• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.256-276
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• 1994

This paper aims at identifying the desirable R'||'&'||'D life cycle related to government-industry cooperative R'||'&'||'D. It is based on a case study associated with the relationship between cooperation and cooperation in information in information communications sector. It presents three types of R'||'&'||'D life cycle to achieve a technological enhancement as high as possible with limited resources. The first case of R'||'&'||'D project is of "advanced type". In the generic technology phase, government takes a leading role jointly in R'||'&'||'D activities, but, in after the applied research phase, the domestic firms take the lead. This kind of cooperation can be made when competition between domestic firms is highly intense, and the technological knowledges of participating firms are at internationally competitive levels. The second type of "less-advanced type"; the firms of a country(more often a small country) lag behind in technology level, and the penetration of foreign firms in the market is limited. In this case, government takes full charge of R'||'&'||'D activities up to the applied research phase, due to the low technology level and insufficient financial resources of private firms. Lastly, this paper presents and R'||'&'||'D life cycle of "strategic" type. This applies to the case in which domestic firm with less financial resources make an attempt to increase their technological knowledges while the government, in turn, contributes to strengthen the international competitiveness of domestic industry.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.61-69
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• 2021

The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate whether and how domestic currency valuation is related to firm-level export competitiveness and profitability by using the unique firm-specific dataset on Bangladeshi nonfinancial firms which have been listed continuously from 2010 to 2018. To achieve the aim of this paper, 63 exporting firms are extracted from a total of 125 firms which have been continuously listed during 2010-2018 and used as the final sample firms. The Pedroni cointegration test reveals that export and import prices of the exporting firms are cointegrated in the short-run as well as long-run. The panel dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) analysis finds that a firm's export competitiveness is maintained by high import inputs even in the presence of depreciation of Bangladeshi currency against the US dollar. Finally, the DuPont analysis finds that the depreciated Bangladeshi currency enhances an exporter's profitability. Conclusions based on the findings are consistent regardless of exchange rate types, such as, real bilateral exchange rate and nominal or real effective exchange rate indexes. Consequently, the firm-level findings of this investigation suggest that undervalution of home currency is essential for Bangaldesh which is one of the frontier markets in South Asia whose exporting firms are mostly price followers in global markets.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.205-225
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• 2022

Different types of corporate ownership may affect the environment among firms and could influence the decisions of new entities in the region. This study determines the role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in hindering new foreign manufacturing firms in the Yangtze River delta (YRD). The negative binomial regression is used for city-sector level data and the following points summarize the results: Firstly, the unique privileges that SOEs enjoy alongside governmental support create difficulties for foreign firms trying to establish themselves near existing SOEs. Secondly, although core cities are more attractive to foreign firms than peripheral cities, the role of core-periphery reveals that, in spite of all the regional advantages core cities could offer, whenever the share of SOEs is higher, the core-periphery system will have an adverse impact on new foreign firms. In other words, government preference for SOEs can suppress the attraction of foreign start-ups. However, after 2008, the governmental authorities finally succeeded in implementing their promising policy of fair treatment and competition in only the core cities.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.171-191
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• 2015

This paper investigates how internal knowledge dependency and its interaction with external knowledge adoption affect innovation performance in Korean companies. We categorize innovation performance into exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. Especially, we examine business group effects as group headquarters and sister subsidiaries holistically form the boundary of the firm. Our empirical results first suggest that the degree of internal knowledge dependency is positively associated with exploitative innovation, but negatively with exploratory innovation. Second, internal knowledge dependency is more negatively related to exploratory innovation in independent firms than in business group affiliates. Third, independent firms' adoption of external knowledge tends to strengthen the positive relationship between internal knowledge dependency and exploitative innovation. Finally, exploitative external knowledge search appears to strengthen the negative relationship between internal knowledge dependency and exploratory innovation in both types of firms.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.25-48
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• 2005

Firms often collaborate on building an infrastructure, which benefits all the firms in the industry, although in unequal magnitudes. Then a difficult and tricky issue is concerned with 'free riding.' Should there be only 'common, i.e., industry-wide' benefits in such collaboration, the literature indicated that the free rider problem is unavoidable, In this paper, however, we suggest that while collaborating, the firm also learns firm-specific knowledge, experience, and know-how, which can be directly utilized for its own internal improvement. That is, the collaboration between firms provides them with not only 'industry-wide,' but also 'firm-specific' benefits, Our analysis shows that if there indeed exist two types of benefits simultaneously, depending on the balance between the two, the free rider problem can be mitigated or even eliminated.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.69-77
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• 2015

