• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1121-1133
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• 2011

Fair trade has received increasing attention from ethical consumers in the North Trans-Atlantic world. It is a movement establishing alternative trading organizations to ensure minimal returns, safe working conditions, and to provide continuity in the trading relationship for disadvantaged producers, especially women and indigenous people in the South. Despite of the growing fair trade movement in the U.S. and Europe, it is still in the introductory stage in Korea. Although fair trade has gained some attention because of the efforts of activists, most Korean consumers are still unaware of it. This paper is divided into four sections including an introduction and conclusions. In section two, I analysed sales of the fairly traded products and the websites of the fairly traded products sellers. In section three, I proposed two effective recommendations for the better marketing and promotion strategies of fairly traded products. One proposal is for providing consumer information, like fair trade certificates, consumer campaigns, and consumer information of the fair trade sellers' websites analyses. The other is for establishing the infrastructure to promote the consumption of fairly traded products such as consumer education, corporate social responsibility, social enterprise, fair trade town and school, and networking. This study is relavant to academics, non-profit fair trade organizations, manufacturers, retailers and governments.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.83-95
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• 2019

Purpose - This study analyzed the effect of the Trump Government's protectionist trade policies on foreign ownership. Specifically, this study empirically analyzes the hypothesis that foreign ownership will decrease after the Trump Government rather than before the Trump Government. Design/methodology - The hypothesis of this study is based on the expectation that US protection trade policy will negatively affect the profitability of Korean companies. The dependent variable in this study is the foreign ownership ratio, and the independent variable is a dummy variable representing before and after the Trump Government. Multiple regression analysis was performed, including the control variables suggested in previous studies related to foreign ownership. Findings - As a result, foreign ownership increased after the Trump Government rather than before the Trump Government. This study further analyzes whether the main variables affecting foreign investor's decision-making are differences before and after Trump Government. The export ratio, profitability and dividends did not differ before and after Trump Government. However, the level of information asymmetry decreased after the Trump Government than before the Trump Government. This suggests that US protection trade policies do not adversely affect the profitability of Korean companies. However, Korean firms are improving their information environment because US protectionist trade policies can lower profitability and negatively impact capital raising. In this regard, the foreign ownership ratio seems to differ before and after the Trump Government. Originality/value - This study contributes in that it presents data that US protectionist policies can affect Korean corporate governance. This study has implications from the short-term analysis of US protection trade policy.

• 중국학논총
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• no.72
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• pp.101-122
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• 2021

Over the past 20 years, labor standards have been widely used in free trade agreements. The U.S., the European Union and China have all aggressively signed free trade agreements with their trading partners, developing different styles on labor standards. According to the study, the implementation of the KOREa-EU FREE trade agreement has been hampered by ongoing disputes over the terms of the FREE trade agreement and the ILO since the korea-EU free trade agreement was signed. Because in order to break this deadlock, relevant scholars have done a lot of research, but mainly focused on the economic and trade field. Therefore, this paper for the first time systematically studies the substantive focus of disputes over FTA and ILO clauses, and carefully analyzes the domestic law amended by South Korea, and provides suggestions and inspirations for China by drawing lessons from the revision model of South Korea's domestic law. This is from a newperspective: the essence of the korea-EU FTA and ILO disputes is the conflict between international law and domestic law, and the conflict between free trade agreements and human rights protection. It holds that the essence of disputes should be sorted out from the perspective of legal principles and human rights protection, and the free trade and human rights protection should be actively coordinated. In order to make China more actively integrate into the international economy, China should adopt a positive attitude to revise and perfect its own laws, so as to realize the purpose of common development of international trade and human rights protection.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.21-44
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• 2022

Purpose - This study quantifies sources of trade balance dynamics over the business cycle in Korea. Specifically, we quantify the relative importance of domestic and foreign factors on trade balance dynamics using a small open economy real business cycle (SOE-RBC) model and provide policy implications for stabilization policies. Aggregate productivity and interest rate spreads are considered domestic factors affecting the trade balance. A world interest rate (the U.S. interest rate) is considered a foreign factor. Design/methodology - Following Neumeyer and Perri (2005), we build the SOE-RBC model with three types of shocks: aggregate productivity, interest rate spread, and world interest shocks. The model is estimated by the generalized method of moments (GMM) using relevant business cycle statistics. The estimated model is used for quantifying the relative importance of domestic and foreign factors on trade balance dynamics in Korea. Findings - Our main findings can be summarized as follows: 85.64% of the trade balance fluctuations in Korea are explained by domestic factors, the remaining 14.35% by foreign factors. Particularly, trade balance dynamics are mostly accounted for by the change in aggregate productivity shocks (85.58%). World interest rate shocks considerably explain trade balance (14.35%), whereas the role of interest rate spread shocks that represent domestic risks is limited (0.08%). Although aggregate productivity is key in explaining trade balance dynamics in Korea, interest rates still have an essential role. This is because aggregate productivity changes induce interest rate spread variations and, thus, the trade balance significantly. The results suggest that government policies mitigating fluctuations in aggregate productivity would be effective for stabilization policies in Korea by reducing the trade balance volatility. Originality/value - Existing studies on the emerging market business cycle examine mostly Latin American countries, and the main object of the studies is the volatility of consumption rather than trade balance dynamics. Conversely, our study examines Korea rather than Latin American countries. Additionally, we examine sources of trade balance dynamics, which are relatively more important in Korea, rather than those of the volatility of consumption. Hence, we estimate the model to explicitly match moments related to trade balance in the data.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.83-94
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• 2009

