Long-run determinant of Korean economic growth: empirical evidence from manufacturing

This paper challenges the recent contrarian view that the phenomenal growth of East Asian NICs is fuelled mainly by the accumulation of production inputs not by TFP growth. To appraise this view, we investigated and re-evaluated South Korean manufacturing growth (1973(Q1)–1993(Q4)). Using Johansen's cointegrating analysis, our results show that South Korean manufacturing appears to have increasing returns to scale in production technology. The ‘learning by doing’ effect defined by Lucas (1988) is empirically supported. This effect appears to be observed as a long-run determinant of South Korean manufacturing growth. Consequently, South Korean manufacturing growth can be described by an endogenous economic growth model, such as the Lucas (1988) model, contradicting the contrarian view.     

How to manage the intensity of comparison in comparative advertising over time

Despite the popularity of comparative advertising (CA) over the past three decades, few studies have explored how to develop this strategy outside the USA. This study reports the results of experiments conducted in South Korea, a country where CA has rarely been used. Two hundred Korean college students were exposed to fictitious advertisements in which the independent variable of comparison intensity (non-comparative/low/medium/high/increasing) and exposure sequence (first/second/third) were manipulated. The dependent variables of attitude towards the brand and purchase interest assessed advertising effectiveness. Results suggest that the effectiveness of comparative advertising in Korea is improved by increasing the intensity of comparison gradually from indirect (low) to direct (high) over time.     

Structural effects of cognitive and affective reponses to web advertisements,website and brand attitudes,and purchase intentions: The case of casual-dining restaurants

This study investigates the structural relationships among responses to website advertisements, website attitudes, brand attitudes, and purchase intentions in the case of web advertisements for casual-dining restaurants. Responses toward advertising (Rad) factors were categorized as cognitive responses and affective responses. The SEM model in LISREL was used to examine the interrelationships among the proposed hypothesized constructs. Several empirical results were obtained. First, Rad had a positive effect on website attitudes. Second, website attitudes had a positive effect on brand attitudes. Third, brand attitudes had a positive effect on purchase intentions. Finally, some discussion and implications of the study are provided.     

Factors affecting successful innovation by content-layer firms in Korea

Technological convergence is changing the division of industries from vertical to horizontal; it has also made user participation easier in information and communication technology industries. To understand this situation, it is necessary to identify the causes of successful innovation. In this research, factors affecting successful innovation by mobile and Internet contents firms were tested from the viewpoint of user-involved innovation. The results show that active user participation in the innovation development process is very important. In addition to being useful to firms, this study points out the need for policies that support users to policy makers.     

Understanding Japanese tourists’ shopping preferences using the Decision Tree Analysis method

This study was designed to assess the factors affecting Japanese tourists’ shopping preference and intention to revisit Korea. The analytical method applied in this study was Decision Tree Analysis, which is under-utilized in tourism studies. A total of 300 questionnaires were collected on the basis of on-site survey method and used for data analysis. Among interesting findings, three groups including ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and spent US$50–300 on shopping’, ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and had a shopping expenditure of US$300–1000’ and ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and had a shopping expenditure of US$1000–5000,’ showed a high level of intention to return to Korea for the purpose of shopping. In addition, two groups ‘those who were interested in shopping in Korea, preferred a shopping mall as a shopping destination, and had an educational level of below high school’ and ‘those who were interested in shopping in Korea, preferred a shopping mall as a shopping destination, and had an educational level of a college graduate or above’ showed a higher level interest in merchandise than in shopping venue attractiveness.     

Die Außenwirtschaft der UdSSR in der zeit von perestrojka

The study of divided government is one of important fields in public choice theory. American voters split their ballots as if intent on preserving divided party control. The U.S. House of Representatives has consistently been Democratic for much of the twentieth century. As indicated by Sprague, it is theoretically true that a number of significant consequences for partisan control of a legislature are entailed by the unequal distribution of seat safety under conditions of high levels of institutionalization. The problem is how to measure the institutionalization of partisan seat safety in a time‐series. The model proposed by Sprague is somewhat awkward and complicated in measuring it. This paper provides a more plausible model and tests empirical data.     

A form of government organization from the perspective of transaction cost economics

Taking the approach of the superfirm, we characterize government organization through six different features. First, citizens are viewed as sovereign owners of a superfirm; elected officials are employees of the sovereign citizens. Second, in analogy to the economic principle of the division of labor and specialization, a division of labor between five independent branches of government is advocated: the legislative, the budgetary, the executive, the law enforcement, and the judiciary branch. Third, we do not suggest a mechanism of checks and balances between government branches but deal with the threat of tyranny using the principle of separation of decision control and decision management developed by Eugene Fama and Michael Jensen. Fourth, with election as a decision control device, we demarcate the constituency of the budgetary branch by age groups to provide an explicit control mechanism for intertemporal and intergenerational trades. Fifth, to strengthen sovereign citizens' decision control, the powers to recall elected chief public servants, to declare emergency and war, to sign into international treaties, and to amend the constitution are vested with a national assembly. Sixth, there is no head of state.     

Associated consistency and equal allocation of nonseparable costs

Summary. We modified the definition of associated game with respect to Hamiache (2001) to characterize the equal allocation of nonseparable costs (EANS) by means of Pareto Optimality(PO), Translation Covariance (TC), Symmetry (SYM), Associated Consistency(AC) and Continuity(CONT).Received: 8 April 2004, Revised: 9 May 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C71.The author is indebted to Clement Wen for many helpful comments and he is also very grateful to a referee who proposed several helpful comments to improve the paper.