• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.73-79
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• 2013

Purpose - This study examines the impact of oil price volatility on economic activities in Korea. The new millennium has seen a deregulation in the crude oil market, which invited immense capital inflow into Korea. It has also raised oil price levels and volatility. Drawing on the recent theoretical literature that emphasizes the role of volatility, this paper attends to the asymmetric changes in economic growth in response to the oil price movement. This study further examines several key macroeconomic variables, such as interest rate, production, and inflation. We come to the conclusion that oil price volatility can, in some part, explain the structural changes. Research design, data, and methodology - We use two methodological frameworks in this study. First, in regards to the oil price uncertainty, we use an Exponential-GARCH (Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity: EGARCH) model estimate to elucidate the asymmetric effect of oil price shock on the conditional oil price volatility. Second, along with the estimation of the conditional volatility by the EGARCH model, we use the estimates in a VECM (Vector Error Correction Model). The study thus examines the dynamic impacts of oil price volatility on industrial production, price levels, and monetary policy responses. We also approximate the monetary policy function by the yield of monetary stabilization bond. The data collected for the study ranges from 1990: M1 to 2013: M7. In the VECM analysis section, the time span is split into two sub-periods; one from 1990 to 1999, and another from 2000 to 2013, due to the U.S. CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) deregulation on the crude oil futures that became effective in 2000. This paper intends to probe the relationship between oil price uncertainty and macroeconomic variables since the structural change in the oil market became effective. Results and Conclusions - The dynamic impulse response functions obtained from the VECM show a prolonged dampening effect of oil price volatility shock on the industrial production across all sub-periods. We also find that inflation measured by CPI rises by one standard deviation shock in response to oil price uncertainty, and lasts for the ensuing period. In addition, the impulse response functions allude that South Korea practices an expansionary monetary policy in response to oil price shocks, which stems from oil price uncertainty. Moreover, a comparison of the results of the dynamic impulse response functions from the two sub-periods suggests that the dynamic relationships have strengthened since 2000. Specifically, the results are most drastic in terms of industrial production; the impact of oil price volatility shocks has more than doubled from the year 2000 onwards. These results again indicate that the relationships between crude oil price uncertainty and Korean macroeconomic activities have been strengthened since the year2000, which resulted in a structural change in the crude oil market due to the deregulation of the crude oil futures.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.65-73
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• 2016

We estimated the averaged maximum incidences of bacterial canker at suitable sites for kiwifruit cultivation in 2020s and 2050s using D-PSA-K model with RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate change scenarios. Though there was a little difference between the estimation using RCP4.5 and that using RCP8.5, the estimated maximum disease incidences were more than 75% at all the suitable sites in Korea except for some southern coastal areas and Jeju island under the assumption that there are a plenty of infections to cause the symptoms. We also analyzed the intermediate and final outputs of D-PSA-K model to find out the trends on the change in disease incidence affected by climate change. Whereas increase of damage to kiwifruit canes in a non-frozen environment caused by bacterial canker was estimated at almost all the suitable sites in both the climate change scenarios, rate of necrosis increase caused by the bacterial canker pathogen in a frozen environment during the last overwintering season was predicted to be reduced at almost all the suitable sites in both the climate change scenarios. Directions of change in estimated maximum incidence varied with sites and scenarios. Whereas the maximum disease incidence at 3.14% of suitable sites for kiwifruit cultivation in 2020s under RCP4.5 scenario was estimated to increase by 10% or more in 2050s, the maximum disease incidence at 25.41% of the suitable sites under RCP8.5 scenario was estimated so.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.175-182
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• 2018

