• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2015

Among many energy resources, natural gas has recently received a remarkable amount of attention, particularly from the electrical generation industry. This is in part due to increasing shale gas production, providing an environment-friendly fossil fuel, and high risk of nuclear power. Because South Korea, the world's second largest LNG importing nation after Japan, has no international natural gas pipelines and relies on imports in the form of LNG, the natural gas has been traditionally procured by long term LNG contracts at relatively high price. Thus, there is a need of developing an Asian LNG trading hub, where LNG can be traded at more competitive spot prices. In a natural gas spot market, the amount of natural gas to be bought should be carefully determined considering a limited storage capacity and future pricing dynamics. In this work, the problem to find the optimal amount of natural gas in a spot market is formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) in risk neutral environment and the optimal base stock policy which depends on a stage and price is established. Taking into account price and demand uncertainties, the basestock target levels are simply approximated from dynamic programming. The simulation results show that the basestock policy can be one of effective ways for procurement of LNG in a spot market.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.157-169
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• 2015

Objectives : The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of various Republic of Korea policies, including the medicine cost rationalization policy implemented By investigating the management strategy/performance changes of the industry caused by such policies. Methods : Pharmaceutical companies listed on the national stock exchange and the KOSDAQ were examined for 10 years from 2004 to 2013. Their financial statements were collected and market changes before and after drug price policy implementations were compared. Results : From the result of this research, among the medicine related policies, the drug price rationalization policy was found to have a significant effect on business management strategies in terms of safety, profitability and growth potential after its implementation. After the drug pricing transparency policy was implemented, management strategies were affected significantly in terms of safety and profitability. Conclusions : As a result, all of the medicine related policies were found to have regulatory effects. Based on these findings, implications, research limitations and future study plans are presented.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.360-368
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• 2018

Background: The proportion of pharmaceutical expenditure out of total health-care expenditure in South Korea is high. In 2016, 25.7% of national health insurance (NHI) spending was for pharmaceuticals. Given the increasing demands for the access to newly introduced medicines and following increase in pharmaceutical spending, the management of NHI pharmaceutical expenditure is becoming more difficult. Methods: This study analyzed the data claimed to NHI for pharmaceutical reimbursement from 2010 to 2016. Results: The policy implications with respect to the trends and problems in spending by drug groups were elicited. First, the proportion of off-patent drugs spending which were treated to chronic disease was much higher than anti-cancer drug spending. Second, the spending to the newly introduced high-costed medicine increased, however, current price-reduction mechanism was not sufficient to manage their expenditure efficiently. Conclusion: Our system seems to need several revisions to improve the efficiency of pharmaceutical expenditure and to cope with high-costed medicines. This study suggested that the prices of off-patent drugs need to be regularly readjusted and the Price-Volume Agreement System should be operated more flexibly as well.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.31 no.12B
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• pp.1099-1111
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• 2006

As W-CDMA R5(HSDPA) service became recently commercialized in Korea, there is increasing demand for new pricing methodology for the 3G mobile interconnection at the earliest possible time. However, it is hard to find any case of systematic study on it. In this paper, a synthetic investigation into the three aspects of new mobile telecommunication service - technology, market, and regulation - is conducted to verify the validity of new interconnection pricing methodology. As the findings of this research indicate, given the several technological limits of 3G, speed of mobile telecommunication industry evolution, the problem of verifying ex-ante regulations' validity, and the cases of some foreign countries, it is suggested that immediate revision of interconnection policy is not sensible and that the revision is more desirable to be postponed until the maturity of the 3G market or the adoption of All-IP network.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

During the global financial turmoil in 2007-2008, deviation from the covered interest parity (CIP) between the Korean won and US dollar through the foreign exchange swap has escalated in its magnitude beyond 1,000bp in November 2008, and it still persists around 100bp level. In this paper, we examine a newly developed margin based asset pricing model using Kalman filter approach and show that the escalation of the CIP deviation is found to be significantly related to the global dollar funding illiquidity and country-specific funding conditions. Furthermore, we find evidence that the poor funding conditions (or higher margins) are driven by the general money market illiquidity and may lead to higher funding illiquidity, which suggests the reinforcing effects of the liquidity spiral. We also show that the supply of dollar liquidity and improved funding conditions help alleviate the deviations from the parity, however the persistent anomaly is found to be related to the high level of volatility in the FX swap market.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.467-470
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• 2013

