• Information Systems Review
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.189-212
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• 2023

This study uses various methods, including media analysis, expert interviews, and large-scale surveys, to derive notable digital business trends in 2023. Most trend studies have yet to deal with digital business trends in Korea. They also often have limitations in the objectivity of the results using unclear methods. On the other hand, this study emphasizes the validity of the results by collecting opinions from Korean digital business experts in various fields. First, Korean IT news articles were collected and analyzed through topic modeling analysis. Then, based on the results, interviews were conducted with 13 academic and industrial experts to derive 16 IT business trend candidates. Then, a survey was conducted on 210 experts to finalize the list of Korean IT business trends. Finally, to compare overseas and domestic views, we conducted an additional survey using the items developed by the Society for Information Management, SIM. This study is meaningful in that it drew prospects for digital business trends in consideration of the domestic business environment by scientifically converging various opinions of Korean digital business leaders. Our study contributes to developing strategies for IT technology and IT service business markets.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.87-109
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• 2024

At the 8th Party Congress in 2021, North Korea announced a plan to build 50,000 housing units in Pyongyang, and this paper analyzes the economic effects and related informal costs of of the project. Currently, Pyongyang is experiencing a significant housing shortage. It is estimated that the number of households in Pyongyang increased by 184,000 between 1994 and 2020, while the estimated new housing supply during the period was only 30,000. Pyongyang's 50,000 housing units construction project is characterized by the goal of improving the living conditions of workers, the application of the new city construction method, and the largest state-led housing construction since the Arduous March. The project is expected to generate economic effects such as increasing workers' motivation to work, increasing tourism resources, and generating income from related industries. On the one hand, a significant portion of the construction cost of the 50,000-unit housing project in Pyongyang is passed on to companies and households in the form of informal cost such as quasi-taxes and manpower mobilization. In addition, there may be congestion in the power supply and sewerage facilities that occur when moving in. If these costs are not taken into account, the feasibility of a housing construction project may not be properly assessed, making it difficult to sustain it in the long term.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.62-77
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• 2024

In the maritime shipping industry, imbalance between supply and demand has persistently increased, leading to the utilization of blank sailings by major shipping companies worldwide as a key means of flexibly adjusting vessel capacity in response to shipping market conditions. Traditionally, blank sailings have been frequently implemented around the Chinese New Year period. However, due to unique circumstances such as the global pandemic starting in 2020 and trade tensions between the United States and China, shipping companies have recently conducted larger-scale blank sailings compared to the past. As blank sailings directly impact freight transport delays, they can have negative repercussions from perspectives of both businesses and consumers. Therefore, this study employed Poisson regression models and negative binomial regression models to analyze the influence of maritime freight rate determinants on shipping companies' decisions regarding blank sailings, aiming to proactively address potential consequences. Results of the analysis indicated that, in Poisson regression analysis for 2M, significant variables included global container shipping volume, container vessel capacity, container ship scrapping volume, container ship newbuilding index, and OECD inflation. In negative binomial regression analysis, ocean alliance showed significance with global container shipping volume and container ship order volume, the alliance with container ship capacity and interest rates, non-alliance with international oil prices, global supply chain pressure index, container ship capacity, OECD inflation, and total alliance with container ship capacity and interest rates.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.321-326
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• 2024

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether Big 4 accounting firms contribute to the reduction of earnings management when auditing shipping companies. Generally, it is understood that companies audited by the Big 4 accounting firms engage in minimal earnings management and maintain high audit quality. However, these factors may vary depending on industry and firm size. As a result, this study empirically analyzes the impact of audits conducted by large accounting firms on earnings management within the shipping industry. The Big 4 accounting firms, namely PwC, KPMG, Deloitte, and EY, are the focus of this research. Discretionary accruals are employed as a proxy for earnings management, with the modified J ones model and the performance matched model used to measure discretionary accruals. The analysis, which covers shipping companies listed on KOSP I from 2001 to 2023, reveals that audits conducted by the Big 4 accounting firms do not significantly influence earnings management in the shipping industry. Unlike the general case, it is evident that audits by the Big 4 accounting firms do not play a role in reducing earnings management in shipping companies. This paper is significant as it examines the role of auditors within the shipping industry and presents findings that deviate from commonly known information. Shipping companies should take into consideration that the audit quality of the Big 4 accounting firms may not always be guaranteed when selecting an auditor. Furthermore, supervisory authorities such as the Financial Supervisory Service should engage in oversight based on an accurate understanding of the audit quality offered by the Big 4 accounting firms.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.315-335
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• 2024

