CSR and the national institutional context: The case of South Korea

The different institutional contexts in which businesses practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) lead researchers to challenge the validity of the extant standardized global approach. This study follows recent studies in employing institutional theory to explore the specific pressures and factors that lead CSR practices to differ between countries, and how they lead to those differences. The study is a detailed qualitative analysis of CSR practice in South Korea, a country with very different value and governance systems from the US and UK where contemporary CSR evolved. Contrary to simplistic expectations, Korea shows a concern for short-termism more than for sustainability; and a normative more than a strategic orientation in its CSR, where CSR lies at a crossroads between implicit and explicit CSR behavior. The practices reflect many Korean institutional factors, but not in simple and direct ways. Institutional factors interact in intricate ways to create complex and dynamic pressures for CSR practice. CSR research needs to consider these interactions and dynamic processes with care and institutional theory can help provide a sufficiently intricate research framework.     

Growth opportunities and trade credit: evidence from Chinese listed firms

Private firms in China have led the explosive growth of the country’s economy, but with restricted or no access to formal financing. It is puzzling that these firms use relatively less trade credit than their counterparts in developed countries. We argue that firms with more growth opportunities should rely mainly on internal financing owing to high asymmetric information, especially in a financial market environment biased towards state-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as China. To explore growth opportunities, these firms may reduce their level of trade credit in the trade-off they face in deciding where to invest. Using panel data of Chinese non-financial listed firms for the period 2003–2013, we find that the relationship between growth opportunities and trade credit (both accounts receivable and payable) is significantly negative and is more pronounced in private firms than in SOEs. Furthermore, we also find that subsequent to the new receivable pledge policy being introduced, Chinese firms with more growth opportunities have higher accounts receivable, but similar levels of accounts payable.     

Modelling land development processes using a sample selection regression

Land value tax has been thoroughly scrutinized as a potential tool in mitigating urban sprawl. However, most studies that have measured the impact of land value tax on land development have focused mainly either on purely new development on vacant land, or on land development on partially developed land such as subdivision development. This study tries to incorporate these two types of residential development conceptually and empirically to make an accurate assessment of the impact of land value tax on land development.     

How do natural and man-made disasters affect international trade? A country-level and industry-level analysis

This study examines the influence of disasters on international trade with a gravity equation model. Four types of disasters will be introduced: natural disasters, technological disasters, political risks, and financial crises. Existing literature implies that any type of disasters can either positively or negatively associated with international trade. The effects of disasters are different across the socioeconomic status of trade pairs and across industries as well as across different types of disasters. Results from country-level and industry-level show that natural disasters reduce international trade flows by raising trading and security costs and hardening borders. In contrast to previous findings, these results show that terrorism activities and technological disasters increase the international trade particularly between developed countries. The econometric specification controls unobserved characteristics of trade pairs and endogeneity problems. Managerial implications and future research are discussed.     

Household Use of Agricultural Chemicals for Soil-Pest Management and Own Labor for Yard Work

In spite of its potential health and environmental risks and contribution to agribusiness, the use of agricultural chemicals for yard care has not been well studied. In our discrete-continuous choice model, estimated with data from a national survey, a household chooses how much money, if any, to initially spend on types of agricultural chemicals and applicators and how much time to subsequently spend on other yard work. Households in big cities or with large gardens are more likely to use organic chemicals. The probability that a household chooses a mix of do-it-yourself and hired applications of synthetic chemicals increases with income, age, and the presence of preschoolers. Among households that apply only synthetic chemicals without hired help, those with young children, with higher incomes, in big cities, and with male heads spend more on the chemicals. The time that such households spend on other yard work increases with expenditures on the chemicals. Cancellation of a pesticide registration might create an extra private cost for households with young children even though the ban might reduce external costs.     

A review of website evaluation studies in the tourism and hospitality fields from 1996 to 2009

This paper reviews website evaluation studies in the tourism and hospitality fields published between January 1996 and September 2009. A website evaluation framework that includes evaluation by phases, evaluation by features, and evaluation by features and effectiveness is developed. The strengths and weaknesses of each method of evaluation are analyzed, and research gaps and future research directions are explored. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

National culture and the revenue-expense matching

Prior studies on the link between country-level cultural aspects and firms' arbitrary accounting practices are scant, and they show mixed results. To gain more insight about the impact of national culture on earnings characteristics, we exploit the matching concept between revenues and expenses, which well reflects managerial estimation and discretion in earnings quality. Using a large sample of 57 countries over the period 1989–2012, we find that (1) the economic association between revenues and expenses becomes stronger in firms from collectivistic and high uncertainty-avoidant countries, (2) the impact of these dimensions of national culture on the matching is more salient for firms from countries characterized by a higher level of accrual accounting, a greater proportion of special-items, and limited openness, and (3) the cultural impact on matching is mainly driven by the correlation between revenue and discretionary expense (i.e., selling, general, and administrative expense). These findings are consistent with the view that national culture plays an informal governance role to influence firms' discretionary accounting choices.     

The Korea-Vietnam trade and the bilateral exchange rate: Asymmetric evidence from commodity trade data

The contribution of the current article is to detect the asymmetric impact that exchange rate fluctuations have on Korea's trade with Vietnam. To this end, the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) process is applied to export and import data disaggregated by 25 commodities. We uncover that the ups and downs of exchange rates have an asymmetric impact on some, though not all, types of Korea's commodities exported to and imported from Vietnam in both the long- and short-run.