This study examined the expectations and attitudes of urban Korean consumers with respect to the Korea-USA Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was drafted on April, 2007. The data were collected through online surveys in which 527 adults answered structured questionnaires. The results showed that the number of consumers who favored the Korea-U.S.A. FTA was almost twice the number of those who objected to it. Most of the consumers surveyed expected not only positive effects but also negative ones from the FTA, and the more consumers expected positive effects from the FTA, the more they tended to have positive attitudes toward the trade agreement. The effects of consumers' individual characteristics on their expectations and attitudes were also analyzed in this experiment.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.45-66
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• 2018

This paper measures the extent of comovements in stock returns between Korea and three major countries (China, Japan and the U.S.) using industry-level data for Korea from 2003 to 2016 in the spirit of the international capital asset pricing model. It also examines what drives the comovements between Korea and the three countries. We find that the comovements of Korean stock returns with those of the U.S. and Japan became smaller after the global financial crisis. In contrast, the comovement in stock returns between Korea and China became larger after the crisis. After an additional analysis, we conclude that trade linkage is the main driver of the comovements between Korea and the three countries.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.303-314
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• 2020

This paper investigates the relationships between bank credit and trade credit with profit of 130 agricultural firms listed on Vietnam's stock exchanges during the period 2008-2014. Using the GMM approach, the paper reveals inverted-U shaped (∩) relationships between bank credit and trade credit with profit. Specifically, the optimal threshold of bank credit and trade credit to total assets of the firms are 0.4173 and 0.2425, respectively. The findings mean that if the ratio of bank credit to total assets exceeds the benchmark of 0.4173, firms should consider restructuring debts to get them back to the benchmark. To do so, firms should withdraw from those business fields that are not of their profession, in addition to liquiditizing unused assets to repay debts and not using short-term credit to invest in long-term projects. Firms may use trade credit wisely when other sources of finance are lacking. In concrete terms, firms can increase trade credit use if the ratio of trade credit to total assets is below 0.2425. Yet, if this ratio goes beyond this benchmark, firms should get back to this benchmark, e.g., keeping a suitable amount of inventory. The implications of this study is to boost firm growth in the proposed way.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.61-68
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• 2021

The exchange rate is considered a tool improving the volume of exports and reducing imports. This paper aims to determine the impact of the exchange rate on exports and imports between Vietnam and the United States in the context of the trade war. The research uses Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) Model in the time-series data from 2010:1 to 2020:9. The ARDL's results support that real exchange rate impact on export and import volumes, but less than the trade war. The trade war helps trade balance increase 0.35%, while the exchange rate increases trade balance 0.191% when the Vietnamese currency devalues 1% in the long run. In the short term, the real exchange rate makes the trade balance decrease. Therefore, the J curve exists between Vietnam and the U.S. The NARDL expresses that the exchange rate is asymmetric both in the short term and the long term. The findings of this study point to two important elements. Firstly, the exchange rate plays a minor role in exports and imports. Secondly, trade war plays a vital role in increasing exports and imports volume between two countries, and the J curve exists between the two countries.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.91-98
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• 2008

It is time-consuming and difficulty to solve the time-cost trade-off problems, as there are trade-offs between time and cost to complete the activities in construction projects and this problems do not have unique solutions. Typically, heuristic methods, mathematical models and GA models has been used to solve this problems. As heuristic methods and mathematical models are have weakness in solving the time-cost trade-off problems, GA based model has been studied widely in recent. This paper suggests the time-cost trade-off optimization algorithm using particle swarm optimization. The traditional particle swarm optimization model is modified to generate optimal tradeoffs among construction time and cost efficiently. An application example is analyzed to illustrate the use of the suggested algorithm and demonstrate its capabilities in generating optimal tradeoffs among construction time and cost. Future applications of the model are suggested in the conclusion.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.41-62
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• 2023

Purpose - This paper examines whether the imposition of countervailing duties by the United States on undervalued foreign currency is legally consistent with the WTO's SCM Agreement. Design/methodology - The study uses a methodology that involves analyzing relevant WTO agreements, prior panel reports, Appellate Body decisions, and other legal documents. Findings - The findings suggest that to impose countervailing duties, certain legal requirements must be met, including financial contribution, benefit, and specificity. The paper also notes that when calculating the benefits of undervalued foreign currency, losses from import activities due to currency undervaluation must be considered. Additionally, classifying all exports to the US under specific industries or business groups is likely to be inconsistent with the SCM Agreement. Originality/value - Even the US countervailing measures on exchange rate subsidies may not comply with WTO regulations due to incorrect calculation of benefits and a lack of specificity, however, it suggests that when intervening in the foreign exchange market, the measures should aim to achieve only minimum policy goals.