Knowledge of the optimum cultivation period for Chinese cabbage would help growers especially in spring in Korea. Growth and yield of Chinese cabbage in a temperature gradient chamber was evaluated for the growing periods of 64 days from three set of transplanting dates including March 6, March 20, and April 3 in 2017. Air temperature in the chamber was elevated step-by-step, by $2^{\circ}C$ above the ambient temperature. This increment was divided into three phases; i.e. low (ambient+$2^{\circ}C$, A), medium (ambient+$4^{\circ}C$, B), and high temperature (ambient+$6^{\circ}C$, C). The fresh weight of Chinese cabbage was greater under B and C conditions in the first period and A in the second period, which indicated that GDDs affected the fresh weight considerably. However, leaf growth (number, area, length, and width) did not differ by GDDs. Bolting appeared under A condition in the first period, which was caused by low temperature in the early growth stage. Soft rot was developed under C condition in the second period and all temperature conditions in the third period, which resulted from high temperature in the late stage. Fresh weight increased when GDDs ranged from 587 to 729. However, it decreased when GDDs > 729. The maximum expected yield (16.3 MT/10a) was attained for the growing period of 64 days from transplanting date during which GDDs reached 601. The GDDs for optimum cultivation ranged from 478-724 under which the yield was about 95% (15.5 MT/10a) of maximum fresh weight. Such an optimum condition for GDDs was validated at five main cultivation regions including Jindo, Haenam, Naju, Seosan, and Pyeongtaek in Korea. In these regions, GDDs ranged from 619-719. This suggested that the optimum GDDs for Chinese cabbage cultivation would range from 478-724, which would give the useful information to expect the cultivation periods for ensuring maximum yield.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.19-30
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• 2012

The majority of daily travel demands concentrate at particular time-periods, which causes the difficulties in the travel demand analysis and the corresponding benefit estimation. Thus, it is necessary to consider time-specific traffic characteristics to yield more reliable results. Traditionally, na$\ddot{i}$ve, heuristic, and statistical approaches have been applied to address the peak-hour ratio. In this study, a hybrid clustering model which is one of the statistical methods is applied to calculate the peak-hour ratio and its duration. The 2009 national 24-hour traffic data provided by the Korea institute of Construction Technology are used. The analysis is conducted dividing vehicle types into passenger cars and trucks. For the verification for the usefulness of the methodology, the toll collection system data by the Korea Express Corporation are collected. The result of the research shows lower errors during the off-peak hours and night times and increasing error ratios as the travel distance increases. Since the method proposed can reduce the arbitrariness of analysts and can accommodate the statistical significance test, the model could be considered as a more robust and stable methodology. It is hoped that the result of this paper could contribute to the enhancement of the reliability for the travel demand analysis.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.47-61
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• 2000

Agroclimatic zoning was done for paddy rice culture in North Korea based on a simulation experiment. Daily weather data for the experiment were generated by 3 steps consisting of spatial interpolation based on topoclimatological relationships, zonal summarization of grid cell values, and conversion of monthly climate data to daily weather data. Regression models for monthly climatological temperature estimation were derived from a statistical procedure using monthly averages of 51 standard weather stations in South and North Korea (1981-1994) and their spatial variables such as latitude, altitude, distance from the coast, sloping angle, and aspect-dependent field of view (openness). Selected models (0.4 to 1.6$^{\circ}C$ RMSE) were applied to the generation of monthly temperature surface over the entire North Korean territory on 1 km$\times$l km grid spacing. Monthly precipitation data were prepared by a procedure described in Yun (2000). Solar radiation data for 27 North Korean stations were reproduced by applying a relationship found in South Korea ([Solar Radiation, MJ m$^{-2}$ day$^{-1}$ ] =0.344 + 0.4756 [Extraterrestrial Solar Irradiance) + 0.0299 [Openness toward south, 0 - 255) - 1.307 [Cloud amount, 0 - 10) - 0.01 [Relative humidity, %), $r^2$=0.92, RMSE = 0.95 ). Monthly solar irradiance data of 27 points calculated from the reproduced data set were converted to 1 km$\times$1 km grid data by inverse distance weighted interpolation. The grid cell values of monthly temperature, solar radiation, and precipitation were summed up to represent corresponding county, which will serve as a land unit for the growth simulation. Finally, we randomly generated daily maximum and minimum temperature, solar irradiance and precipitation data for 30 years from the monthly climatic data for each county based on a statistical method suggested by Pickering et a1. (1994). CERES-rice, a rice growth simulation model, was tuned to accommodate agronomic characteristics of major North Korean cultivars based on observed phenological and yield data at two sites in South Korea during 1995~1998. Daily weather data were fed into the model to simulate the crop status at 183 counties in North Korea for 30 years. Results were analyzed with respect to spatial and temporal variation in yield and maturity, and used to score the suitability of the county for paddy rice culture.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.61 no.6
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• pp.111-121
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• 2019

