Trade liberalization and wage inequality: Evidence from Korea

This paper investigates the heterogeneous income distribution effects of trade liberalization using Korean survey data from years of 2000–2015. Following the Stolper-Samuelson theorem most of previous research studying the effects of trade liberalization on wage differences focus on workers’ characteristics (e.g., skilled or unskilled) while heterogeneity within the same worker group has not been yet substantially investigated. To fill this gap, this paper provides empirical evidence of wage inequality across firms within the same group of workers caused by trade liberalization, potentially implied in the new-new trade models with firm heterogeneity. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) specification, we find that the wages of unskilled workers in Korea have increased since its FTAs with more advanced countries, such as members of EU and the US, came into effect, while the effects on the wages of skilled workers are negative but not statistically significant. We also show that wage effects are heterogeneous across firms within unskilled and skilled worker groups, while the positive effects are statistically significant and largest for unskilled workers in medium-large sized firms. These findings are in line with both traditional and new-new trade models.     

Environmental proactivity,competitive strategy,and market performance: The mediating role of environmental reputation

This article examines the impact of small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) proactive environmental strategy on market performance through the mediating mechanism of environmental reputation. In addition, we investigate the potential moderating role of competitive strategies on the environmental reputation-market performance nexus. Data were collected from 223 SMEs. Using the hierarchical multiple regression analysis, the results show that a proactive environmental strategy positively enhances environmental reputation. Also, the influence of proactively environmental strategy on market performance is mediated by environmental reputation. In addition, our findings show the relationship between environmental reputation and market performance is greater for firms that adopt the differentiation strategy but not significant for firms adopting the low-cost and integrated strategies. Our study offers several theoretical and practical implications.     

Knowledge capital,CEO power,and firm value: Evidence from the IT industry

Disruptive innovation dramatically changes the demand of a product market in the information technology (IT) industry. In response to the impact of disruptive innovation, IT firms that may be eliminated from the competitive race actively develop innovative products and adjust their operating strategies to strengthen their survivability in the fiercely competitive market. Thus, this study explores the factors that affect firm value in the IT industry under the impact of disruptive innovation. The empirical results reveal that knowledge capital and CEO power play crucial roles in explaining firm value. IT firms with powerful CEOs and increased knowledge capital have high firm values. The effects of knowledge capital and CEO power on firm value are especially significant for founder and duality CEO firms. Furthermore, the influence of CEO power is more prominent in periods of financial crisis.     

Application of bootstrap re-sampling method in statistical measurement of sustainability

Sustainability is of essential interest for many organizations and is defined as the ability to maintain existing resources at a certain rate or level when encountered with barriers. Factors affecting sustainability are categorized as enablers (capacities) and barriers (challenges) that have positive and negative effects on sustainability, respectively. To evaluate the status of sustainability, organizations need a measurement method to account for all the aspects of the sustainability classified into social, economic, and environmental tiers. Previously many researchers have provided indexes and measure specific to the studied field, which is not applicable to other areas. Furthermore, the proposed methods fail to cover all the aspects of sustainability. This study investigates a statistical method to measure the sustainability and the application of the bootstrap re-sampling method in order to overcome the problem with normality assumption when the sample size is not large enough and thus develop a more realistic stochastic model. The Bootstrap re-sampling method enables the unbiased estimation of population parameters such as mean and standard deviation. The proposed method is evaluated by comparing its results with those found in the literature.     

Effects of financial constraints on export performance of firms during the global financial crisis: microeconomic evidence from Korea

This study uses a manufacturing firm-level panel data set of South Korea for 2006–2013 to investigate the effect of financial constraints on the export performance of firms, with particular emphasis on the corporate ownership structure. The empirical results show that foreign multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries are not affected by financial constraint during both crisis and noncrisis periods, implying advantages of foreign ownership. However, domestic firms suffer more from financial constraints on exports during crisis years. In particular, domestic firms without parent firms are financially constrained during both crisis and noncrisis periods. However, those with parent firms do not experience financial constraints during noncrisis periods, although they too suffer from them during crisis periods. Thus, parent–subsidiary linkage among domestic firms plays an important role in alleviating financial constraints on export activity in noncrisis years but not as much during crisis years. Therefore, domestic parent firms exhibit less resilience to the global financial crisis, in comparison to foreign MNC parent firms.     

