• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.39-48
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• 2022

Purpose: COVID-19 has negatively influenced the financial performance of restaurant firms. Previous literature suggests that the franchising strategy effectively helps restaurant firms recover from difficult business conditions through various methods for expanding business size and enhancing business efficiency. According to risk-sharing theory, restaurant franchisors may minimize operational risks by sharing the risks with their franchisees. For instance, restaurant franchisors could generate more stable cash flow using franchise fees from their franchisees. However, research on the effect of franchise's risk reduction factor on business performance during pandemic is scarce. Thus, this study aims to examine the positive moderating effect of franchising between COVID-19 and restaurants' financial performance. Research design, data, and methodology: Panel data including financial information and franchising status of restaurant firms were collected for analysis. In order to control for unobserved firm-specific factors, generalized least squared estimation in fixed effects model was conducted. Huber-White robust standard errors were used to deal with heteroscedasticity issues. Results: It was found that COVID-19 pandemic has a negative effect on the restaurants' financial performance such as ROA (return on assets), ROE (return on equity), and PM (profit margins), which confirms the findings from existing literature. More importantly, results show that the degree of franchising has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between COVID-19 and financial performance of restaurant firms. This suggests that more active engagement in franchising may decrease negative impacts of COVID-19 on the restaurants' financial performance. Conclusions: The study supports existing literature related to risk-sharing theory, by confirming that pandemics, such as COVID-19, negatively affect financial performance of the restaurants. Furthermore, it was found that franchising strategy can help lessen negative impacts of pandemics on the firm performance. These findings can contribute to the franchise and restaurant management literature by suggesting the role of franchising in reducing business risks, thereby positively affecting financial performance. Moreover, this study offers business managers of franchisors and franchisees insights for utilizing franchising in restaurant risk management. Policymakers may also gain information on aiding restaurant firms during global crisis, such as COVID-19.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.318-328
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• 2007

Purpose: Because it is important to prevent adolescents from becoming involved in smoking, this study was done to explore important factors influencing cigarette use and the increase in smoking frequency. Method: For this study the Korea Youth Panel Survey (KYPS) was analyzed. Because the KYPS is longitudinal, a fixed effect regression method was used to control for the effects of time-independent factors. More specifically, a logistic regression was used to explore factors affecting cigarette use, and a Poisson regression was used to explore smoking frequency. Result: As the adolescents got older, the number of male adolescents who tried smoking increased, while the number of female adolescents who tried smoking decreased. Also, the frequency of cigarette use among male and female smokers increased over time. Significant factors affecting cigarette use were friends who smoked, delinquent behavior, and loneliness at schools. Important factors affecting the increase in smoking frequency were grade (e.g., the 2nd- and 3rd-year of middle school), friends who smoked, delinquent behavior, monthly pocket money, expectation for the highest level of education, and attack tendency. Conclusions: To solve the problems linked to adolescent smoking, it is critical to develop intervention programs that target specific homogeneous subgroups of smokers, and that take into consideration gender difference in smoking and factors affecting levels of smoking behavior.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.291-304
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• 2020

This paper examines the factors that drive temporal income diversification in rural areas of the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, based on a framework that conceptualized diversification as a function of a household's capacity to diversify and incentives (both push and pull factors) to diversify. Drawing from five rounds of the Vietnam Living Standard Measurement Surveys covering a 13-year span (1993-2006), two panel datasets made from five cross-sectional samples are used for the analyses. The data are drawn from the Vietnam General Statistics Office. Both tobit model and Ordinary Least Squares model with random and fixed effects are applied. The main points emerging from the analysis is that income diversification is strongly influenced by household labor capacity. The relationship between household labor capacity and increasing insertion in non-farming wage activities is not driven by unobserved time-invariant factors such as household ability and motivation, but is instead driven by the higher labor capacity of households. In terms of the other household capacity variables, the effect of farm size is much larger in terms of retaining households in traditional occupations as compared to pushing them towards non-farm wage employment. Other variables such as household access to financial capital do not play an important role.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2017