Evapotranspiration (ET) of vegetation is one of the major components of the hydrologic cycle, and its accurate estimation is important for hydrologic water balance, irrigation management, crop yield simulation, and water resources planning and management. For agricultural crops, ET is often calculated in terms of a short or tall crop reference, such as well-watered, clipped grass (reference crop evapotranspiration, $ET_o$). The Penman-Monteith equation recommended by FAO (FAO 56-PM) has been accepted by researchers and practitioners, as the sole $ET_o$ method. However, its accuracy is contingent on high quality measurements of four meteorological variables, and its use has been limited by incomplete and/or inaccurate input data. Therefore, this study evaluated the applicability of Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN) model for estimating $ET_o$ from less meteorological data than required by the FAO 56-PM. A total of six meteorological inputs, minimum temperature, average temperature, maximum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation, were divided into a series of input groups (a combination of one, two, three, four, five and six variables) and each combination of different meteorological dataset was evaluated for its level of accuracy in estimating $ET_o$. The overall findings of this study indicated that $ET_o$ could be reasonably estimated using less than all six meteorological data using BPNN. In addition, it was shown that the proper choice of neural network architecture could not only minimize the computational error, but also maximize the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The findings of this study would be of use in instances where data availability and/or accuracy are limited.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.256-266
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• 2022

Empirical models including the Angstrom-Prescott (AP) model have been used to estimate solar radiation at sites, which would support a wide use of crop models. The objective of this study was to estimate two sets of solar radiation estimates using the AP coefficients derived for climate zone (AP_Frere) and specific site (AP_Choi), respectively. The daily solar radiation was estimated at 18 sites in Korea where long-term measurements of solar radiation were available. In the present study, daily solar radiation and sunshine duration were collected for the period from 2012 to 2021. Daily weather data including maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall were also obtained to prepare input data to a process-based crop model, CERES-Rice model included in Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT). It was found that the daily estimates of solar radiation using the climate zone specific coefficient, SFrere, had significantly less error than those using site-specific coefficients S_Choi (p<0.05). The cumulative values of S_Frere for the period from march to September also had less error at 55% of study sites than those of S_Choi. Still, the use of S_Frere and S_Choi as inputs to the CERES-Rice model resulted in slight differences between the outcomes of crop growth simulations, which had no significant difference between these outputs. These results suggested that the AP coefficients for the temperate climate zone would be preferable for the estimation of solar radiation. This merits further evaluation studies to compare the AP model with other sophisticated approaches such as models based on satellite data.

• Journal of agriculture & life science
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.167-178
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• 2016

This study was conducted to estimate genetic parameters for milk production and linear type traits in Holstein dairy cattle in Korea. The data including milk yields, fat yields, protein yields, fat percent, protein percent, somatic score and 15 linear type traits for 10,218 first parity cows collected by Dairy Cattle Improvement Center, National Agricultural Cooperative, Korea, which were calving from January 2009 to April 2013. Genetic and error (co)variances between two traits selected form 19 traits were estimated using bi-trait pairwise analyses with WOMBAT package. The estimated heritabilities for milk yield(MY), fat yield(FY), protein yield(PY), fat percent(FP), protein percent(PP), somatic cell score(SCS), udder depth(UD), udder texture(UT), median suspensory(MS), fore udder attachment(FUA), front teat placement (FTP), rear attachment height(RAH), rear attachment width(RAW), rear teat placement(RTP), front teat length(FTL), foot angle(FA), heel depth(HD), bone quality(BQ), rear legs side view(RLSV), rear legs rear view(RLRV) and locomotion(LC) were 0.128, 0.144, 0.100, 0.273, 0.333, 0.090, 0.179, 0.066, 0.104, 0.109, 0.127, 0.099, 0.059, 0.069, 0.154, 0.014, 0.010, 0.052, 0.065, 0.175 and 0.031, respectively. Among the genetic correlations, UD, UT, FTP, RAW, FTL, FA and RLSV with MY were -0.334, 0.271, 0.445, 0.544, 0.076, -0.281 and -0.228, respectively, and MS, FTP, RTP, FTL, FA, BQ, RLSV, RLRV and LC with PP were -0.147, -0.182, -0.262, -0.136, 0.355, 0.311, 0.135, 0.233 and 0.143, respectively. Especially, MY had the highest positive genetic correlation with RAW (0.544), while SCS had the highest negative genetic correlation with LC (-0.603). FP had negative genetic correlation with most udder traits, whereas, FP had positive genetic correlation with leg and hoof traits (0.056 - 0.355).

