that other factors; human capital specially high school education rather than university education and skill required in less skill biased occupations or the poverty; also have taken effect.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2019

The purposes of this study were to concretely reveal the effect of the parents' child-rearing attitude perceived by adolescents and the school life adaptation on the problem behavior, and to verify the moderating effect of the ego-resilience on the relationship between the parents' child-rearing attitude and the school life adaptation and the adolescent problem behavior. This study analyzed a total of 2,107 students in the first year of high school, which was the 4th year data(2013) of Korea Children Youth Panel Survey(KCYPS) 2010. The reliability, descriptive statistics, t-test, and hierarchical regression analysis were conducted using SPSS WIN 22.0. The results were as follows. First, the effect of the parents' child-rearing attitude(supervision, affection, reasonable explanation, excessive interference, excessive expectation, and inconsistency), school life adaptation(relationship with teacher, relationship with friend, school regulation, and learning activity), and ego-resilience on the adolescent problem behavior was analyzed. As a result, the relationship with friend(-) had the highest influence on the adolescent problem behavior, followed by learning activity(-), inconsistency(+), ego-resilience(-), excessive interference(+), and supervision(-). However, the remaining sub-variables did not have any significant influence on the adolescent problem behavior. Second, the moderating effect of the ego-resilience on the relationship among the parents' child-rearing attitude, adaptation to school life, and adolescent problem behavior. The ego-resilience was found to moderate the effects of parents' positive child-rearing attitude, interpersonal relationships, and school adaptation on the adolescent problem behavior. However, the moderating effect was not significant for the effect of negative child-rearing attitude on the adolescent problem behavior. Therefore, various ego-resilience enhancement programs need to be developed and researched as a part of the safety education through the home economics class.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.559-575
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• 2014

Individual investors are increasingly flocking to message boards to seek, clarify, and exchange information. Businesses like Seekingalpha.com and business magazines like Fortune are evaluating, synthesizing, and reporting the comments made on message boards or blogs. In March of 2012, Yahoo! Finance Message Boards recorded 45 million unique visitors per month followed by AOL Money and Finance (19.8 million), and Google Finance (1.6 million) [McIntyre, 2012]. Previous studies in the finance literature suggest that online communities often provide more accurate information than analyst forecasts [Bagnoli et al., 1999; Clarkson et al., 2006]. Some studies empirically show that the volume of posts in online communities have a positive relationship with market activities (e.g., trading volumes) [Antweiler and Frank, 2004; Bagnoli et al., 1999; Das and Chen, 2007; Tumarkin and Whitelaw, 2001]. The findings indicate that information in online communities does impact investors' investment decisions and trading behaviors. However, research explicating the correlation between information on online communities and stock market activities (e.g., trading volume) is still evolving. Thus, it is important to ask whether a volume of posts on online communities influences trading volumes and whether trading volumes also influence these communities. Online stock message boards offer two different types of information, which can be explained using an economic and a psychological perspective. From a purely economic perspective, one would expect that stock message boards would have a beneficial effect, since they provide timely information at a much lower cost [Bagnoli et al., 1999; Clarkson et al., 2006; Birchler and Butler, 2007]. This indicates that information in stock message boards may provide valuable information investors can use to predict stock market activities and thus may use to make better investment decisions. On the other hand, psychological studies have shown that stock message boards may not necessarily make investors more informed. The related literature argues that confirmation bias causes investors to seek other investors with the same opinions on these stock message boards [Chen and Gu, 2009; Park et al., 2013]. For example, investors may want to share their painful investment experiences with others on stock message boards and are relieved to find they are not alone. In this case, the information on these stock message boards mainly reflects past experience or past information and not valuable and predictable information for market activities. This study thus investigates the two roles of stock message boards-providing valuable information to make future investment decisions or sharing past experiences that reflect mainly investors' painful or boastful stories. If stock message boards do provide valuable information for stock investment decisions, then investors will use this information and thereby influence stock market activities (e.g., trading volume). On the contrary, if investors made investment decisions and visit stock message boards later, they will mainly share their past experiences with others. In this case, past activities in the stock market will influence the stock message boards. These arguments indicate that there is a correlation between information posted on stock message boards and stock market activities. The previous literature has examined the impact of stock sentiments or the number of posts on stock market activities (e.g., trading volume, volatility, stock prices). However, the studies related to stock sentiments found it difficult to obtain significant results. It is not easy to identify useful information among the millions of posts, many of which can be just noise. As a result, the overall sentiments of stock message boards often carry little information for future stock movements [Das and Chen, 2001; Antweiler and Frank, 2004]. This study notes that as a dependent variable, trading volume is more reliable for capturing the effect of stock message board activities. The finance literature argues that trading volume is an indicator of stock price movements [Das et al., 2005; Das and Chen, 2007]. In this regard, this study investigates the correlation between a number of posts (information on stock message boards) and trading volume (stock market activity). We collected about 100,000 messages of 40 companies at KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) from Paxnet, the most popular Korean online stock message board. The messages we collected were divided into in-trading and after-trading hours to examine the correlation between the numbers of posts and trading volumes in detail. Also we collected the volume of the stock of the 40 companies. The vector regression analysis and the granger causality test, 3SLS analysis were performed on our panel data sets. We found that the number of posts on online stock message boards is positively related to prior stock trade volume. Also, we found that the impact of the number of posts on stock trading volumes is not statistically significant. Also, we empirically showed the correlation between stock trading volumes and the number of posts on stock message boards. The results of this study contribute to the IS and finance literature in that we identified online stock message board's two roles. Also, this study suggests that stock trading managers should carefully monitor information on stock message boards to understand stock market activities in advance.