The Effect of Forward‐looking Criteria and IFRS on the Informativeness of Banks’ Loan Loss Allowances: Evidence from Korea

This study analyses how forward‐looking criteria (FLC) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as well as changes in accounting principles, affect the informativeness of banks’ loan loss allowances. The results indicate that although the relationship between non‐performing loans and loan loss allowances strengthened after the application of FLC, the relationship between non‐performing loans and loan loss allowances weakened and that between net charge‐offs and loan loss allowances strengthened after the application of IFRS, presumably because banks delayed the reflection of insolvent loans on loan loss allowances in the latter case. Moreover, the introduction of IFRS did not improve the ability to predict the future charge‐off scale using loan loss allowances, referred to as the ‘informativeness of loan loss allowances’. This result occurred because IFRS's incurred loss model does not incorporate the impact of macroeconomic situations into loan loss allowances in the early stage, although it does enhance the accuracy of loan loss allowances. By exploring the effect of accounting principles on the determinants of loan loss allowances, this study has implications for the assessment of loan loss allowances, capital adequacy and asset quality for stakeholders such as depositors, creditors, capital markets and financial supervisory authorities.     

Securities Regulation, the Timing of Annual Report Release, and Market Implications: Evidence from China

Using a sample of earnings announcements of Chinese firms in the fiscal years 1994–1999, covering the periods before and after the introduction of a regulation to stagger the release of annual reports, we reassess the relation between earnings news and the timing of earnings announcements. We find that even though the reporting lag has significantly shortened as a result of the regulation, the pattern whereby good news is announced earlier than bad news persists. We then examine the behavior of stock prices before earnings announcements and find some indication of information leakage. These findings suggest that the regulation had the expected effect of reducing reporting delay and earnings release clustering. Yet, it did not appear to reduce the extent of the pre‐announcement leakage of information.     

The Effects of Governance on Classification Shifting and Compensation Shielding

Prior research (e.g., Dechow, Huson, and Sloan 1994 ) documents that, on average, compensation practices appear to shield CEO pay from income‐decreasing special items. In some circumstances, compensation shielding can be efficient. For example, it may encourage CEOs with earnings‐sensitive pay to take an action that reduces current earnings but nevertheless enhances value. Compensation shielding can be inefficient in other circumstances, such as when a board of directors is captured by an overly powerful CEO or the magnitude of negative special items has been overstated (e.g., by shifting core expenses into special items). This paper explores whether strong governance can explain cross‐sectional variation in compensation shielding, and whether stronger governance and auditing are associated with less shifting of expenses. We find that strong corporate governance mechanisms, as captured by board (and committee) independence, the Sarbanes‐Oxley (2002) Act (SOX) and its related governance reforms, and switches to Big 4 auditors, are all associated with less compensation shielding. While our evidence suggests that strong overall governance is associated with a reduction in manipulation of core earnings through classification shifting in the cross‐section, we find inconclusive evidence to suggest that board independence or SOX influence classification shifting.     

Anti‐dumping Duty and Firm Heterogeneity: Evidence from Korea

This study examines the imposition of anti‐dumping (AD) duties on imported products in Korea. We use panel data for Korean firms between 2000 and 2012 and estimate the firm‐level productivity of import‐competing firms before and after AD imposition. Using a difference‐in‐difference framework, we compare firm productivity changes in a treatment group that receives AD protection to a control group that does not. In contrast to recent findings on the effects of AD measures, we find that the average protected firms experience productivity loss during the AD protection period. Examining the changes in external market condition and internal resource allocation during the protection period, such loss appears to be more evident inside highly concentrated import‐competing sectors. Further, we find that protected firms are more likely to reallocate their resources abroad via FDI at the expense of domestic production and investment once they receive temporary protection.     

Narcissism and Empowerment: How Narcissism Influences the Trickle-Down Effects of Organizational Empowerment Climate on Performance

The present study proposes a trickle-down model of employee empowerment in which empowerment climate at the organization level is positively related to the empowering leadership of team leaders and ultimately to individual task performance. Importantly, we hypothesize that team leaders’ and members’ narcissism can respectively inhibit and enable the cross-level empowerment process by affecting the intended distribution of decision-making authority and resources between team leaders and members. The analysis of data from 834 team members of 189 teams in 46 organizations reveals that organizational empowerment climate is positively related to team leaders’ empowering leadership when they are less narcissistic. Empowering leadership is positively related to individual task performance when team members are highly narcissistic. Finally, we observe that the combination of less narcissistic leaders and more narcissistic members is a condition under which the indirect effect of organizational empowerment climate on individual task performance through empowering leadership is positive.     

