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.     

How do storefront window displays influence entering decisions of clothing stores?

Store window displays play important roles in influencing shoppers' store entry decisions and their perceptions of brand/store image. The purpose of this study is to explore how shoppers' perceptions of window displays interact with situational variables in making their store entry decisions. We conducted experimental studies by using merchandise-focused versus artistic storefront window displays under situations comprising of shopping motive types (purchase versus recreational) and cognitive load levels (low versus high). Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of these window displays bounded by the interplay between shopping motives and cognitive loads.     

Regional integration and the international strategies of large European firms

From the perspective of regional economic integration we decompose international strategy into regional integration strategy and three types of global strategy (global sales, global production, and pure global integration). Using 1100 firm-year observations we find that 60% of the largest European firms pursue a regional integration strategy. We also find that global strategies vary. We examine the firm specific factors that affect global strategies. In general, R&D capability determines a global production strategy, whereas firm size and managerial capability determine both a global sales strategy and a pure global integration strategy.     

Parent contribution and organizational control in international joint ventures

Organizational control scholars have recently noted how control use is not singular in organizations, but rather, different types of control are used to achieve different purposes. In international joint ventures (IJVs), we suggest that output, process, and social control are exercised by both foreign and local parent firms. We then hypothesize that a parent firm's usage of these three control types is influenced by its resource contributions. Using a sample of IJVs in China, we find that property‐based contribution is linked with output and process control, and knowledge‐based contribution is related to process and social control. The results also show differences in control practices between foreign and local parent firms. The findings provide important implications for the design and implementation of control systems in IJVs.     

Flexibility in internationalization: is it valuable during an economic crisis?

This study investigates the value of the strategic flexibility provided by firms' international investments during an economic crisis, defined here as an unanticipated significant downturn in the economy. To avoid below‐par performance, firms need to adapt quickly to this significant change in their environment, making real options very valuable to them. Although firms' international investments can potentially provide such flexibility, this issue has not been empirically examined in a context of such dramatic negative change. We consider two types of international investments by firms in this regard, foreign direct investments and export‐related international investments, developing two measures that directly assess the flexibility derived from each that are new to the literature. Based on these measures, we find evidence that both types of international investments provided valuable flexibility for Korean firms during the economic crisis conditions. This study contributes to the literature by showing that firms with real options investments in place have a greater ability to flexibly adapt their overall operations in line with unforeseen negative environmental change, in contrast to firms without such investments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Green tea quality attributes: a cross-cultural study of consumer perceptions using importance–performance analysis (IPA)

This study examined consumer perceptions about green tea quality attributes and consumers’ green tea consumption behavior within major green tea-producing and consuming countries including China, Japan, and Korea. Five factors of green tea quality attributes were revealed through the exploratory factor analysis and were analyzed using importance–performance analysis (IPA). Safety, health, and sensory factors perceived by Chinese consumers as being important and well-performed were positioned in the “Keep Up the Good Work” quadrant. Safety and sensory factors were perceived by Japanese and Koreans as being important, but were less-performed and were placed in the “Concentrate Here” quadrant. Japanese and Koreans considered the health factor as less important and less well-performed and were positioned in the “Low Priority” quadrant. The price/utility and production factors were less important by all consumers. Chinese consumers perceived all five factors as performing very well. However, Japanese and Koreans perceived other factors as performing less acceptable except for the production factor for Korean respondents and the price/utility factor for those Japanese respondents. The production factor was the most influential for drinking frequency and spending for green tea in all three countries, also for the amount purchased by Chinese and Japanese consumers.     

More powerful threshold cointegration tests

Threshold cointegration tests have made a big splash in the literature by allowing for asymmetric adjustment in linear cointegration tests. This paper contributes to this literature by proposing new tests to improve the power of the conventional threshold cointegration tests. The new tests intuitively resolve one of the possible reasons that attribute to the low power of existing threshold cointegration tests and are easy to implement since they do not require any additional information outside of the system. Our simulation results show that the proposed tests improve the power of the existing threshold cointegration tests, especially as the signal-to-noise ratio increases, in contrast to other considered procedures. The efficiency gains are achieved regardless of sample size, the number of cointegrated variables, and the types of threshold specifications. The newly developed tests are applied to examine long-run purchasing power parity in the Pacific nations. In contrast to conventional cointegration tests, the proposed tests found long-run PPP holds in 5 out of 7 countries with appropriate asymmetric adjustments.     

The relationship between the Beveridge–Nelson decomposition and other permanent–transitory decompositions that are popular in economics

The Beveridge–Nelson (BN) decomposition is a model-based method for decomposing time series into permanent and transitory components. When constructed from an ARIMA model, it is closely related to decompositions based on unobserved components (UC) models with random walk trends and covariance stationary cycles. The decomposition when extended to I(2)$I\left(2\right)$ models can also be related to non-model-based signal extraction filters such as the HP filter. We show that the BN decomposition provides information on the correlation between the permanent and transitory shocks in a certain class of UC models. The correlation between components is known to determine the smoothed estimates of components from UC models. The BN decomposition can also be used to evaluate the efficacy of alternative methods. We also demonstrate, contrary to popular belief, that the BN decomposition can produce smooth cycles if the reduced form forecasting model is appropriately specified.     

Green Leather for Ethical Consumers in China and Korea: Facilitating Ethical Consumption with Value–Belief–Attitude Logic

Using an innovative fabrication technique, eco-friendly faux leather (EFFL) has been newly developed as a green leather alternative for the Chinese and Korean markets. Value–belief–attitude logic drawn from the heuristic-systemic model (Zuckmand and Chaiken in Psychol Mark 15(7):621–642, 1998) and value–belief–norm theory (Stern et al. in Environ Behav 27(6):723–743, 1995) is proposed to explicate the consumer acceptance attitudes toward the EFFL product. The findings from the multi-group structural equation modeling analysis of online data (n = 600) support the relevancy of VBA logic in which utilitarian and hedonic value motivate pro-environmental belief, and the EFFL product attributes significantly mediate belief and positive attitude toward the EFFL product. The discrepancies across two countries and two age cohorts are noteworthy when pro-environmental belief and product-related information lead to different consumer VBA processes in specific market segments. This study presents insights which provide novel opportunities for managerial implementations and theoretical advancements in eco-friendly related subjects and issues.     

Interfirm Bundled Discounts as a Collusive Device

This paper investigates whether and how firms competing in price with homogeneous goods (i.e., Bertrand competitors) can achieve supernormal profits using interfirm bundled discounts. By committing to offering price discounts conditional on the purchase of a specific brand of other differentiated good, the homogeneous good suppliers can separate consumers into distinct groups. Such brand‐specific discounts help the firms relax competition and attain a collusive outcome. Consumers become worse off due to higher effective prices. Our result shows that in oligopolies it is feasible to leverage other's market power without excluding rivals.