1) Purpose: The goal of this study is to examine the association between independent external financial audits and uncompensated care. Not-for-profit hospitals are required to provide uncompensated care in return for tax exemption. These tax exemption benefits are applied to all activities that contribute to the enhancement of uncompensated care. However, some researchers argue not-for-profit hospitals do not provide uncompensated care as expected by their tax exemption. Thus, this paper examines whether independent external financial audits can help the not-for-profit hospitals to function as designed and ultimately for meeting the objectives of the not-for-profit organization, which are the clearest examples of charitable activities performed by not-for-profit hospitals. 2) Methodology: Panel data analysis was utilized with fixed effect using California hospital financial data from 2002 to 2011. 3) Findings: We found that hospitals receiving independent external financial audits provide more uncompensated care than their counterparts which do not receive audits. 4) Practical Implications: Not-for-profit hospitals provide uncompensated care to people in welfare blind spots. Therefore, they fulfill what governments cannot afford, and play a social role as a ʻnonprofitʼ organization with independent external financial audits.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.249-261
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• 2021

To tranquilize the devastating impact of unnecessary risk-taking behavior of banks towards the economy for maximizing their profits that usually arises due to widely known 'moral-hazard' problem originating from market competition and intensified by bank's limited liability, the banking system is strongly monitored across all countries of the world. The goal of controlling would become more feasible if there exist some self-discipline and motivations which could safeguard the banks' charter value through the mechanism of market discipline. Therefore, our study is aimed to scrutinize the relation between market discipline and charter value of local commercial banks that are registered on the Pakistan Stock Exchange by analyzing a balanced panel data from the year 2007 to 2019. Deposit growth, interbank deposits, and subordinate debt are taken as proxies to measure market discipline whereas Tobin's Q theory is applied for calculating the charter value. Generalized Least Square Regression with Fixed Effect Model is used for evaluation. The outcomes reveal that in the existence of control variables, all proxies of market discipline have a significant positive impact on bank charter value. Our research has important policy implications for monitoring and supervising financial intermediaries for their stability and soundness by offsetting the complications of moral-hazard in the financial systems.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.517-523
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• 2021

Audit quality encompasses the key elements that create an environment that maximizes the likelihood that quality audits are performed consistently. This study aimed to identify the impact of auditing quality on the market value of the manufacturing companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). The analytical method was adopted in this research to extract and collect the necessary data. This study hypothesizes that audit quality leads to an increase in the market value by the offering of high-quality services. The study used the panel data approach to analyze cross-sectional data for 41 industrial companies that included time series data for the period (2019-2019). To test its hypotheses, the study used the fixed-effect model. The study found that the audit quality factors (audit office size, client retention period, auditor's fees, and linking with international audit offices) did not have a significant impact on market value. It found also the positive impact of the audit office size on the market value of the listed companies on the ASE for the period from 2009 to 2019. The study recommended the management of the company realize the importance of contracting with audit offices of large size and good reputation because these offices are more capable of increasing their efficiency, qualifying their employees, and thus be fully prepared for the audit process efficiently and effectively.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.269-282
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• 2019