Determinants of corporate adoption of e-Marketplace: an innovation theory perspective

Despite the growing interest and attention from IT researchers and practitioners, empirical research on the adoption of e-Marketplaces has been limited. This study identifies the factors influencing e-Marketplace adoption from an IT innovation perspective. Innovation, environment, and organization characteristics were tested as determinants of the adoption of an e-Marketplace based on a survey of 39 manufacturing firms. The findings indicate that external pressure and organizational size have positive relationships with organizational adoption of e-Marketplaces. Contrary to the prior innovation research, however, relative advantages did not have a significant impact on the organizational adoption of an e-Marketplace.     

Assessing the impact of green supply chain practices on firm performance in the Korean manufacturing industry

As a growing number of customers tend to view corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a key purchase decision criterion, demands for CSR including environmental sustainability have accelerated in today's business world. To meet such demands, many firms consider embracing environment-friendly business practices. However, many firms are still hesitant to implement those practices due to sceptical views about their real managerial benefits. Although the previous literature confirms the positive link between a firm's commitment to environmental sustainability and its performance, the varying degree of impact of different kinds of environment-friendly supply chain practices on the firm's operational performance is still unknown. To fill the void left by prior research, this paper aims to classify various types of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and then assess the impact of each of these distinct types on the firm's operational performances (especially manufacturing and marketing performance). Also, this paper examines how the firm's organisational profiles such as firm size affect the particular firm's choice of GSCM practices. Our experimental results reveal that the chosen type of GSCM practices influences the firm's performance differently.     

The dual analytic hierarchy process to prioritize emerging technologies

Recently, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been frequently used as a proper tool for a wide variety of decision-making situations in fields such as government, business, industry, healthcare, and education. In this article, we will mainly focus on the use of the AHP to select proper emerging technologies for future R&D at a country level. For successful completion of our project, we propose to use the dual AHP (DAHP) which consists of the regular AHP and the Bayesian type AHP. This DAHP performs useful features when decomposition of the main criteria is desirable but is not technically feasible via the conventional AHP. As an empirical application, appropriate electronic device technologies for future R&D in Korea are found by the DAHP, which reveals that DAHP-led technologies selection (or DAHP-led resources allocation) at a country level is a many-faceted problem.     

A multi-criteria analysis framework including environmental and health impacts for evaluating traffic calming measures at the road network level

Recent interests in both vehicle emissions and public health have facilitated the development of more eco-friendly transportation systems. This study developed a multi-criteria evaluation framework to evaluate the effectiveness of traffic calming measures (TCMs) from the various perspectives at the road network level; operational efficiency, traffic safety, environmental and health impacts. The proposed methodology employs four-step sequential simulation experiments, including driving, traffic flow, emissions, and air dispersion simulations. The results obtained from these four simulations are used to evaluate the effectiveness in terms of safety and operational efficiency in addition to environmental and health impacts. A multi-criteria value function based on the weights estimated from the analysis of an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is applied in the evaluation framework. As an application, chicanes and speed humps widely implemented in Korean school zones were evaluated at the road network level. The proposed simulation-based approach is expected to be effectively used for the decision-making process in selecting better alternatives for TCM.     

Estimating Open Economy New Keynesian Phillips Curve for Korea

We estimate the open economy new Keynesian Philips curve (NKPC) to characterize the inflation dynamics of Korea. While recent studies show that the NKPC holds for the pre‐currency crisis period, the empirical evidence is inconclusive for the post‐crisis period. Has globalization increased the role of global factors relative to domestic factors? Can labor income share still serve as a good measure of real marginal cost following the structural break? To address these issues for the post‐crisis period, we use two types of open NKPC: the relative prices model and the incomplete pass‐through model. The estimation of both models indicates that the forward‐looking behavior is important, and its role is reinforced in an open economy specification. Both NKPC models also show that the external factors are more relevant inflation drivers than the domestic factors.