An Analysis of Trade Patterns and the Effects of the Real Exchange Rate Movements in East Asia

This article investigates the patterns of vertical specialization in trade among China, Japan and Korea, and the effects of real exchange rate fluctuations under a multistage production process. By extending the models of Yi (2003, 2010), we derive two distinct features of vertical specialization and test them using Time-Varying Parameter (TVP) VAR. We find that a positive shock to China’s final good consumption increases the intermediate goods trade between Korea and China, with expanding magnitude over time. In addition, the positive effect of a real exchange rate depreciation on intermediate goods trade is strengthened through the competitiveness-enhancing channel, with this effect being more pronouncing in Korea-China trade than in Korea-Japan trade.     

The Effects of Oil Price on the Korean Economy: A Global VAR Approach

This article empirically explores the effects of oil price on the Korean economy using a Global VAR model. First, we evaluate the average connectedness of oil price with the Korean domestic variables over the precrisis period. We then investigate the time-varying contribution of oil price to the Korean financial and real sectors during and after the global financial crisis through recursive estimation. It is found that the contribution of oil price becomes very large in the case of real exports, equity prices, and real output, but plays a much less prevalent role in the remaining cases. In the meantime, the time-varying contribution of oil price to the Korean economy has not changed during and after the global financial crisis. Interestingly, we find that the Korean economy is affected mostly by overseas financial conditions in the short-term but it becomes more susceptible to oil price fluctuations in the long run, suggesting that Korea’s reliance on energy imports leaves the economy exposed to volatility in energy prices.     

The Role of Total Factor Productivity Growth in Middle-Income Countries

We examine the importance of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in middle-income countries (MICs) based on cross-country panel data for the period of 1975–2014. We find that TFP growth contributed significantly to a country’s upward transition from middle-income to high-income country group. The TFP growth model reveals that the catch-up effect, human capital, smaller population, weak currency, and research and development growth are significant sources of TFP growth. We do not find a systematic difference in the TFP growth models for MICs. In analyzing the role of factors influencing TFP growth at different income stages, strengthening innovative activities and building innovative capacities are important in overcoming the challenges that MICs face when transitioning to the high-income group. Governments of upper MICs need to initiate reform to motivate innovation by optimizing national R&D systems, and redesigning the educational system to target promoting innovation.     

Debt financing in private and public firms

Using administrative confidential data on the universe of Canadian corporate firms, we compare debt financing choices of private and public firms. Private firms have higher leverage ratios, which are entirely driven by private firms’ stronger reliance on short-term debt. Further, private firms rely more of leverage during economic expansions, while public firms rely on equity financing. Specifically, private firms manage to increase their long-term debt during expansions, while short-term debt is used during downturns. Our findings have implications for a better understanding of the role of asymmetric information in private firms’ capital structure decisions.     

Perceptions of determinants of job selection in the hospitality and tourism industry: The case of Korean university students

ABSTRACT

This study explores the key factors influencing potential employees in the hospitality and tourism industry and examines whether causal relationships between behavioral attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control influence students' job selection. The study suggests that the career decision-making process is related to job selection. A total of 307 responses were analyzed. The results explain individual students' attitudes toward a behavior and perceived behavioral control in the context of their job selection. Attitudes toward a behavior and job selection had significant effects on career decisions. On the other hand, opinions of significant others had no significant effect. Perceived behaviors required to decide on jobs had a significant effect on job selection intentions. Students with internship experience were likely to form positive attitudes toward the hospitality and tourism industry, suggesting internships to be a useful source of a stronger relationship between the industry and job aptitudes of students in hospitality and tourism programs. The results have important implications.     

Reconstructing Urban Politics with a Bourdieusian Framework: The Case of Local Low‐Income Housing Policy

This research aimed to reconstruct a local urban politics and develop a meso–micro‐level model of urban politics through a case study, drawing on a Bourdieusian relational framework. To this end, it investigated the case of local low‐income housing policy — inclusionary zoning — in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. It historicized the path of the local low‐income policy issue through document analysis and qualitative media content analysis. Through multiple analyses, the study revealed that urban politics consists of complex interlinkages among stakeholders with shared values or interests from different social domains, created in order to dominate the policy issue. The study further investigated, on the basis of Bourdieu's concepts of capital and habitus, what elicited different political strategies from key community leaders.     

Impacts of household loan regulation on financial stability: evidence from Korea

The paper examines whether banking regulations and monetary policy contributed to controlling the fragility of household debt in Korea. The results show that housing loan regulations such as debt to income regulation contributed to a lower household debt delinquency ratio. Lowering the target interest rate provided additional stabilisation of the delinquency ratio. It is recommended that the government adopt an appropriate mix of regulation and monetary policy to control household financial fragility. The financial supervisory services need to be involved in managing debt to income regulation and minimising financial instability and financial market distortions. Further, the monetary authority has to adopt a more effective position in controlling the real lending interest rate and the delinquency ratio of household loans. Such a policy mix will improve effectiveness in controlling financial fragility, especially at a time of financial crisis.     

Marrying personality and job resources and their effect on engagement via critical psychological states

This study examined the process by which individuals become engaged with their jobs by integrating seminal engagement theory. More specifically, we suggest that an individual factor (i.e. autotelic personality) and two contextual factors (i.e. feedback environment, job autonomy) interact to predict work engagement through three critical psychological states – namely availability, meaningfulness, and safety. This moderated mediation framework was tested using a cross section of the US population (n = 284); data were collected at two points in time with 3 months in between. Availability and meaningfulness mediated the relationship between autotelic personality and work engagement. Autotelic personality’s indirect effect on work engagement through meaningfulness and safety was conditional such that the nature of feedback environment’s effect depended on job autonomy level. Theory and practice implications are discussed.     

The great divergence on the Korean peninsula (1910–2020)

Before the 1960s, North Korea's GDP per capita was 30%–50% higher than South Korea's due to industrialisation during the 1930s. However, the governments of the two Koreas pursued different goals in the 1960s, which resulted in a reversal. The South Korean government made economic growth its ultimate goal. They did this by self-implementing, adjusting and instituting an export-oriented development strategy. On the other hand, the North Korean government tried to maximise its ability to survive by sacrificing gains from economies of scale. These differences brought about remarkable differences in economic performance. The gap between the two economies has continued to grow since the income level reversal in the 1970s.     

Content analysis of fake consumer reviews by survey-based text categorization

As the influence of online consumer reviews grows, deceptive reviews are a worsening problem, betraying consumers' trust in reviews by pretending to be authentic and informative. This research identifies factors that can separate deceptive reviews from genuine ones. First, we create a novel means of detection by contrasting authentic versus fake word patterns specific to a given domain (e.g., hotel services). We use a survey on a crowdsourcing platform to obtain both genuine and deceptive reviews of hotels. We learned the word patterns from each category to discriminate genuine reviews from fake ones for positively and negatively evaluated reviews, respectively. We show that our All Terms procedure outperforms current benchmark methods in computational linguistics and marketing. Our extended analysis reveals the factors that determine fake reviews (e.g., a lack of details, present- and future-time orientation, and emotional exaggeration) and the factors influencing people's willingness to write fake reviews (including social media trust, product quality consciousness, deal proneness, hedonic and utilitarian consumption, prosocial behavior, and individualism). We also use our procedure to analyze more than 250,000 real-world hotel reviews to detect fake reviews and identify the hotel and review characteristics influencing review fakery in the industry (e.g., star rating, franchise hotel, hotel size, room price, review timing, and review rating).