This study analyzes the digital business environment in Korea and predicts the digital business trends to be noted in 2024. The study comprehensively reviews the domestic and international ICT market outlook and provides objective and in-depth analysis by compiling opinions from various experts. In particular, through a multi-dimensional approach, it derives practical trends applicable to the local business environment, provides strategic implications considering the characteristics of digital business in Korea, and suggests directions for Korean companies to adapt to the global business environment and strengthen their competitiveness. During the research process, 20 preliminary candidate trends were initially identified by collecting and analyzing reports from major domestic and international market research institutes. We then conducted in-depth interviews with 10 experts from industry and academia to select 15 shortlisted trends from these 20 trends and 10 trends selected from the previous year. Finally, we conducted a large-scale survey of 209 experts from academia and industry, and we selected 11 domestic digital business trends to focus on in 2024. This study, which presents an outlook of digital business trends suitable for the Korean business environment based on a variety of opinions scientifically gathered from Korean digital business leaders, will contribute to understanding IT trends in Korea from a business perspective and their differences from global trends.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.155-167
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• 2024

This study recognized the importance of joint research in the field of artificial intelligence and analyzed the characteristics of the industry-academic-research technological cooperation ecosystem focusing on patents from the perspective of the Techno-Economic Segment (TES). To this end, economic entities such as companies, universities, and research institutes within the ecosystem were identified for 7,062 joint research projects out of 113,289 artificial intelligence patents over the past 10 years filed in IP5 countries since 2012. Next, this study identified the topics of technological cooperation and the characteristics of cooperation. As a result of the analysis, technological cooperation is increasing, and the frequency of all types of cooperation was high in industry-to-industry (40%) and industry-to-university (25.2%) relationships. Here, this study confirmed that the role of universities is being strengthened, with an increase in the ratio of companies with strengths in funding and analytical data, industry and universities with excellent research personnel (9.8%), and cooperation between universities (1.9%). In addition, as a result of identifying collaborative patent research areas of interest and collaborative relationships through topic modeling and network analysis, overall similar research interests were derived regardless of the type of cooperation, and applications such as autonomous driving, edge computing, cloud, marketing, and consumer behavior analysis were derived. It was confirmed that the scope of research was expanding, collaborating entities were becoming more diverse, and a large-scale network including Chinese-centered universities was emerging.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.119-138
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• 2016

