Social media affordances in entry‐level employees’ socialization: employee agency in the management of their professional impressions and vulnerability during early stages of socialization

This study examined how entry‐level employees interacted with social media during three stages of organizational socialization. They navigated between four different media affordances (persistence, editability, visibility, and association) while experiencing them as both enabling and constraining in different socialization stages. Qualitative interview data analysis revealed during anticipatory socialization, job applicants realized visibility and persistence in relation to institutional and individualized socialization. During encounter, new employees managed personal and professional life boundaries carefully against the association and visibility affordances. Although some participants used both public and enterprise social media for obtaining job‐related information and understanding coworkers and company culture, during metamorphosis, most interviewees adopted passive information seeking strategies and experienced a paradoxical tension between the enabling and constraining affordances of social media. Findings are discussed with regards to employees’ exertion of agency in managing their professional impressions and coping with high levels of uncertainty and vulnerability during early stages of socialization.     

Evidence of a glass ceiling for arts and culture professionals in Korea

Using the five available waves of the Wage Structure Survey data, this study employs quantile decomposition to investigate the existence of a glass ceiling among Korean professionals. The decomposition results for all professional workers show an inverse U-shape, which implies no evidence of a glass ceiling. However, we find a monotonically increasing pattern for arts and culture professionals, indicating strong evidence of a glass ceiling on their labour market. This result implies that, as the wage quantile moves from lower to higher levels, female professionals in arts and culture jobs face significant barriers to career advancement. This analysis supports the recent assertion of UNESCO that gender equality in culture is not immune to inequalities and discrimination.     

Microstructure-based manipulation: Strategic behavior and performance of spoofing traders

We examine how investors strategically spoof the stock market by placing orders with little chance of being executed, but which mislead other traders into thinking there is an imbalance in the order book. Using the complete intraday order and trade data of the Korea Exchange (KRX) in a custom data set identifying individual accounts, we find that investors strategically placed spoofing orders which, given the KRX's order-disclosure rule at the time, created the impression of a substantial order book imbalance, with the intent to manipulate subsequent prices. This manipulation, which made use of specific features of the market microstructure, differs from previously studied forms of manipulation based on information or transactions. Roughly half of the spoofing orders were placed in conjunction with day trading. Stocks targeted for manipulation had higher return volatility, lower market capitalization, lower price level, and lower managerial transparency. We also find that spoofing traders achieved substantial extra profits. The frequency of spoofing orders decreased drastically after the KRX altered its order-disclosure rule.     

Understanding the Benefit Sought by Rural Tourists and Accommodation Preferences: A South Korea Case

Rural tourism has been widely acknowledged for its effectiveness in contributing to rural areas’ development. With strong government support, rural tourism has developed in many countries during the last several decades. This study aims to improve the understanding regarding tourism in Korean rural areas using a segmentation approach. The responses of 442 tourists in 23 rural villages were analyzed. Four segments of tourists were identified based on the different benefits they sought for their vacation in rural establishments. The estimation of a multinomial logit model determined the socio‐demographic characteristics and the preferred accommodations of a rural tourist. Discussions and implications of the detailed findings are provided in the last section. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of perceived behavioral control on the consumer usage intention of e‐coupons

To investigate changes that e‐coupons bring to consumers' coupon usage, the authors of this article developed and estimated models of coupon‐usage intention. The models are based on the theory of reasoned action or the theory of planned behavior. Results show that the theory of planned behavior explains e‐coupon usage intention better than the theory of reasoned action. On the other hand, the intention to use traditional coupons is effectively explained by the theory of reasoned action. Both perceived behavioral control and attitude toward Internet searching have significant effects on the intention to use e‐coupons. Also, heavy users of e‐coupons are different from those of traditional coupons. Light users of traditional coupons have relatively high intention to use e‐coupons if they have more access to e‐coupons. On the other hand, heavy users of traditional coupons have relatively low intention to use e‐coupons if they have less access to them. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Economic Effect of Zoning Regulations on Korea's Small and Medium‐Sized Retailers*