Telecommunication cost have been increasing successively in Korean hoseholds and its level is high now. Even though here are a lot of issues related to the high bill of mobile telecommunication services, plausible solutions have not been provided yet. 99% of Koreans use mobile phones and it is the highest rate in the world, but bill is relatively high. This situation may be brought by the government policy selection that it supports three mobile telecom companies systems. Thus least efficient company should be supported to sustain by pricing policy and MVNO cannot come into the market. The government can make mobile pricing system consider revenue and cost only in proper manner and constrain marketing cost in the rational level. And it can reduce mobile bill levels and selection rights of consumers by restraining too much complicated bill system. Fairness of mobile phone bill levels could be achieves by mobile telecommunication structure improvement through active MVNOs and reduction of excessive marketing costs. Mobile bills can be made more acceptable if the base is measured rate system.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.274-285
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• 2021

Objectives: The question of whether the level of fees paid to working environment measurement agencies is appropriate has long been a matter of concern to the government. In addition, measurement institutions express dissatisfaction with their level of compensation, which has a great influence on the evaluation of a subject's policy. This study is intended to find a way to appropriately calculate working environment measurement fees. Methods: We looked at the principle of fee determination as a basic theory of fee calculation used in fee calculation, the legal and academic aspects of the general method of fee calculation, and government cost calculation standards. Furthermore, we reviewed the research methods applied so far to derive a method of calculating fees appropriate for this environment. Results: The working environment measurement environment is different from other commission calculation environments. The other environment is to appropriately calculate the service price provided by a monopoly public enterprise, while the situation is to appropriately calculate the fees provided by competitive private enterprises. Therefore, the service delivery environment and the delivery entity are different. In this case, the appropriate method of calculating service fees would be competitive pricing. There have also been many problems under the method of calculation by service cost. Conclusions: First, the working environment measurement fee requires an accounting correction of endogenous variables. Second, the theory of calculating fees appropriate for this situation is appropriate for competitive pricing that applies to private competitors. Third, the government should make efforts to make the service supply market a fully competitive market while ensuring that the service fee level is determined at the marginal cost level. Fourth, economically, research on marginal cost levels is needed.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.13
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• pp.5531-5536
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• 2015

Background: Increased pricing of cigarettes might be one of the most effective approaches for reducing the prevalence of smoking. This study aimed to investigate the effects of increasing cigarette prices through taxation by a tobacco intervention policy on the changes in smoking prevalence in Korean university students. Materials and Methods: The participants in this study were 23,047 healthy university students aged 18-29 years from a health examination in 2011-2015. We investigated the adjusted prevalence of daily and occasional smoking before and after increasing cigarette prices through taxation. Results: The prevalence of occasional smoking was significantly decreased in 2015 from 2014 in both male (from 10.7% in 2014 to 5.4%) and female (from 3.6% to 1.1%) students, but the prevalence of daily smoking did not decrease significantly. The frequency of individuals who had attempted smoking cessation during the past year was significantly higher among occasional smokers in male students (90.2%) compared with daily smokers (64.9%). For female students, there were no differences in experience of smoking cessation, willingness for smoking cessation, or E-cigarette experience between daily and occasional smokers. Conclusions: We found that a policy of increasing cigarette prices through taxation is associated with decreases in the prevalence of occasional smokers, who have relatively lower nicotine dependence compared with individuals who smoke daily. The results of our study suggest that social support and direct intervention for smoking cessation at the community level are needed for university students alongside the pricing policy.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.91-96
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• 1978

A modeling framework and its computational methodology for an industrial sector of the economy are investigated. The suggested industrial sector model is characterized by a programming (process analysis) representation of a production sector and an econometric estimation of the price sensitive (own and cross-prices) demands. By introducing the price sensitive demands into the process analysis representation of the production sector, it becomes possible to analyze and plan the pricing policy, the optimal production schedules and capacity expansion plans within a single framework. The computational scheme suggested in the report is based on the iterative approach each of which solves a separable convex programming problem.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.493-513
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• 2002

This empirical study analyzed the policy effect of deregulation in oil product prices. To investigate the effect of deregulation, it is tested whether gasoline prices are determined by market power. Also, the role of government in gasoline tax system is investigated. The empirical analysis has been done by using error correction model. The major findings are as follows. First of all, no significant empirical evidence is found to support that the deregulation affects the determination of gasoline prices. Secondly, the short-term CIF elasticity is estimated to be 0.14. This finding implies that if CIF increases 10%, the gasoline prices increase 1.4%. Finally, the investigation on government role in deregulated market shows that the government has still exercise the power of control through the tax system. For example, the government is seemed to increase the gasoline price more than the increase amount caused by the international oil prices and the exchange rates, because of the intention to achieve the internal revenue increases and lead to gasoline conservation.