Estimating Trend Inflation Based on Unobserved Components Model: Is It Correlated with the Inflation Gap?

Building on the work of Stock and Watson (2007), this paper empirically shows that a negative correlation between innovations to trend inflation and the inflation gap plays an important role in the dynamics of postwar U.S. inflation. Additional features that we incorporate in our model include regime‐switching inflation gap persistence and association between inflation and inflation uncertainty. The resulting estimate of trend inflation is smooth, and our model provides superior out‐of‐sample forecasts than Stock and Watson's (2007) unobserved components model with stochastic volatility or than Atkeson and Ohanian's (2001) random walk model does.     

Dynamics of Banks' Capital Accumulation

We construct a dynamic neoclassical model of banking capital where the dynamics are governed by the process of financial capital accumulation and credit risk realizations in a structure where stylized banking characteristics are maintained. This is aimed at focusing on how the profit‐maximizing capital ratio of banks evolves and how it reacts to exogenous shocks particularly so during periods of prolonged downturn of the economy. We examine impulse responses of our model to credit risk shock, business cycle shock, and monetary policy shock. The convergence of financial capital to its optimal level is also explored.     

A Model of Arbitral Decision Making: Facts,Weights, and Decision Elements

This study provides a structural model of arbitral decision making that depicts arbitrators as deciding cases by ascertaining the facts, attaching weights to the facts, and combining the facts and weights to form decision elements that determine their decisions. The model further posits that arbitrators’ biographical characteristics affect their decisions by influencing their fact finding and weight assignments. It also allows for arbitrators’ characteristics to have a direct impact on their decisions. A test of the model indicates that the decision elements determine the arbitrators’ decisions but the arbitrators’ characteristics have a limited impact.     

The Impact of Attribute Importance in the Effects of Option Framing on Choice: Budget Range and Justification as Moderators of Loss Aversion

Loss aversion or an endowment‐based explanation clearly predicts that subtractive option framing (i.e. deleting mode or starting from a full model) will have a stronger effect on choice than additive option framing (i.e. adding mode or starting from a base model). This research examines whether the differential effects of option framing (additive vs. subtractive) on choice vary depending on the importance of attributes that constitute the defaults. Furthermore, this research proposes that consumers’ budget range and justification for choice serve to moderate the differential effects of option framing on choice.     

TRANSACTION COSTS AND EXPORT CHANNELS OF SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES: THE CASE OF KOREA

This paper develops hypotheses concerning firm- and industry-specific factors determining the relative importance to manufacturing exporters of different export channels in relatively high transaction cost Korean small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Data from a Korean SME survey demonstrate the validity of several hypotheses and reveal that most sample SMEs rate the external support for international marketing rather low. The paper offers recommendations for reforming such support.     

INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL FLOWS,BOOM‐BUST CYCLES,AND BUSINESS CYCLE SYNCHRONIZATION IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION

This article documents evidence of business cycle synchronization in selected Asia Pacific countries since the 1990s. We explain business cycle synchronization by the channel of international capital flows and boom‐bust cycles. Using the vector auto‐regression method, we find that most Asian countries experience boom‐bust cycles following capital inflows, where the boom in output is mostly driven by consumption and investment. Empirical evidence also shows that capital flow shocks are positively correlated in the region, which supports the conclusion that capital market liberalization has contributed to business cycle synchronization. (JEL F4)     

Determinants of Labor Market Participation and Wages of North Korean Female Refugees in South Korea

This paper uses data from a survey on 289 North Korean female refugees who arrived in South Korea in 2007 to understand the determinants of their economic adaption in the South Korean labor market. More specifically, we look at the effects of job finding channels and government policies on the labor market participation and wages of these women. We find that job finding through both personal contacts and public employment networks increases the probability of finding employment, but the former, especially job finding through contacts with South Koreans, is the most effective route to finding employment. In addition, jobs with higher wages are acquired in employment attained from South Korean referrals, followed by South Korean government agencies and those from North Korean refugee contacts. We further find that labor market participation is negatively affected by both public benefits and private transfers possibly because of increases in the reservation wages of job seekers.     

INFRASTRUCTURE AND PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY: AN ANALYSIS ON THE KOREAN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

This study estimates an aggregate production function of manufacturing industry using panel data of 11 Korean regions covering 1977–1992. While the previous studies regard infrastructure as a direct input for production, the present study proposes that infrastructure has an effect on actual output by enhancing technical efficiency thereby, reducing the gap between maximum potential output and actual output. To investigate the relationship between infrastructure and technical efficiency, a stochastic frontier approach is applied to Korean manufacturing industry. Confirming the presence of substantial technical inefficiency in production, this study shows that an increase in infrastructure reduces the technical inefficiency level. The study also finds that, contrary to expectation, the industrialized regions are less efficient than the less industrialized ones. (JEL O20, H54, C23)     

Experience Goods, Expectations and Pricing*

This paper studies a peculiar problem involved in the pricing of an 'experience good' whose value is not known to consumers until it is actually consumed It shows that the producer faces an expectational problem that does not arise in the framework of a 'search good'. Noticing a link between markets in earlier and later periods due to the expectational problem, the present paper analyzes equilibrium price patterns when a producer can precommit to a certain future price path and when he cannot It also discusses social welfare implications.