• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.133-144
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• 2017

This study investigates firm-specific financial variables that determine investment or speculative grades from the viewpoint of firms, which are one of the major stakeholders related to the credit rating. We employ an ordered probit model for our analysis with the sample data from 1999 to 2015 for listed firms in the Korean stock markets. For investment grades, operating margin, sales, market-to-book, dividend payment, capital expenditure ratio, and tangible asset ratio have a significantly positive impact on credit ratings. In the subsample for speculative grades, the coefficients of the dividend payment, retained earnings ratio, and capital expenditure ratio are significantly positive while short-term debt ratio and R&D expenditures have a significantly negative impact on credit ratings. For the analysis before and after 2009, when the Credit Information Use and Protection Act was strengthened after the global financial crisis, the coefficients of the capital expenditure ratio, cash ratio, and tangible asset ratio are significantly positive in the subsample for investment grades before 2009, but not significant after 2010. The coefficient of the long-term debt ratio is more significantly negative than that of the short-term debt ratio before 2009, for speculative grades, but short-term debt ratio has a more negative effect on ratings than long-term debt ratio after 2010. Surprisingly, the coefficient of the R&D expenditures is significantly negative in both investment and speculative grades since 2010. Our findings are inconsistent with the conjecture that the increase in R&D expenditures enhances the possibility of creating cash-flow by raising the investment growth opportunity, and thus affects positively the credit rating.

• Korean Linguistics
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• v.76
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• pp.187-211
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the speech act realization of speculative expressions and to present their teaching-learning contents. It is hard for Korean learners to use speculative expressions appropriately because there are various similar expressions and their meaning is distinctive in detail. This study describes speech act realizations of '-는 것 같다, -을까, -나 보다, -을걸'. All these forms have the meaning of speculations, so they are mainly used to present uncertain information or thoughts of speaker. But they show distinctive aspects. '-는 것 같다' is mainly used to present contents contrary to their counterparts' opinions or irritating for their counterparts. It is used as polite forms because it conveys meanings of uncertainty. Especially in these contexts, it performs the refusal speech acts. '-을까' has the characteristic feature in the complex forms such as '뭐랄까', '뭐라고 할까' and it performs request speech acts more frequently than '-는 것 같다'. Also it is used to express the speakers' opinions contrary to their counterparts'. '-나 보다' expresses speaker's speculations based on hearer's conditions or his speech, so it is used to respond to hearer actively and express interests unlike other speculative expressions. '-을걸' isn't used to perform request, to express interests to hearer. However, it is mainly used when speaker has the contrary assumptions or expectations to hearer's. Based on the analyze, this study presents and grades teaching-learning contents of speculative expressions.