Climate impacts on geographical changes in the energy industry

Owing to global warming, ice in the Arctic Ocean has shrunk by 2.7% every 10 years since 1978, resulting in tremendous damage. This study uses the Cobb–Douglas production function to analyze the impact of abnormal weather on energy industry production using temperature and precipitation indicators. In particular, the government identified the impact of abnormal weather conditions on manufacturing and public works related to the Korean energy industry. The results showed that the numbers of freezing days and heavy rain days adversely affect public works, whereas hot and cold days and heavy rain days all positively affect the production of coal, petroleum, and chemical products. These results also led to regional risk assessments of the energy industry. This study can help in developing the 2030 industry climate change adaptation plan.     

Asymmetric and leptokurtic distribution for heteroscedastic asset returns: The SU-normal distribution

This paper proposes the S_U-normal distribution to describe non-normality features embedded in financial time series, such as: asymmetry and fat tails. Applying the S_U-normal distribution to the estimation of univariate and multivariate GARCH models, we test its validity in capturing asymmetry and excess kurtosis of heteroscedastic asset returns. We find that the S_U-normal distribution outperforms the normal and Student-t distributions for describing both the entire shape of the conditional distribution and the extreme tail shape of daily exchange rates and stock returns. The goodness-of-fit (GoF) results indicate that the skewness and excess kurtosis are better captured by the S_U-normal distribution. The exceeding ratio (ER) test results indicate that the S_U-normal is superior to the normal and Student-t distributions, which consistently underestimate both the lower and upper extreme tails, and tend to overestimate the lower tail in general.     

Determining factors for the adoption of e-business: the case of SMEs in Korea

This study investigates the determining factors of the successful adoption of e-business by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Korea using survey data. After the major determining factors were identified from the innovation adoption literature and were extracted by applying the principal component analysis to the survey data and by adding the country-specific characteristics of Korea, we conducted empirical analyses to determine the critical success factors for the adoption of e-business by Korean firms. The empirical results which are based on t-tests of the differences between adopters and non-adopters, the linear probability model, and the logit model, all suggest that the important determinants of the successful adoption of e-business by SMEs in Korea are: the CEO's knowledge of information technology (IT)/e-business, relative advantages and benefits from implementing e-business, governmental support, globalization strategy and the North Korean factor. Business size, the cost of e-business adoption and competitive pressure of the industry do not seem to play an important role in the adoption of e-business by Korean SMEs. The policy implications of this study on promoting e-business adoption by SMEs in emerging economies, such as Korea, are also discussed.     

Information and adjustment in a local housing market

Existing studies on bubbles have been mainly concerned with investigating the stationarity properties of stock prices and market fundamentals. We develop a new method of testing for bubbles that relates the bubble component of stock prices to the probability of bursting in the context of the Weibull distribution. There were several eruptions and subsequent collapses of seeming bubbles over the past three decades: 1987 (Black Monday), 2000 (information technology (IT) boom) and 2007 (housing market boom). Using US monthly data for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ series, we have found that the S&P 500 series contained an explosive bubble only during the boom of the housing market that occurred before the 2007 global economic crisis, and the NASDAQ market contained an explosive bubble during the surge of stock prices peaking in 1987 and 2007, although our stationarity tests fail to detect the bubbles. No bubble was found in both the S&P and NASDAQ series during the 2000 IT boom. Our evidence corroborates the criticism that the traditional unit root and cointegration tests may not be able to detect some important class of bubbles.     

Does Trade Expansion Still Promote Employment in Korea?

According to the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson (HOS) model, trade can be an important source of job gains for developing economies, but, conversely, result in job losses for developed economies. Empirical research to date, however, has provided mixed results regarding the direction and size of the employment effects for both developing and developed economies. This paper attempts to evaluate the employment implications of trade for Korea over the 1975–2000 period. Korea merits attention because it has successfully transformed itself from a developing to a semi‐developed economy during this period. Empirical results show that trade has indeed played an important role in enhancing job opportunities in Korea throughout this period, but its role as a job creator has diminished since 1985, suggesting that such a role could soon end, or even reverse.     

A test of the Samuelson Hypothesis using realized range

This study examines the Samuelson Hypothesis, which postulates that futures price volatility increases as the futures contract approaches its expiration. Investigating intraday data and drawing on the recently developed concept of realized range, this study provides empirical evidence regarding the Samuelson Hypothesis for 14 agricultural, metal, energy, and financial futures markets in six futures exchanges. While utilizing a nonparametric test, a simple linear regression model and a system of seemingly unrelated regressions, the study finds strong support for the Samuelson Hypothesis in agricultural futures. In contrast, no support for the Samuelson Hypothesis is observed in any of the metal and financial futures. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:680–696, 2008     

Bankruptcy Prediction: Evidence from Korean Listed Companies during the IMF Crisis

This paper empirically studies the predictive model of business failure using the sample of listed companies that went bankrupt during the period from 1997 to 1998 when deep recession driven by the IMF crisis started in Korea. Logit maximum likelihood estimator is employed as the statistical technique. The model demonstrated decent prediction accuracy and robustness. The type I accuracy is 80.4 per cent and the Type II accuracy is 73.9 per cent. The accuracy remains almost at the same level when the model is applied to an independent holdout sample. In addition to building a bankruptcy prediction model this paper finds that most of firms that went bankrupt during the Korean economic crisis from 1997 to 1998 had shown signs of financial distress long before the crisis. Bankruptcy probabilities of the sample are consistently high during the period from 1991 to 1996. The evidence of this paper can be seen as complementary to the perspective that traces Asian economic crisis to the vulnerabilities of corporate governance of Asian countries.     

On the optimal mix of corporate hedging instruments: Linear versus nonlinear derivatives

We examine how corporations should choose their optimal mix of linear and nonlinear derivatives. We present a model in which a firm facing both quantity (output) and price (market) risk maximizes its expected profits when subjected to financial distress costs. The optimal hedging position generally is comprised of linear contracts, but as the levels of quantity and price‐risk increase, the use of linear contracts will decline due to the risks associated with overhedging. At the same time, a substitution effect occurs toward the use of nonlinear contracts. The degree of substitution will depend on the correlation between output levels and prices. Our model also allows us to provide insight into the relation between a firm's derivatives usage and its transaction‐cost structure. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:217–239, 2003     

中国与越南增值税制比较

中越两国都是在建设社会主义市场经济,实现经济体制转轨的大背景下引进增值税这一税种的,现在都已成为各自的第一大税种.同时两国在增值税纳税人、征税对象、税率、增值税类型、计算方法、进项税额的确定等方面都存在诸多差异.从比较中可以得到一些有益的思考,对于推动我国的增值税改革有着借鉴意义.     

The Role of NSOs in Assuring National Prosperity: A Case Study of Korea

As changes in the socio-economic environment become more rapid, so the role of statistics in society becomes more important. At the same time, the role of a national statistical office (hereafter NSO) as a provider of official statistics attracts increasing interest because the function of an NSO in a country assuredly depends on changes in the economic and social surroundings in pursuit of national prosperity.
In this paper, the strong relationship between the social and economic development of a country and the development of a national statistical office will be explicated using the example of Korea, which has experienced dynamic take-off in both economic and social sectors during the last 40 years. The progress of the Korean NSO will be studied in three time periods by looking at the socio-economic changes in each period, and how the NSO responded. In addition, as the Global Age emerged in the late 1990s, the Korean NSO started to encounter new demands at a time of limited resources and a worsening statistical environment. In light of this, several current issues and corresponding strategies for NSOs will be suggested.