Since the Industrial Revolution, which made the mass production and mass distribution of standardized goods possible, machine-made (manufactured) products have accounted for the majority of the market. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing even more expensive handmade products has become a noticeable trend as consumers have started to acknowledge the value of handmade products, such as the craftsman's commitment, belief in their quality and scarcity, and the sense of self-esteem from having them,. Consumer interest in these handmade products has shown explosive growth and has been coupled with the recent development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies. Etsy.com is the world's largest online handmade platform. It is no different from any other online platform; it provides an online market where buyers and sellers virtually meet to share information and transact business. However, Etsy.com is different in that shops within this platform only deal with handmade products in a variety of categories, ranging from jewelry to toys. Since its establishment in 2005, despite being limited to handmade products, Etsy.com has enjoyed rapid growth in membership, transaction volume, and revenue. Most recently in April 2015, it raised funds through an initial public offering (IPO) of more than 1.8 billion USD, which demonstrates the huge potential of online handmade platforms. After the success of Etsy.com, various types of online handmade platforms such as Handmade at Amazon, ArtFire, DaWanda, and Craft is ART have emerged and are now competing with each other, at the same time, which has increased the size of the market. According to Deloitte's 2015 holiday survey on which types of gifts the respondents plan to buy during the holiday season, about 16% of U.S. consumers chose "homemade or craft items (e.g., Etsy purchase)," which was the same rate as those for the computer game and shoes categories. This indicates that consumer interests in online handmade platforms will continue to rise in the future. However, this high interest in the market for handmade products and their platforms has not yet led to academic research. Most extant studies have only focused on machine-made products and intelligent services for them. This indicates a lack of studies on handmade products and their intelligent services on virtual platforms. Therefore, this study used signaling theory and prior research on the effects of sellers' characteristics on their performance (e.g., total sales and price premiums) in the buyer-seller relationship to identify the key influencing e-Image factors (e.g., reputation, size, information sharing, and length of relationship). Then, their impacts on the performance of shops within the online handmade platform were empirically examined; the dataset was collected from Etsy.com through the application of web harvesting technology. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that the reputation, size, and information sharing have significant effects on the total sales, while the reputation and length of relationship influence price premiums. This study extended the online platform research into online handmade platform research by identifying key influencing e-Image factors on within-platform shop's total sales and price premiums based on signaling theory and then performed a statistical investigation. These findings are expected to be a stepping stone for future studies on intelligent online handmade services as well as handmade products themselves. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide online handmade platform operators with practical guidelines on how to implement intelligent online handmade services. They should also help shop managers build their marketing strategies in a more specific and effective manner by suggesting key influencing e-Image factors. The results of this study should contribute to the vitalization of intelligent online handmade services by providing clues on how to maximize within-platform shops' total sales and price premiums.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.21-46
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• 1990

This paper, a sequel to Yoo and Lee (1990), attempts to investigate the interindustry determinants of technical efficiency in Korea's manufacturing industries, and also to conduct an exploratory analysis on the stability of technical efficiency over time. The hypotheses set forth in this paper are most found in the existing literature on technical efficiency. They are, however, revised and shed a new light upon, whenever possible, to accommodate any Korea-specific conditions. The set of regressors used in the cross-sectional analysis are chosen and the hypotheses are posed in such a way that our result can be made comparable to those of similar studies conducted for the U.S. and Japan by Caves and Barton (1990) and Uekusa and Torii (1987), respectively. It is interesting to observe a certain degree of similarity as well as differentiation between the cross-section evidence on Korea's manufacturing industries and that on the U.S. and Japanese industries. As for the similarities, we can find positive and significant effects on technical efficiency of relative size of production and the extent of specialization in production, and negative and significant effect of the variations in capital-labor ratio within industries. The curvature influence of concentration ratio on technical efficiency is also confirmed in the Korean case. There are differences, too. We cannot find any significant effects of capital vintage, R&D and foreign competition on technical efficiency, all of which were shown to be robust determinants of technical efficiency in the U.S. case. We note, however, that the variables measuring capital vintage effect, R&D and the degree of foreign competition in Korean markets are suspected to suffer from serious measurement errors incurred in data collection and/or conversion of industrial classification system into the KSIC (Korea Standard Industrial Classification) system. Thus, we are reluctant to accept the findings on the effects of these variables as definitive conclusions on Korea's industrial organization. Another finding that interests us is that the cross-industry evidence becomes consistently strong when we use the efficiency estimates based on gross output instead of value added, which provides us with an ex post empirical criterion to choose an output measure between the two in estimating the production frontier. We also conduct exploratory analyses on the stability of the estimates of technical efficiency in Korea's manufacturing industries. Though the method of testing stability employed in this paper is never a complete one, we cannot find strong evidence that our efficiency estimates are stable over time. The outcome is both surprising and disappointing. We can also show that the instability of technical efficiency over time is partly explained by the way we constructed our measures of technical efficiency. To the extent that our efficiency estimates depend on the shape of the empirical distribution of plants in the input-output space, any movements of the production frontier over time are not reflected in the estimates, and possibilities exist of associating a higher level of technical efficiency with a downward movement of the production frontier over time, and so on. Thus, we find that efficiency measures that take into account not only the distributional changes, but also the shifts of the production frontier over time, increase the extent of stability, and are more appropriate for use in a dynamic context. The remaining portion of the instability of technical efficiency over time is not explained satisfactorily in this paper, and future research should address this question.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.29-35
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• 1976