This study analyzes the effects of participation in the global production network on the income inequality using panel data from 2005 to 2016 for 63 countries. In this study were used fixed effects model with autocorrelation, random effect model with autocorrelation and the GLS method. Results are as follows: First, the economic development level supports the Kuznets hypothesis. And then, the forward participation in global value chains increased income inequality, and the backward participation decreased income inequality. In order to derive more detailed estimation results, we analyzed OECD countries and non-OECD countries. First, OECD countries featured decreased, but increased beyond a certain level as a U-shaped curve, that did not support the Kuznets hypothesis. In contrast, non-OECD countries followed the Kuznets U-curve. Second, participation in the global production network showed that both OECD and non-OECD countries featured increased income inequality. In contrast, backward participation appears to mitigate income inequality both in OECD and non-OECD countries. Finally, the ratio of labor and capital is significant in mitigating income inequality in non-OECD countries in which they feature backward participation in production networks. This can be interpreted as developing economies participate in the global production network due to increased capital accumulation and increased the labor productivity.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.31-41
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• 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the minimum wage policy and the employment labor force in Myanmar by exploring firms' actions such as installing supplementary machines to substitute for labor resources and by addressing gender issues in employment. Research design, data, and methodology: This paper applies a fixed-effect estimation method by using the World Bank's enterprise panel data set surveyed in Myanmar. Results: Findings suggest that the minimum wage reduces both full-time and part-time employment, while the first minimum wage policy increases overall female employment. The adverse impacts are more pronounced for female employees of Joint Venture enterprises and enterprises located in the less-populated regions. Investment in capital such as equipment and machinery increase to substitute for labor after the minimum wage policy implementation; as a result, full-time employment slightly decreases. Conclusions: Appropriate measures concerning the minimum wage policy must be prepared by the government and institutions related to the labor union to serve the well-being of employees. Government of Myanmar should fix the minimum wage in a reasonable period based on the fiscal year for both employers and employees to prevent possible issues and losses resulting from the minimum wage being set.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.143-151
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• 2023

Expanding exports of small and medium-sized companies is crucial for the continuous growth of the Korean economy. Therefore, the government operates various support systems to enhance the export capabilities of these companies. This study aims to analyze the impact of the Korean government's flagship export support system, known as the export initiation support system, on the performance of participating domestic companies. A fixed effect model using panel data was applied to examine the characteristics of 11,099 companies that participated in the export initiation support system from 2016 to 2019. The analysis revealed that the number of exporting countries, employees, and previous export volume had a significant impact on the export amount of participating companies. However, contrary to expectations, the number of overseas marketing participation and the GCL (global competence level) test did not show a significant impact. This study is significant as it provides implications for the development of support projects tailored to the specific needs of small and medium-sized companies, with the goal of improving the export support system.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.15-24
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• 2013

Purpose: With the demand of SPECT/CT increasing, the interest in complex diagnostic information of CT is rising along with the expansion of various studies on potential performance value. But the study on reduction of exposure dose generated by CT is not being conducted enough. Therefore, in this study, the goal is to identify how much dose reduction exists when performing the extremity bone SPECT/CT using the flat-panel CT. Materials and Methods: The extremity bone SPECT/CT was performed with two equipments -BrightView XCT (Philips Healthcare, Cleveland, USA) and Brilliance 16 CT (Philips Healthcare, Cleveland, USA)-to identify the exposed dose and image quality resulted by changing scan parameter (mAs) applying for both equipment respectively. The noise value of image and spatial resolution were measured with AAPM CT phantom. Tube voltage (kVp) was fixed to 120 kVp, tube current (mAs) calculated at different mA (20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80) was applied to both equipments respectively. DLP (dose length product) were calculated at the same distance at respective mAs. Also, we acquired images and % contrast with NEMA IEC body phantom to confirm the effect on image. The output of statistics was analyzed by SPSS ver.18. Results: Regarding AAPM phantom, the noise decreased as the tube current (mAs) increased and flat-panel had less noise than Helical CT. This difference increased at lower dose exposure. As to the evaluation of spatial resolution, we can differentiate the space up to 0.75 mm with both equipments. With scan parameter (mA) growing, the value of DLP increased up to 54-216 mGy cm at flat-panel CT and up to 177-709 mGy cm at Helical CT. Regarding NEMA IEC body phantom, same sphere with varied parameter (mA) shows that similar results. Conclusion: There is no significant differences of image quality in both flat-panel and Helical CT when the scan parameter (mA) is changed respectively. Moreover, we can identify the reduction of exposure dose and confirm %contrast analysis value with maintaining image quality. Therefore, at the extremity bone SPECT/CT requiring high spital resolution without the wide ROI, the flat-panel CT is considered to be more useful and it expected to result in the similar image quality with lower exposure dose compared to Helical CT. Additionally, through this study, we expect to help the reduction of the unnecessary exposure dose.