• Korean small business review
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.173-193
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• 2020

This study analyzes the effects of KOSDAQ-listed firms' convertible bonds, which have recently increased rapidly in number and size. Although KOSDAQ companies are called mid-size companies, KOSDAQ companies belong to SMEs. Furthermore, convertible bonds have traditionally been a critical capital raising tool for SMEs in the US and Europe. In Korea, KOSDAQ companies actively employ convertible bonds. Convertible bonds provide investment incentives for hesitant investors, allowing companies to raise capital at low interest rates. This study analyzes whether capital raising through issuance of convertible bonds by KOSDAQ companies affects their financial constraints. Financial constraints result from incomplete capital markets, which are embedded in most companies and countries.. In particular, financial constraints have a significant impact on the growth and survival of SMEs. The seminal study FHP(1988) is the most important and effective study of firm's financial constraints. We find that FHP's financial constraint measures show that convertible bond issuance would mitigate the financial constraints of KOSDAQ companies. However, the significance of the evidence is not strong.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.66-94
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• 2004

The objective of this study is to examine how to maximize the efficiency of hospital management by minimizing the unit cost of hospital operation. For this purpose, this paper proposes to develop a model of the profit maximization based on the cost minimization dictum using the statistical tools of arriving at the maximum likelihood values. The preliminary survey data are collected from the annual statistics and their analyses published by Korea Health Industry Development Institute and Korean Hospital Association. The maximum likelihood value statistical analyses are conducted from the information on the cost (function) of each of 36 hospitals selected by the random stratified sampling method according to the size and location (urban or rural) of hospitals. We believe that, although the size of sample is relatively small, because of the sampling method used and the high response rate, the power of estimation of the results of the statistical analyses of the sample hospitals is acceptable. The conceptual framework of analyses is adopted from the various models of the determinants of hospital costs used by the previous studies. According to this framework, the study postulates that the unit cost of hospital operation is determined by the size, scope of service, technology (production function) as measured by capacity utilization, labor capital ratio and labor input-mix variables, and by exogeneous variables. The variables to represent the above cost determinants are selected by using the step-wise regression so that only the statistically significant variables may be utilized in analyzing how these variables impact on the hospital unit cost. The results of the analyses show that the models of hospital cost determinants adopted are well chosen. The various models analyzed have the (goodness of fit) overall determination (R2) which all turned out to be significant, regardless of the variables put in to represent the cost determinants. Specifically, the size and scope of service, no matter how it is measured, i. e., number of admissions per bed, number of ambulatory visits per bed, adjusted inpatient days and adjusted outpatients, have overall effects of reducing the hospital unit costs as measured by the cost per admission, per inpatient day, or office visit implying the existence of the economy of scale in the hospital operation. Thirdly, the technology used in operating a hospital has turned out to have its ramifications on the hospital unit cost similar to those postulated in the static theory of the firm. For example, the capacity utilization as represented by the inpatient days per employee tuned out to have statistically significant negative impacts on the unit cost of hospital operation, while payroll expenses per inpatient cost has a positive effect. The input-mix of hospital operation, as represented by the ratio of the number of doctor, nurse or medical staff per general employee, supports the known thesis that the specialized manpower costs more than the general employees. The labor/capital ratio as represented by the employees per 100 beds is shown to have a positive effect on the cost as expected. As for the exogeneous variable's impacts on the cost, when this variable is represented by the percent of urban 100 population at the location where the hospital is located, the regression analysis shows that the hospitals located in the urban area have a higher cost than those in the rural area. Finally, the case study of the sample hospitals offers a specific information to hospital administrators about how they share in terms of the cost they are incurring in comparison to other hospitals. For example, if his/her hospital is of small size and located in a city, he/she can compare the various costs of his/her hospital operation with those of other similar hospitals. Therefore, he/she may be able to find the reasons why the cost of his/her hospital operation has a higher or lower cost than other similar hospitals in what factors of the hospital cost determinants.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.117-127
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• 2017

