FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE WELFARE STATE IN THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA: PROCESS OF REFORM OF THE PUBLIC ASSISTANCE SYSTEM

The legal framework for social security in the Republic of Korea began to be formed in the early 1960s (the first period) and further progress was made during the process of democratization in the 1980s (the second period). However, it remained a “top‐down” residual system, preserving conservative elements. With the constitutional lawsuit over the right to life in 1994 as a turning point, however, there was a major shift to a universal system, supported by “bottom‐up” efforts through petitions to the National Assembly and legislation by Assembly members. This led to the enactment of the Framework Act on Social Security (1995), the National Basic Livelihood Security Act (1999) and other measures (the third period). This paper attempts to analyze the Korean‐style welfare state by tracking these institutional changes as well as the main actors.     

Economic analysis of the introduction of the MVNO system and its major implications for optimal policy decisions in Korea

This study analyzes the anticipated economic effects arising from the introduction of the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) system in the mobile communications service market. For the analysis, actual data (or estimated data)—such as price elasticity, the number of subscribers, traffic volume, rate, and access charge—were combined with an assumption about a competition scenario in the future market. Based on this analysis, consumer surplus, and change in the service provider's profits were estimated according to the type of policy that may be adopted for the MVNO system by the regulator. The results of the analysis indicate that consumer surplus appears to increase largely because of the reduction of the mobile service rate by the promotion of “service-based competition,” which occurs upon adoption of an MVNO policy in the mobile communication service market. Moreover, the introduction of an MVNO system into the mobile communication market seems to be socially beneficial regardless of policy type if access charges are set reasonably by a cost-plus or retail-minus method. In particular, in order to make sense of the introduction of a special MVNO, whether by the cost-plus method or the retail-minus method, the correct discount rate must be used in setting an access charge between the special MVNO and the significant market power (SMP) mobile network operator (MNO).     

Perceived stakeholder influences and organizations’ use of environmental audits

While the use of internal, external, and both types of environmental audits are becoming more pervasive in society, little is known about the stakeholder influences associated with their use, in large part because previous research has viewed them as a uniform type of management practice. This study draws on stakeholder theory to explore organizations’ use of different types of environmental audits. It uses international manufacturing data to show that significant variations in the use of environmental audits are associated with differences in stakeholder influences, and that a more nuanced treatment is needed when evaluating these audits.     

The identification of new service opportunities: a case-based morphological analysis

Typically, firms try to differentiate their products through the integration of innovative services. For this reason, much recent research into new service development has focused on methods of identifying and generating new service ideas. The most prevalent method for generating a new service is a morphological analysis that decomposes a system into several dimensions and values, and then recombines those values to generate new services. Despite the popularity of morphological analysis, how to build morphological matrix has been an area of subjective expert judgment. In this paper, we focused on the possibility to utilize the big data to the morphological analysis to address the subjective morphological building process, by suggesting a case-based morphological analysis. By employing case-based reasoning and network analysis, firms can easily identify direct and indirect clues for the new services and integrate these results to the morphological building processes. To support this approach, this study first employs a case-based reasoning strategy to collect and identify similar services, and then assesses the patterns in those services through network analysis. By engaging in network analysis, firms can identify key aspects of new services, and determine what kinds of keywords or aspects should be employed for the dimensions and values of morphological matrices.     

A stochastic patent citation analysis approach to assessing future technological impacts

The anticipation and forecast of technological changes are of vital importance, as technological advances become increasingly fast and complex. What is at the core is identification of the current technologies that will drive technological changes over the coming few years. In this respect, numerous approaches have been devised to assess future technological impacts based on patent citation information, but do not provide a fair reflection of dynamic and idiosyncratic aspects of technological impacts as they are deterministic methods based on simple citation counts. We propose a stochastic patent citation analysis that can assess future technological impacts in a time period of interest by employing the future citation count as a proxy. At the heart of the proposed approach is a Pareto/NBD (Negative Binomial Distribution) model for taking into account the dynamic and idiosyncratic aspects of technological impacts. A patent citation matrix is first constructed for each time unit with citation patterns of the past. The future technological impacts are then derived by Pareto/NBD sub-model and gamma–gamma sub-model. A case study of the display technology patents is presented to illustrate the proposed approach. We believe our method can be employed in various research fields, from narrow patent valuation, to broad technological analysis and planning.     