In order to estimate sawmill productivities, rates of technical change and optimum combination of production factors, Cobb-Douglas production functions have been derived using data obtained from 96 sample mills in Busan-Incheon, southwestern and northeastern areas. The results may be summarized as follows: 1. There is a tendency of expanding average sawmill size in the areas. The horse-power holdings per mill have been increased at the rates of 91 percent in Busan-Incheon, 7.7 percent in southwestern and 16.9 percent in northeastern areas. This implies that the mills around log-importing ports have made rapid development, compared with those in forest regions. 2. The regression coefficients (production elasticities) of the functions for the year of 1967 in the above three areas are much similar each other, but significant differencies are found in the production functions of 1975. In other words, sawmill productivity was mainly restricted by capital deficiencies in all areas in 1967, but this situation was succeeded only by N-E area in 1975. The range of sum of regression coefficients is 1.0437-1.4214, this indicates increasing rates of return to scale. 3. The annual rates of technical changes in B-I, S-W and N-E areas for the observed period are 17.6, 7.6 and 2.2 percents respectively. Busan-Incheon is the only area where labor productivity is higher than that of capital. 4. The best combination of production factors for maximizing firm's profit is subject to the changes of input and output prices. With some assumptions of prices and costs, the optimum levels of power and labor input in B-I, S-W and N-E areas are 57:17, 427:94 and 192:27.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.99-120
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• 1998

The purpose of this study is to clarify the industrialization process, and locational factors and linkages of manufacturing in Jangyu-Myun, a suburb of Metropolitan Pusan, toward which heavy decentralization of manufacturing from Pusan has been done. Hard data and soft data were used as the basic data. Hard data used for this study were both the statistical data which consists of the number of establishments and employee classified by product type, firm size, organizational type and unit area(dong) which were listed in statistics yearbooks, and the list of the owner's names, addresses, employee number, products and headquarters of firms which were listed in firm directories. Soft data were the results of the interviews with the 53 owners of firms surveyed among the firms selected by Proportional Stratified Sampling Method. The major findings were as follows: (1) Manufacturing location in Jangyu-Myun was regularized in 1980's in which decentralization of manufacturing was activiated. Though the industrialization of study area resulted from the birth, relocation and establishment of branches of the firms originated from the other regions, the relocation of small outer-oriented firms from the central city was the most important factor among them. (2) The main locational factors which induced the decentralizing manufacturing from the central city into Jangyu-Myun are closely related to land, transportation, personal factor, raw material suppliers and market. (3) The differences of important locational factors by the size and organizational type of firms are relevant to the characteristics of manufacturing location. (4) The changes of linkages attendant upon locational changes of firms were not so great and were localized in labor supply and marketing. (5) The strength of linkages is strong in the procurement of materials, in the subcontraction and in the marketing, but not in the ordering. (6) The main factors influencing on the formation of linkages are different by the types of linkages: monopolistic and oligopolistic supply are important in procurement linkages; characteristics of products and production capacity in the subcontraction and ordering; characteristics of products and the subsequent difficulties, in the marketing. (7) With the exception of procurement linkages, the strength of linkages with the outside of the study area are stronger than the linkages with the inside. The strength of linkages with the outside has distance-decay-function and strong linkages with the central city. (8) These spatial characteristics of linkages are different by products type, firm size and organizational type of firms: the spatial ranges of linkages are wider in the multi-location firms than in the single-location firms; the larger the firm size, the wider the spatial range of linkages: there is no consistent trend by products type. In conclusion, some facts described above were proved to be consistent with the results of proceeding studies in the other areas: influence of central city manufacturing relocation on industrialization in the suburb: different decentralization by products type, firm size and organizational types of firms: different locational factors by products type, firm size and organizational types of firms; linkage changes attendant upon locational changes of firms; spatial differences of linkages by products type, firm size and organizational type of firms. Some other factors were proved to be partly consistent: locational factors and spatial characteristics of linkages. Accordingly I think that the results of previous studies on the other areas can be applicable to the explanation of the location and linkage of manufacturing in Jangyu-Myun. For the better explanation on the characteristics of manufacturing decentralization from the central city, more empirical case studies on the location and linkage of manufacturing in the suburb areas are necessary.