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine whether the cash policies of retail firms listed on Korean stock markets are consistent with the evidence provided in the study of Almeida et al. (2004). Liquidity management is an important issue for financially constrained firms relative to financially unconstrained firms. Because there are few sources of external funding, the optimal liquidity policies of financially constrained firms should reflect their own earnings or cash inflows to create opportunities for current and future real investments. According to this simple idea, we estimate the sensitivity of cash to cash flows and simply check whether the estimated sensitivity to cash flows of the cash retained by constrained retail firms is greater than that of the cash retained by unconstrained retail firms. Through this work, we aim to explain why the cash policies of the retail firms listed on the Korean stock markets differ from those of listed manufacturing enterprises. Research design, data, and methodology - To explain a firm's cash holdings, we use only three explanatory variables: earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), Tobin's q, and size. All the variables are defined as the value of the numerator divided by aggregate assets. Thanks to this definition, it is possible to treat all the sample firms as a single large firm. The sample financial data for this study are collected from the retail enterprises listed on the KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets from 1991 to 2013. We can obtain these data from WISEfn, the financial information company. This study's methodology has its origin in Keynes's simple idea of precautionary liquidity demand: When a firm faces financial constraints, cash savings from earnings or cash inflows become important from the corporate finance perspective. Following this simple idea, Almeida et al. (2004) developed their theoretical model and found empirical evidence that the sensitivity of cash to cash flows varies systematically according to different types of financing frictions. To find more empirical evidence for this idea, we examined the cash flow sensitivity of the cash held by Korean retail firms. Results - Through several robustness tests, we empirically showed that financially constrained Korean retail firms display significant positive propensity to save cash from earnings before interest and taxes, while the estimated cash flow sensitivity of the cash held by unconstrained retail firms is not significant. Despite the relatively low earnings of retail firms, their sensitivity is three times greater than that of manufacturing enterprises. This implies that Korean retail firms have greater intentions of facilitating future investments rather than current investments. Conclusions - The characteristics of the cash policies of Korean retail firms differ from those of manufacturing firms. This contrast may be attributable to industry-oriented policy planning, regulations, and institutional differences. However, the industrial policymakers should observe signals of the long-term growth options of retail firms based on their high propensity to save from their cash inflows.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.163-190
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• 2009

This study tries to analyze the investment determinants of Chinese firms in local Korea, where the Chinese investing ones have been operating since in the middle of 1990s. The main purpose can be mentioned to test empirically some relations between the investment determinants of Chinese firms and the investment types. In detail speaking, the dependent variables of investment types are classified with sole venture and joint venture, while the independent ones are sorted based on the previous studies with the 2 following factors like the competitive advantages of Chinese firms, and the location advantages of local Korea. This study is conducted as the following: the survey of Chinese firms engaging in investment activities in there is implemented by collecting questionnaires. And for testing the hypothesis, the path analysis of structural equation modeling is activated with SPSS. 12.0 and AMOS 11.0 for windows.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.81-107
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• 2009

The Korean government provides a variety of supporting programs with firms to promote technological innovation which is a main driver of economic growth. The existing literature on technological innovation has mainly focused on analysis about determinants of successful innovation and effectiveness of a specific policy measure. However, there is no study deals with characteristics of policy demanders. For this, this study investigates the relationship between barriers and policy measures in technological innovation using the logistic regression analysis method with raw data of Korean Innovation Survey (KIS). The findings from this analysis show that barriers of technological innovation are meaningful variables to determining whether firms adopt a policy measure, although there are some differences according to policy types. Cost barriers increased the probability that firms adopt support programs regardless of policy types. Also, the more firms encounter cooperation barriers, the more likely firms utilize supporting programs in regard to technological advice and information.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.65-88
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• 2021

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the determinants of SWFs' investment in Asian countries and to identify consistent investment patterns of SWFs in specific target firms from Asia, particularly China and South Korea. Design/methodology - This study extends the Tobin's Q model to examine the relationship between SWF investments in target firms and their returns with other firm-level control variables. We collect consistent data on SWF investments and the matched firm-level data on target firms, which of observation is 1,512 firms (333 in South Korea and 1,179 in China) targeted by 20 SWF sources during 1997-2017. The panel random effect model is used to estimate the extended Tobin's Q model. The robustness of the estimations is tested by the simultaneous equation models and the panel GEE model. Findings - The evidence shows that sovereign wealth funds are more inclined to invest in the financial sector with a monopoly position and in large firms with higher growth opportunity and superior cash asset ratios in China. In contrast to their investments in China, sovereign wealth funds in South Korea prefer to invest in strategic sectors, such as energy and information technology, and in large firms with high performance and low leverage. Sovereign wealth funds' investments tend to significantly improve the target firm's performance measured by sales growth and returns in both Korea and China. Originality/value - The existing literature focuses on examining the determination of SWFs investment in the developed countries, such as Europe and the United States. Our paper contributes to the literature in three ways; first, we analyzes case studies of SWF investments in Asian markets, which are less developed and riskier. Second, we examine whether the determination of SWF investment in Asian target firms depends on the different time periods, on types of sources of SWFs, and on acquiring countries. Third, our research uses vast sample data on target firms in longer time periods (1997-2017) than other previous studies on the SWFs for Asian markets.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.431-442
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of seasonality on the tourism and hospitality industry in ArugamBay after the civil unrest across the different firms in tourism. This study uses both quantitative and qualitative analyses using primary data. Fifty questionnaires give valid responses that were used for analysis. Out of 80 questionnaires, the average response rate was 62.5%. An exploratory study, descriptive analysis, and an Independent Sample Test were used to identify the potentials of tourism, the overall impact of seasonality, and the impact of seasonality across different travel and tourism sector of the study area. According to the results, 83%, 75%, 68%, and 59.9% of firms agreed on the impact of seasonality on environment, workers, supply, and quality of services, respectively in ArugamBay. It also concluded that the impact of seasonality on workers, supply, and quality of services is not the same among all the categories of firms except environment. The variation in seasonality in the travel and tourism sector is because of the lack of regional planning considering the types of firms in the tourism sector. Also, insufficient resources and lack of consistent capacity between various firms in the sectors are also course variations because of the effect of seasonality.