• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.167-183
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• 2022

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to show the need to use the past long-term returns for investment decisions in U.S. equity funds and to suggest an investment strategy using long-term returns. Design/methodology/approach - This study solves the problem of high return volatility in long-term returns and proposes new investment portfolios based on the behavior of fund investors according to past returns. For the investment portfolio of this study, 60 months are divided into several periods and the average of the performance ranks for each period is used. Findings - First, funds with high average returns over multiple periods have lower future outflows and higher future returns than funds with high 60-month cumulative returns. Second, funds with low average returns over multiple periods have lower future inflows and lower future returns than funds with low 60-month cumulative returns. The findings mean that when making decisions based on past long-term returns, it is a smarter investment choice to buy funds with high average returns over multiple periods and sell funds with low average returns over multiple periods. Research implications or Originality - This study shows that it is necessary to use long-term returns in fund investment by analyzing the characteristics of the portfolio based on past returns. In addition, the study is meaningful in that it suggests a way to use long-term returns more efficiently based on the behavior of fund investors and shows that such investments lead to higher returns in the future.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.83-95
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• 2022

Purpose: This study aims to explore an ability to time market-wide investor sentiment of mutual fund managers in an emerging market. Research design, data, and methodology: Based on data of Thai mutual fund market over the period of 2000-2019, our sample includes 283 equity funds, consisting of 204 bank-related funds and 79 nonbank-related funds. We perform our regression analyses at the aggregate and portfolio levels. Results: Under the non-normal distribution of return, we find different behaviors between the best- and worst-performing funds in an ability to time market-wide investor sentiment in Thailand, which is dissimilar to the findings in the U.S. Bottom fund managers act as sentiment hedgers, who decrease (increase) an exposure of investment portfolios when the investor sentiment is high (low). Oppositely, top fund managers are likely to chase investor sentiment. Conclusion: We find that only the worst-performing fund managers, especially for bank-related funds are able to time the market-wide investor sentiment. An advantage of gaining information from their bank's clients is a key success. A competition in the mutual fund industry, an ability to predict fundamentals, and financial literacy are possible reasons to explain the main findings found in this study.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.541-549
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• 2015

Research about U.S. and European countries demonstrated that startups and young firms account for nearly all net job creation. If we want to bring down unemployment and to increase economic growth rate, we need to create new companies and to make them to grow. Credit availability is one of the most important factors for entrepreneurs as they attempt to start or expand a business. For young firms, access to credit for business growth can mean the difference between survival and failure. Equity crowdfunding is an innovative means of raising capital for businesses. Crowdfunding campaigns can give new business access to a large pool of investors. This brings huge benefits for marketing and increase provability of success of business and ROI, so it leads follow-on investment from Venture Capital and Angel investors. In Korea, the survival rate of startups and average growth rate of survivors is far lower than those of the U.S or other countries due to lack of funds for startup or early business growth. Equity crowdfunding can be a new funding source for venture or startups. It can increase startup and survival rate, in addition to the growth rate of survivors, resulting in decreased unemployment rate. In Korea, Equity crowdfunding will be available from 2016. Further study is needed to determine whether the impact of crowdfunding in Korea on job creation will be similar to its impact in the U.S.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.47-57
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• 2015

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to investigate the explanatory power of the Pecking-order theory (the cost of financing increases with asymmetric information) among Korean retail firms from the perspective of debt capacity. According to the Pecking-order theory, a firm's first preference is to use internal funds for its capital needs, its next preference is the issuance of debt, and its last preference is the issuance of equity; this is due to the information asymmetry problem between existing shareholders and investors. However, prior empirical studies, such as Lemmon and Zender (2010), argue that the entire sample test for the Pecking-order theory could be misleading due to the different levels of debt issuance capability of each of the individual firms; in fact, they confirm that the explanatory power of the Pecking-order theory improves after taking into account the differences in debt capacity of the U.S. firms they examined. This paper implements a case study approach among Korean retail firms to examine the relationship between debt capacity and the explanatory power of the Pecking-order theory in Korea. Research design, data, and methodology - This study uses the sample of public retail firms on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) from the time period of 1990 to 2013. We gather related financial and accounting statements from the financial information firm WISEfn. Credit rating information is provided by the Korea Investor Service. We employ the models of Lemmon and Zender (2010) and Son and Kim (2013) to measure a firm's debt capacity. Their logit models use the rating dummy variable as a dependent variable and incorporate other firm characteristics as independent variables to estimate debt capacity. To test the Pecking-order theory, we adopt variants of the financing deficit model of Shyam-Sunder and Myers (1999). In the test of the Pecking-order theory, we consider all of the changes in total debt obligations, current debt obligations, and long-term debt obligations. Results - Our main contribution to the literature is our confirmation of the predicted relationship between debt capacity and the explanatory power of the Pecking-order theory among Korean retail firms. The coefficients on financing deficits become greater as a firm's debt capacity improves. This is consistent with the results of Lemmon and Zender (2010). The coefficients on the square of the financing deficits are also negative for the firms in the largest debt capacity group, which is also consistent with the predictions in prior literature. Conclusions - This study takes a case study approach by examining Korean retail firms. We confirm that the Pecking-order theory explains the capital structure of retail firms more appropriately, after taking into account the debt capacity of each firm. This result suggests the importance of debt capacity consideration in the testing of the Pecking-order theory. Our result also implies that there has been a potential underestimation of the explanatory power of the Pecking-order theory in existing studies.