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.779-787
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• 2011

This study was conducted to evaluate the usefulness of ground-based remote sensing for the estimation of rice yield and application rate of N-fertilizer during growing season. Dongjin-1, Korean cultivar of rice was planted on May 30, 2006 and harvested on October 9, 2006. Chlorophyll content and LAI (leaf area index) were measured using Minolta SPAD-502 and AccuPAR model LP-80, respectively. Reflectance indices were determined with passive sensors using sunlight and four types of active sensors using modulated light, respectively. Reflectance indices and growth rate were measured three times from 29 days to 87 days after rice plating and at harvesting day. The result showed that values of growing characteristics and reflectance indices were highly correlated. Growing characteristics to show significant correlation with reflectance indices were in order of followings: fresh weight > N uptake > dry weight > height > No. of tiller > N content. Chlorophyll contents measured by chlorophyll meter (SPAD 502) showed high correlation with nitrogen concentration (r=$0.743^{**}$), although the correlation coefficients between remote sensing data and nitrogen concentration were higher. LAI was highly correlated with dry weight (r=$0.931^{**}$), but relationship between LAI and nitrogen concentration (r=$0.505^*$) was relatively low. The data of CC-passive sensor were negatively correlated with those of the near-infrared. NDVI correlation coefficients found more useful to identify the growth characteristics rather than data from single wavelength. Both passive sensor and active sensor were highly significantly correlated with growth characteristics. Consequently, quantifying the growth characteristics using reflectance indices of ground-based remote sensing could be a useful tool to determine the application rate of N fertilizer non-destructively and in real-time.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.43-61
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• 2016

Customer reviews help potential customers make purchasing decisions. However, the prevalence of reviews on websites push the customer to sift through them and change the focus from a mere search to identifying which of the available reviews are valuable and useful for the purchasing decision at hand. To identify useful reviews, websites have developed different mechanisms to give customers options when evaluating existing reviews. Websites allow users to rate the usefulness of a customer review as helpful or not. Amazon.com uses a ratio-type helpfulness, while Yelp.com uses a count-type usefulness index. This usefulness index provides helpful reviews to future potential purchasers. This study investigated the effects of sentiment and readability on useful votes for customer reviews. Similar studies on the relationship between sentiment and readability have focused on the ratio-type usefulness index utilized by websites such as Amazon.com. In this study, Yelp.com's count-type usefulness index for restaurant reviews was used to investigate the relationship between sentiment/readability and usefulness votes. Yelp.com's online customer reviews for stores in the beverage and food categories were used for the analysis. In total, 170,294 reviews containing information on a store's reputation and popularity were used. The control variables were the review length, store reputation, and popularity; the independent variables were the sentiment and readability, while the dependent variable was the number of helpful votes. The review rating is the moderating variable for the review sentiment and readability. The length is the number of characters in a review. The popularity is the number of reviews for a store, and the reputation is the general average rating of all reviews for a store. The readability of a review was calculated with the Coleman-Liau index. The sentiment is a positivity score for the review as calculated by SentiWordNet. The review rating is a preference score selected from 1 to 5 (stars) by the review author. The dependent variable (i.e., usefulness votes) used in this study is a count variable. Therefore, the Poisson regression model, which is commonly used to account for the discrete and nonnegative nature of count data, was applied in the analyses. The increase in helpful votes was assumed to follow a Poisson distribution. Because the Poisson model assumes an equal mean and variance and the data were over-dispersed, a negative binomial distribution model that allows for over-dispersion of the count variable was used for the estimation. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression was used to model count variables with excessive zeros and over-dispersed count outcome variables. With this model, the excess zeros were assumed to be generated through a separate process from the count values and therefore should be modeled as independently as possible. The results showed that positive sentiment had a negative effect on gaining useful votes for positive reviews but no significant effect on negative reviews. Poor readability had a negative effect on gaining useful votes and was not moderated by the review star ratings. These findings yield considerable managerial implications. The results are helpful for online websites when analyzing their review guidelines and identifying useful reviews for their business. Based on this study, positive reviews are not necessarily helpful; therefore, restaurants should consider which type of positive review is helpful for their business. Second, this study is beneficial for businesses and website designers in creating review mechanisms to know which type of reviews to highlight on their websites and which type of reviews can be beneficial to the business. Moreover, this study highlights the review systems employed by websites to allow their customers to post rating reviews.