In recent times the size of the world IPO in general has skyrocketed. Specifically, China's financial market development is becoming important as both the size of China's capital market and the number of companies going public are gradually increasing. This has led to a rapid development of venture vapital(VC) institutions in China for the past couple of decades. This study focuses on one of the three markets of China's Shenzhen Stock Exchange-the Growth Enterprise Board((GEB) hereafter, ChiNext). The ChiNext is established in October, 2009 to enable hi-tech or high growth potential technology companies that find it relatively difficult to fulfil the listing requirements of either the Shenzhen Main Board or Small and Medium Size Enterprise Board(SMEB) to go public. This study covers a three-year period(2012/01/-2015/01) and analyze first day initial return of 83 venture capital-backed companies and 53 non-venture capital-backed companies using T-test. Regression analysis is used as to examine the variables affecting IPO's first-day return. The empirical results are four-fold. First, the level of first day return of venture-backed is significantly lower than non venture capital backed support in the Chinese venture capital market. Second, the level of first-day return of listed companies supported by foreign venture capital is significantly higher than that of companies receiving domestic venture capital support. Third, the firms that have a large number of venture capital firms showed a low level of first-day return. Fourth, regression result for the IPO first-day return which is as dependent variable indicates that the venture capital support(VCAP), number of venture capital(VCNum), offering size(Lnsize) and PER all affect have negative effect on the first day initial return. Also, the venture capital type(VCType), turnover ratio and the the firm type(Tech-firms) statistically affect IPO first day return positively. Finally, by shedding more light on the IPO first-day return, this paper provides meaningful information to investors about the Chinese IPO market.

• 한국산학경영학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.55-72
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• 2004

Before 2003 the companies In Korea should capitalize the interest expenses that are attributable to the acquisition, construction or production of a qualifying assets. However, according to the revised standard which should be applied from 2003, the companies can either capitalize the interest expenses or recognize as an expense when they are incurred. Therefore almost all the companies confronted with the decision making of accounting choices on the interest capitalization. This paper empirically examines which financial characteristics of the companies affect the accounting choice by using logistic regression model and reviews the sufficiency of the foot notes disclosures regarding the capitalized interest. The variables of the financial characteristics are change of debt-equity ratio, borrowing ratio, qualifying assets ratio, firm sire and income smoothing. The results of this study are summarized as follows. First, among the financial characteristics, only qualifying asset ratio has the significant difference between capitalized companies and expensing companies. Second, the results of logistic regression indicate that qualifying asset ratio and firm size have the significant influence on the accounting choices. Therefore, I cannot find the evidence supporting that the companies use the accounting choice to manage the financial ratios.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.233-253
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• 2014

Can the stock market really be predicted? Stock market prediction has attracted much attention from many fields including business, economics, statistics, and mathematics. Early research on stock market prediction was based on random walk theory (RWT) and the efficient market hypothesis (EMH). According to the EMH, stock market are largely driven by new information rather than present and past prices. Since it is unpredictable, stock market will follow a random walk. Even though these theories, Schumaker [2010] asserted that people keep trying to predict the stock market by using artificial intelligence, statistical estimates, and mathematical models. Mathematical approaches include Percolation Methods, Log-Periodic Oscillations and Wavelet Transforms to model future prices. Examples of artificial intelligence approaches that deals with optimization and machine learning are Genetic Algorithms, Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Neural Networks. Statistical approaches typically predicts the future by using past stock market data. Recently, financial engineers have started to predict the stock prices movement pattern by using the SNS data. SNS is the place where peoples opinions and ideas are freely flow and affect others' beliefs on certain things. Through word-of-mouth in SNS, people share product usage experiences, subjective feelings, and commonly accompanying sentiment or mood with others. An increasing number of empirical analyses of sentiment and mood are based on textual collections of public user generated data on the web. The Opinion mining is one domain of the data mining fields extracting public opinions exposed in SNS by utilizing data mining. There have been many studies on the issues of opinion mining from Web sources such as product reviews, forum posts and blogs. In relation to this literatures, we are trying to understand the effects of SNS exposures of firms on stock prices in Korea. Similarly to Bollen et al. [2011], we empirically analyze the impact of SNS exposures on stock return rates. We use Social Metrics by Daum Soft, an SNS big data analysis company in Korea. Social Metrics provides trends and public opinions in Twitter and blogs by using natural language process and analysis tools. It collects the sentences circulated in the Twitter in real time, and breaks down these sentences into the word units and then extracts keywords. In this study, we classify firms' exposures in SNS into two groups: positive and negative. To test the correlation and causation relationship between SNS exposures and stock price returns, we first collect 252 firms' stock prices and KRX100 index in the Korea Stock Exchange (KRX) from May 25, 2012 to September 1, 2012. We also gather the public attitudes (positive, negative) about these firms from Social Metrics over the same period of time. We conduct regression analysis between stock prices and the number of SNS exposures. Having checked the correlation between the two variables, we perform Granger causality test to see the causation direction between the two variables. The research result is that the number of total SNS exposures is positively related with stock market returns. The number of positive mentions of has also positive relationship with stock market returns. Contrarily, the number of negative mentions has negative relationship with stock market returns, but this relationship is statistically not significant. This means that the impact of positive mentions is statistically bigger than the impact of negative mentions. We also investigate whether the impacts are moderated by industry type and firm's size. We find that the SNS exposures impacts are bigger for IT firms than for non-IT firms, and bigger for small sized firms than for large sized firms. The results of Granger causality test shows change of stock price return is caused by SNS exposures, while the causation of the other way round is not significant. Therefore the correlation relationship between SNS exposures and stock prices has uni-direction causality. The more a firm is exposed in SNS, the more is the stock price likely to increase, while stock price changes may not cause more SNS mentions.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.235-259
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• 2014