Asymmetric information consolidation and price discovery: Inferring bad news from insider sales

Due to the paucity of sources of negative firm‐specific information, US capital markets have more difficulty identifying and incorporating bad news into stock prices than they do good news. Even though insider selling is a potentially important proxy for undisclosed bad news, researchers have difficulty ex ante identifying information‐based sales due to an inability to separate liquidity‐motivated from information‐based insider trades. We hypothesize that when insiders in multiple firms sell shares of one firm in which they are insiders and at the same time buy shares of other insider portfolio firms, the sale is more likely to be information‐based, since the proceeds are reinvested. Conversely, when an insider sells one firm without purchasing others or sells multiple insider firms the sale is likely liquidity‐motivated. We find that insider sales identified as information‐based using this algorithm are followed by significant negative abnormal returns. Information‐based sales are also more likely to be associated with delistings, earnings declines and earnings restatements. Analysts are also more likely to revise their earnings forecasts downwards for these firms. It is thus possible to ex ante identify insider sales with information content. Our results will be of interest to investors and also to regulators designing insider trading rules.     

For green or not for green? The effect of cooperation goals and type on environmental performance

Although many scholars have demonstrated that companies engaged in collaborations achieve better environmental performance than other companies, existing studies have not analyzed in depth whether this effect changes considering the characteristics of cooperation. Our paper aims to explore whether collaboration with other companies always has a positive effect on environmental performance or whether it depends on cooperation goals, collaboration type, or company size. Empirical analysis based on a sample of 773 European companies demonstrated that an external source of knowledge is an important way to foster firms' environmental proactivity, especially when environmental goals are shared at the basis of collaboration. Second, we verified that companies involved in JVs with environmental goals achieve greater environmental performance than companies that use M&As to acquire external knowledge. Finally, we demonstrated that it is more important for small companies to be involved in environmental collaboration than larger ones.     

How the COVID-19 pandemic affected hotel Employee stress: Employee perceptions of occupational stressors and their consequences

This study sought to examine the impacts of the global coronavirus pandemic on hotel employees’ perceptions of occupational stressors and their consequences. Paired t-tests and structural equation modeling were applied to examine the responses of 758 hotel employees in the United States. The findings showed that occupational stressors after the outbreak of the pandemic consisted of three domains: traditional hotel-work stressors, unstable and more demanding hotel-work-environment stressors, and unethical hotel-labor-practices-borne stressors. The impacts of these stressors differed from the hypothesis that traditional hotel-work stressors positively affect job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The findings showed that job satisfaction and organizational commitment significantly explained job performance, subjective well-being, and prosocial behavior, but they did not significantly influence turnover intention. Hotel employees’ pre-pandemic perceptions of occupational stressors and their consequences also differed significantly from their perceptions after the pandemic had broken out.     

渠道合作情境下合同双元功能对主动和被动投机行为的影响差异研究

基于交易成本理论，在渠道合作情境下，以制造商的合同监督和企业间联合行动为工具测量合同治理的保障功能和协作功能，探讨二者对经销商主动投机行为和被动投机行为的影响差异。通过对512份问卷数据的统计分析，得到以下结论：第一，合同监督有助于抑制经销商的主动投机行为，但对其被动投机行为的影响不显著；第二，企业间联合行动有助于抑制经销商的被动投机行为，但对其主动投机行为的影响不显著；第三，经销商的主动投机行为和被动投机行为均会负向影响合作绩效；第四，经销商的主动投机行为中介合同监督对合作绩效的正向影响，被动投机行为中介企业间联合行动对合作绩效的正向影响。