In this paper, we investigated the economic effects of zoning regulations on the retail industry in Korea. We estimated the changes in the number of sales for retail stores using a panel regression analysis for stores in traditional markets. This analysis was conducted to examine the benefit of zoning regulations on retail stores. Our results show that the zoning regulations (called Traditional Commercial Activity Protection Zones) have contributed to an improvement in the actual business performance of small independent retailers. We found that the amount of sales for each store clearly increased on average in the areas designated as Traditional Commercial Activity Protection Zones where there was no market entry of mega supermarket chains (called SSM in Korea). We also present evidence that the effects of this policy differ geographically: the effects were stronger for small and medium cities than for large metropolitan cities. These results suggest that zoning regulations enacted by the government to protect traditional markets and small retailers should also consider regional differences when assessing policy effectiveness.     

Yield curve risks in currency carry forwards

We provide empirical evidence that cross-country yield curve gaps (parallel gap, twist gap, and butterfly gap) are predictive to the expected currency carry premiums using currency forward contracts. We find that the expected currency gains are more notable as these yield curve risk factors at time t indicate short-term bond prices of investment currencies to go up (positive parallel movement, negative twist, and positive butterfly). We also find carry gains are more sensitively affected by cross-country monetary shocks than currency-country inflation pressures and business cycles. Our findings support that cross-country yield curve risk premiums still exist even after considering transaction costs.     

Community-based tourism (TourDure) experience program: a theoretical approach

This research tested the Theory of Planned Behavior model to reveal the formation of tourists’ intention to experience a tour program organized by a local community (i.e. TourDure) by taking the moderating effect of gender and age into account. TourDure is an excellent case of the community-based tourism initiatives in Korea. A field survey was carried out for data collection. Our findings indicated that attitude and subjective norm had a significant impact on intention. Also, destination attachment showed a positive influence on the intention. In addition, subjective norm and attitude was found to be significant across the gender group.     

The disposition effect and investment performance in the futures market

This study examines whether the disposition effect (DE), i.e., the tendency of investors to ride losses and realize gains, exists in the Korean stock index futures market. Using a unique database, we find strong evidence for the DE and explain this in terms of investor characteristics. We also investigate the effect that the disposition bias has on investment performance. There are four main findings. First, individual investors are much more susceptible to the DE than institutional and foreign investors. Second, sophistication and trading experience tend to reduce the DE. Third, the DE is stronger in long positions than in short positions. Finally, there is a negative relationship between the DE and investment performance. This result is consistent with Odean (1998, Journal of Finance, 53, 1775–1798), but contrasts with Locke and Mann (2005, Journal of Financial Economics, 76, 401–444) who find no evidence of any contemporaneous measurable costs associated with the DE. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:496–522, 2009     

The substitution effects of short-term debt for long-term debt on the expected returns of common stocks

The determination of the level of corporate borrowing and the choice of debt maturity are the two most important concerns in the management of capital structure. In this study, we examine analytically and empirically the impact of debt maturity changes on the expected returns of common stocks. Using the US stock market data and financial statement data, we examine the cross-sectional relation between expected returns and financial leverage ratios. We find reliable evidence that common stock expected returns are positively related to the extent of short-term debt financing. The positive relation is significant even after we control for systematic risk, total debt ratio and firm size. The results suggest that an increase in short-term debt which displaces the same amount of long-term debt increases the expected returns of common stocks, possibly because the substitution transfers risk from long-term debtholders to shareholders.The author is from the Department of Business Administration, Han Sung University, Seoul, Korea. This paper is based on my dissertation submitted to the School of Management, SUNY at Buffalo (1991). I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Dosoung Choi, Frank Jen and Michael Rozeff, for their invaluable comments throughout the dissertation research.