AGAINST THE COLONIZATION OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT: The Top-dong Right to the City Movement in Jeju,South Korea

The Top-dong Movement was an extensive residents’ resistance mobilization against the Top-dong Public Water Reclamation project in the late 1980s in Jeju, South Korea. Starting as a local female divers’ struggle for subsistence, the Top-dong Movement grew into a collective action to reveal the illegalities of the project, demand that profits should be fairly shared and assert self-determination. State-led development of Jeju in the post-Korean war period functioned to render the island an extractive periphery during South Korea's capitalist modernization. Within that context, the Top-dong reclamation project exemplifies how urban development projects create colonial conditions in local communities by dispossessing them of land and the means of subsistence, commodifying public resources and extracting profits. Jeju islanders reacted by claiming specific rights: female divers’ collective rights to public water and the means of livelihood against dispossession; local residents’ rights to control developmental profits against extraction; and islanders’ rights to participate in decision-making processes against exclusion. Bridging Lefebvre's two concepts—colonization and the right to the city, this article argues that the historically situated, place-based right to the city movement revealed the colonization involved in urban development and performed practices of decolonization.     

The importance of research teams with diverse backgrounds: Research collaboration in the Journal of Productivity Analysis

Journal of Productivity Analysis - The Journal of Productivity Analysis (JPA) is a pioneering academic journal that aims to develop new methodologies for efficiency and productivity measurement and...     

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.     

Class struggle and economic fluctuations: VAR analysis of the post-war US economy

Building on Marx’s insights in Chapter 25, Volume I of Capital, an augmented version of the cyclical profit squeeze (CPS) theory offers a plausible explanation of macroeconomic fluctuations under capitalism. The pattern of dynamic interactions that emerges from a 3-variable (profit share, unemployment rate and nonresidential fixed investment) vector autoregression estimated with quarterly data for the postwar U.S. economy is consistent with the CPS theory for the regulated (1949Q4--1975Q1) as well as for the neoliberal periods (starting in 1980 or in 1985). Hence, the CPS mechanism seems to be in operation even under neoliberalism.     

The Role of Chonsei as a Price Protector in the Korean Housing Market

In this study, we investigate whether ‘Chonsei,’ the distinctive type of housing contract system in Korea, has a favorable impact on house prices during a market downturn. We show the mechanism in which Chonsei prevents a sharp drop in house prices based on sellers’ loss aversion behavior. Moreover, using data on the Seoul condominium (i.e. apartment) market during the 2006–2017 period, we find that Chonsei prices have a negative impact on the housing trade volume in a market recession. This finding is consistent with our argument that loss aversion behavior appears with regard to the rise in Chonsei prices and thereby Chonsei functions as a price protector in the Korean housing market.     

The effect of job stress on the quality of life of commercial pilots: Testing the mediating effects of mindfulness and job satisfaction

The commercial pilots responsible for aircraft and passenger safety are exposed to various environmental job stresses. This study investigates the relationship between job stress and the quality of life of commercial pilots, and examines the mediating effects of mindfulness and job satisfaction in the relationship between job stress and quality of life. The results show that the job stress aced by commercial pilots has a negative impact on quality of life, and that mindfulness and job satisfaction partially mediates this stress. However, despite the mediating effects of mindfulness and job satisfaction, there is a need for a way to reduce job stress more directly. These results indicate the need for various strategies, including direct and indirect methods, to reduce job stress among commercial pilots, as this is directly related to safety.     

A simple continuous measure of credit risk

This paper introduces a simple parameterization for the risk-neutral default probability distributions for risky firms that are easily computed from quoted bond prices. The corresponding expected times to default have a particularly simple form and are proposed as a measure for credit risk. Being continuous in nature, times to default provide a much finer measure of risk than those provided by ratings agencies. Comparison with the ratings provided by Moody's and the distance to default measures calculated using the Merton [Merton, R. (1974). On the pricing of corporate debt: the risk structure of interest rates. Journal of Finance, 2(2), 449-470] model shows that the highest rank correlation is found between the proposed time to default measure and Moody's ratings.     

The Effect of IPO Risks on Auditors’ Decisions: Auditor Designation Case

This study examines the effect of audit risks in the Korean initial public offering (IPO) market on the designated auditors’ decisions. The Korean External Audit Act requires firms to switch from incumbent to new auditors designated by the Securities and Futures Commission after the firm announces a future IPO. This study shows the effects of audit risks by examining if the quality of reported earnings and audit fees significantly differs between IPO‐eligible and IPO‐ineligible firms. Empirical tests first show that discretionary accruals are significantly lower for IPO‐ineligible firms than for IPO‐eligible firms in both the IPO designation period and the following review period. We interpret this result to mean that designated auditors evaluate the IPO‐ineligible (and eventually failed) firms’ listing possibility as low. Second, audit fees are higher for IPO‐ineligible firms in the auditor designation period. This reflects the fact that designated auditors are exposed to future audit risks associated with firms’ post‐IPO financial market troubles if IPO‐ineligible firms attempt to go public. Our study contributes to IPO‐related research by showing the effects of auditors’ risk evaluation on discretionary accruals and audit fees. This study also contributes to accounting policymaking regarding auditor independence.     

The effects of retail channel integration through the use of information technologies on firm performance

The ability of information technologies (ITs) to integrate activities and offerings across multiple channels offers a promising opportunity for retail firms to enhance their relationship with their customers and firm performance. Consumers value the flexibility to learn about the available offerings, complete their orders and obtain customer service across different channels in a convenient and integrated manner. Therefore, the retail industry has begun to use IT extensively to automate and integrate business processes across their traditional and online channels. This study examines the impacts of the use of IT by retail firms in integrating channel activities for selling to customers. Our research model argues that retail channel integration through IT should enhance the efficiency and innovation of a retail firm. In turn, these improvements should enhance their overall performance. We also propose that the environmental dynamism would moderate the effects of improvements in efficiency and innovation on firm performance. We draw upon recent theories in organizational resource integration and organizational learning to develop our research model and hypotheses. Based on survey data from 125 multichannel retailers in Singapore, we find that retail channel integration through the use of IT allows firms to not only be efficient in delivering the current offerings, but also be innovative in creating future offerings. Further, we find that environmental dynamism does positively moderate the effects of innovation ability on performance. Our results provide managerial insights for firms involved in digital integration not only in the retail sector but also in other service industries. These findings could also serve as a foundation for further research on service operations management for firms with both physical and online operations.