Demand forecasting for new media services with consideration of competitive relationships using the competitive Bass model and the theory of the niche

New broadcasting services such as Internet protocol TV (IPTV) have been totally revolutionizing the broadcasting industry; thus, the prediction of the degree of diffusion of new media services is a major topic of interest for both governments and providers. This paper proposes a new approach towards demand forecasting for new services with no data and with consideration of competitive relationships with existing services. The underlying model of the proposed approach is the competitive Bass model, which is the most widely used competitive diffusion model. The competition coefficients of the model are estimated by introducing the theory of the niche. The theory of the niche, which originates from ecology, has often been used as a framework for examining competition patterns in the media industry. This study develops a new integrated measure, competitive superiority, by modifying and combining the two conventional measures of the theory of the niche, viz., niche overlap and niche superiority. The competition coefficients are then obtained by adjusting the values of competitive superiority to be incorporated in the model based on the relationship between competition and imitation effects. A case of Korean digital broadcasting services is presented to illustrate the proposed approach.     

Monetary Policy Regime Shifts and Uncovered Interest Parity Revisited: The Euro–US Dollar Exchange Rate

ABSTRACT

To explore possible sources of the well-documented uncovered interest parity (UIP) violation in the foreign exchange market, this paper scrutinizes structural changes in monetary reactions to inflationary pressure in the conventional approaches to nominal exchange rate and examines how this small but important change has an effect on the empirical implications of the UIP condition. In addition to some salient features found in the euro exchange rate, by introducing occasional monetary policy regime shifts into an otherwise standard open-economy dynamic general equilibrium model, we found some important findings that potentially help better understand exchange rate dynamics. During the entire sample period, 1999:M1–2014:M8, exchange rate disconnect puzzle still exists. However, sub-sample analysis suggests that relatively passive monetary reaction implying less frequent intervention by monetary authority tends to be more consistent with the UIP relation. Simulation results support the empirical regularities.     

Bank concentration and financial constraints on firm-level investment in Europe

This study examines the effect of bank concentration on financing constraints of non-financial firms in 14 European countries between 1992 and 2005. Using firm-level data we analyze financial constraints with the Euler equation derived from the dynamic investment model. We find that with a highly concentrated banking sector firms are less financially constrained. This result is robust to consideration of firm opacity, firm size, and business cycle. Relaxation of financial constraint while greater for firms in less opaque industries also accrues for firms in more opaque industries. Greater bank concentration is associated with less tight financial constraint during both expansions and recessions. Results overall are consistent with an information-based hypothesis that more market power increases banks’ incentives to produce information on potential borrowers. Findings are robust to consideration of country specific institutional factors.     

Using patent information for designing new product and technology: keyword based technology roadmapping

With the rapid change in markets and technologies, it is becoming essential for firms to develop new products constantly. This can most successfully be achieved by using technology roadmaps (TRMs), which are effective tools for connecting product and technology planning. However, TRMs generally tend to overstate the qualitative and expert-dependent knowledge rather than incorporating quantitative and objective information. This paper proposes a new approach where patent data are used in a quantitative methodology to support reliable decision-making in roadmapping processes. In this study, text-mining techniques were utilized to extract the relevant information on which portfolio, co-word, and network analyses were carried out. The results were three types of product-technology maps that can be applied to specific roadmapping steps. The suggested approach is expected to yield useful information about roadmapping, and help improve the overall effectiveness and quality of the technique.