Reduced Form Auctions Revisited

This note uses the Theorem of the Alternative to prove new results on the implementability of general, asymmetric auctions, and to provide simpler proofs of known results for symmetric auctions. The tradeoff is that type spaces are taken to be finite.     

The roles of R&D team leaders in Korea: a contingent approach

This study empirically examines the relationship between the role of R&D project leaders and their team performance using data from 87 project teams in 6 R&D organizations in Korea. The results reveal that:
(1) R&D project leaders played five different roles in performing their jobs – strategic planner, team builder, gatekeeper, technical expert, and champion;
(2) All but the champion role of a leader is positively related with project team performance;
(3) However, this relationship between the role of leader and project team performance varies according to the characteristics of R&D project teams and their tasks.
Specifically, it becomes important for a leader to focus less on the team building role as the team gets older. The team building role of a leader, however, is more important for higher performance of relatively certain R&D projects, while for uncertain R&D projects, the strategic planning role appears to be more crucial. Based on these results, this study discusses several managerial and theoretical issues related to the role of a leader in R&D project teams.     

Vertical Specialization and Trade Growth in Northeast Asia

As the global economy has become further integrated, the international production chain has become more sophisticated, with diversified stages of production located in different countries. Economic theorists have argued that the fragmentation of the global production chain is partly attributable to the high growth in international trade over the past several decades. In this study, we examine vertical specialization in China, Japan and Korea, and its contribution to these nations' trade. Using a multilevel model, it is illustrated that vertical specialization has encouraged increases in trade among all three countries. In particular, China's outcome is remarkable considering how recently it became a member of the WTO.     

Corporate Venture Capital and Its Contribution to Intermediate Goods Firms in South Korea*

Set by government, corporate, financial and individual sources, venture capitalists in Korea have adapted themselves to the new and uncertain venture capital market through stand‐alone and syndicated investments. The present study raises questions about whether various financial sources contributed differentially to their portfolio firms during the market boom of 2000. Results show that no single capital source showed better performance, and only corporate venture capitalists contributed to intermediate goods firms. The latter finding might reflect the unique ability of corporate venture capitalists to use vertical value‐chain linkages for their investments.     

Efficiency of the Banking Industry Structure in Korea*

This paper analyzes whether the efficiency of the Korean banking industry has improved since the bank restructuring in 1997, and whether a bank with high efficiency has a larger market share. This paper uses an efficient structure hypothesis model to examine the relationship between the banks' efficiencies and their profitability. The data envelopment analysis method is applied to measure the efficiency and profitability of the banking industry in order to minimize possible bias due to the inflow of public funds for the bank consolidation. The two‐step Heckman selection method is used to correct for survivorship bias in the model. The derived result indicates that banks with higher efficiencies tend to record higher profit. Moreover, higher pure technological efficiency and scale efficiency have a positive effect on a bank's market share and concentration.     

Foreign versus domestic institutional investors in emerging markets: Who contributes more to firm-specific information flow?

Using a large sample of firms listed on the Korea Stock Exchange over 1998–2007, this study investigates whether and how trading by foreign and domestic institu...     

Financing Technological Innovation: Evidence from Patent-Intensive Firms

ABSTRACT

Equityholders of firms with high debt loads have an incentive to underinvest, a distortion that can be most costly for firms with attractive growth options. Using a novel patent-based measure of a firm's growth options, we find that firms issue more equity and shy away from debt financing when they have larger investment opportunities sets. The results are more pronounced among firms in patent-intensive industries. The findings suggest the existence of conflicts of interest between debtholders and equityholders. Our results are consistent with the use of conservative debt policies by technology-intensive firms to mitigate the debt overhang associated with their future growth options.     

Motivations and Use Context in Mobile Tourism Shopping: Applying Contingency and Task–Technology Fit Theories

Mobile tourism shopping is an emerging market, but there is little theoretically based research on the topic. This study investigates the impact of motivations (value, enjoyment, time saving and mobility) on consumer satisfaction by applying contingency and task–technology fit theories in the mobile tourism shopping context. The results show that value and enjoyment have significant effects on satisfaction. Use context is found to have a full mediating role between time saving and satisfaction as well as between mobility and satisfaction. This study offers theoretical and practical contributions to the tourism literature and mobile tourism industry. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Customers’ Risk Factor Disclosures and Suppliers’ Investment Efficiency

This study examines the effect of downstream firms’ (i.e., customers’) risk factor disclosures contained in annual reports on the investment efficiency of upstream firms (i.e., suppliers). We find that more informative disclosures of customers’ risk factors are associated with less under‐ or overinvestment by suppliers. In addition, this inverse association is stronger when the suppliers are at a bargaining disadvantage, when they operate in the durable goods industries, and when they are more concerned about the volatility of future demand. Overall, our results suggest that risk factor disclosures provided by firms in their annual reports contain useful information that could potentially help their suppliers achieve better investment efficiency. Divulgation d'information sur les facteurs de risque des clients et efficience de l'investissement des fournisseurs     

Measuring living standards from the lowest: Height of the male Hangryu deceased in colonial Korea

The living standards in Korea during the colonial period (1910–1945) have been debated for a long time. We explored this problem using the height of the Hangryu deceased, a dead person who did not have any acquaintances to claim the body. We found that the height of male Hangryu deceased, ages 25 to 30, increased by 2.2 cm during the colonial period. This result is consistent with recent quantitative studies measuring income levels or demographic information. However, questions such as when this growth in height started and what initiated this pattern need further investigation.