New product or new technology developments are directly linked to a firm's survival and thus their performance and improvement are gaining attention in the midst of rapidly changing business environment and aggravating competition. However, despite SMEs' significance in the national economy, they are limited in terms of size and resources in possession, so the government provides a variety of supports as a policy. According to a study on the organizational life cycle, a firm's limits and difficulties differ by growth stage, so the supports need to be tailored. Based on the data from 2,575 firms that responded to the "2011 SMEs Technological Statistics," how technological capability level and deviation in the R&D process affect the R&D sales performance was studied. The result of analysis revealed that the technological capability has a positive impact on the R&D sales performance. It was also learned that the relationship between deviation in the technological capability and R&D sales performance was moderated by the government support. For the hypothesis that the government support would have a different moderating effect by growth stage for the impact the technology level has on the R&D sales performance, the empirical analysis showed a different meaningful moderating effect for each growth stage. The theoretical implications of the study are that, instead of a simple relation of dynamics that does not take the growth stages into account, it suggested a more realistic causal relationship model that reflects the complex environment the SMEs are in and that the need for measuring and using the deviation in technological capability as a research variable has been justified. The practical implications are that the government policy for supports can be tailored to a growth stage and that the guidelines have been suggested to effectively use the government funding by encouraging the SMEs in a different growth stage to adapt to the customized policy.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.280-284
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• 2010

Approvals of medical device increase every year as industry of medical device grows. Therefore KFDA keeps trying to improve approval systems. However, the firms of medical device are in trouble due to regulation amendment, a firm of small size, exchange of the person in charge. The staffs of KFDA increase their work load because applicants of approval of medical device aren't used to writing of document. Therefore the firm of medical device in business have a long term. KFDA develops eight guidance document item by item for one-step evaluation and approval for Medical Devices because applicants of approval of medical device write documents easily. KFDA reviewer can carry on quick reviewing in use of this eight guidances. This guidance are improved on satisfaction of applicants of approval of medical device.

• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.85-102
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• 2009

With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.133-159
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• 2011

This study was conducted about the various forms of downsizing in small manufacturing firms such as lay-offs, honorary retirement, wage cuts, reduction of assets, merging of organizations with similar functions. Specially the study was conducted among small manufacturing companies to investigate which factors play a role in deciding which method to use. As result, the study found out the form of downsizing varies according to the characteristics of the small manufacturing companies. In other words, it is the size and the growth form of the company which influences the form of downsizing, rather than the management experience of the company. Based on the result of the study, small firms tend to prefer form of downsizing which will have short term or immediate effect, depending on the condition of their organization. Also, this kind of slim down on workforce has positive effect on the management achievement. However, there is also a negative effect on the moral of the members of the organization and the level of concentration in the work field. Therefore, it is better for small manufacturing companies to seek other long term means to increase its' productivity and renovation in management, and avoid method which will have direct effect on the moral of the members.

• Journal of the Korean Arthroscopy Society
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.99-103
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• 2001

Purpose : The purpose of this prospective study was to evaluate second look arthroscopic finding after osteochondral autograft transfer(OAT) for the treatment of the chondral defect of the knee. Materials & Methods : Fourteen out of forty cases underwent second look arthroscopy after the OAT for the treatment of the chondral defect of the knee. The average age of patients was 34 years. Preoperatively, magnetic resonance imaging was performed in eleven cases and chondral defect was confirmed in nine cases. The site of the chondral defect located at medial femoral condyle at seven, trochlea in four, and lateral fomoral condyle in three cases. The average size of the condral defect was $13\times10mm$, maximum $22\times20mm$. The number of graft was one in eight, two in three, three in two, and five in one case. The average follow-up period was twenty-one months. Second look arthroscopy was performed at six months in almost cases. Results : After the OAT, $86\%$ of cases showed that the consistency of grafted cartilage was firm and $93\%$ of cases showed that grafted cartilage was well incorporated with surrounding cartilage. Conclusion : The results of this study suggest that OAT can be one of treatment modality in the chondral defect of the knee.