• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.45-55
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• 2024

This study analyzed the efficiency determinants of specialty construction companies by industry using the DEA model and the Tobit model. The analysis targets are 394 specialty construction companies as of 2022. As a result of analysis of efficiency determinants using 12 company characteristics as independent variables, the biggest problem for specialty construction companies was overall efficiency reduction due to rising labor costs. In addition, in a situation where construction companies' loan regulations are severe, the debt ratio was found to have a positive effect on efficiency. Company size had a different impact by industry, and the number of businesses held, credit score, and total capital turnover had an effect only on some industries. This study presents results that are an advance on existing research in that it strategically analyzes factors for improving the efficiency of specialty construction companies. However, it has limitations such as limiting the analysis to only specialty construction companies subject to external audit, insufficient number of companies subject to analysis by industry, and analyzing relative efficiency in the same category for each industry.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.153-163
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• 2017

The objective of this study is to enhance the model's speed of estimating weather variables (e.g., minimum/maximum temperature, sunshine hour, PRISM (Parameter-elevation Regression on Independent Slopes Model) based precipitation), which are applied to the Agrometeorological Early Warning System (http://www.agmet.kr). The current process of weather estimation is operated on high-performance multi-core CPUs that have 8 physical cores and 16 logical threads. Nonetheless, the server is not even dedicated to the handling of a single county, indicating that very high overhead is involved in calculating the 10 counties of the Seomjin River Basin. In order to reduce such overhead, several cache and parallelization techniques were used to measure the performance and to check the applicability. Results are as follows: (1) for simple calculations such as Growing Degree Days accumulation, the time required for Input and Output (I/O) is significantly greater than that for calculation, suggesting the need of a technique which reduces disk I/O bottlenecks; (2) when there are many I/O, it is advantageous to distribute them on several servers. However, each server must have a cache for input data so that it does not compete for the same resource; and (3) GPU-based parallel processing method is most suitable for models such as PRISM with large computation loads.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.177-199
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• 2015

Commerce enriches human life enriched and within commerce, transportation of cargo is arguably the most important in business transactions. Traditionally, marine transport has been major commercial transaction, but carriage cargo by air is on the increase. While the fare for freight in comparison with that of ocean is higher, air freight has many benefits that justify the higher shipping fee; lower insurance premium, packing charges, inventory control, cost management and especially speed. Therefore, air freight transport is accumulating gradually. An air waybill(AWB) is needed in the air transport flow. It is a nonnegotiable security, so the holder cannot transfer of a right to a third party. Some scholars suggest that a negotiable AWB is needed. However, it seems nearly impossible to do so; an e-AWB use shows a gain in numbers, even if it has not met expectations. Going forward, it would appear reasonable to conduct a follow-up study on the utility and legal problem for e-AWB. After sending goods, the consignor has the right of disposition of cargo in some cases, and more research is necessary, because it is related to change of ownership and a trade settlement. According to WATS (World Airlines Transport Statistics), the Korean Air took third place in international freight in 2014, and fifth in total, domestic and international to great acclaim. However, there is a lack of research supporting the business showing. It is hope that more studies on e-AWB, stoppage in transit, and a risk of outstanding amount, etc. connect to develop Korean air freight industry.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.373-404
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• 2011

The purpose of research is to reveal the effect of innovation to enterprises' economic performance. The kind of this study has begun since 1960s and lively progressed then. The fmal theoretical result of the effect of innovation to the performance came positive in compare to the mixed results came out in empirical analysis. There are several reason why empirical results are different to the theoretical results. However the major factor is that of using imperfect statistics and inappropriateness of analysis method. This study used a population (1990~2008) provided from Korean Intellectual Property Office, KIPO for patent and also used a population (1990~2008) provided from Korea Investors Service, KIS for research and development. The contribution of this study is enormous statistical analysis. This study used principal component analysis made innovativeness index for appropriate index sampling, and made effort to minimize the error by using appropriate quantile regression for both to panel analysis and rapidly developed company analysis. Dividing the final results into two parts, the growth and the profit, the effect of technological innovation to the firm's growth is not significant to the panel analysis but heavily significant to the upper 10% of high growth firm. By classifying large company and small and medium enterprise, it is significant to upper 10% of high growth firm for large company and generally significant to small and medium enterprise. But for both lower 10% of low growth firms and 25% of low ranking firms are negatively effected, and for high growth firms larger than the medians are positively effected. Especially for upper 10% of high growth firms are mostly effected. It is more effective to the profitability than the growth. The effect to the profit for every enterprises are not significant, but effected significant to the larger enterprises than 25% of low ranking enterprises especially most effective to the upper 10% of high-profit enterprises. The analysis for the large company, it was significant and positively effected to the upper 10% of high profit enterprises and 25% of low ranking enterprises, but the negatively effected for the low-profit enterprises. For the small and medium enterprises, it is negatively effected for both 10% of low ranking enterprises and 25% of low ranking enterprises. However it is positively effective and significant for the high ranking enterprises than median, especially for those high growth firms. It is meaningful to recognize significancy by quantile, but more implicative result is to finding more effectiveness to the small and medium enterprises than to the large company.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.16-34
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• 1995

This study aims to analyze the impact of cement industry on region change. For this study Maepo-Eub was selected as study area, where three cement factories are located. The data for analysis were obtained from interviews, questionaire surveys and the employee list of each cement factory. The analytic procedures for this study are as follows: 1) The change of regional employment was analyzed by development was industry in terms of the permanent address, education level, occupational status of the employee. 2) The degree of population growth are analyzed by developmental staae of the industry. Some conclusions from this study follows: 1) As these cement factories were built at Maepo in the 1960's, there were plenty of employment opportunities. Thus many technicians and workers flooded in Maepo-Eub. in the 1970's with the expansion of production facilities therewere much more immigrants to the industrial region, while there were outflow in the neighboring rural areas. In the 1980's the opportunity for the employment of cement factories have been decreased due to the introduction of the automation processes and larger, sized machines. Among the employee of three cement factories the native of Chungcheongbukdo (65%; in them Danyang 52%, Jecheon 32%) is dominant, the second is from Kangwon-do (13%), and the third is from Kyungsangbuk-do (11%) adjacent to Chungcheongbuk-do. It means that there are more employment opportunity in the near places of cement factories. 2) In the period of 1960's study area had experineed rapid social increase in population by the development of cement industry. That is, cement industries created new job opportunities and attracted large population concentration into this area. In the period of 1970's the population of the industrial region have increased continuously, while the population of neighboring rural areas have decreased. In the period of 1980's the population of Maepo decreased steadily because of decrease of labour forces through automation and commuting. Thus in the early stage of idustrial development large population concentrated in the neighboring villages of cement factories, and formed residential areas, commercial areas and service areas. As agricultural and was encroached, rural people left their regions to live in the more convenient suburbs. 3) People engaged in cement industry think that cement industry has a favorable influence on regional development, such as creating job opportunity, raising income level, developing business and service sector, and leading high economic growth. While farmers and some people think that cement industries as a pollution causing factories have a harmful influence on regional development, sucha as injuring the crops, causing environmental pollution, and being harmful to health. If pollution problems are solved, I think Maepo will play an important role as a regional center which can offer employment opportunity, business and service function to pheripheral rural areas, and raise a income level.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.1D
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• pp.119-126
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• 2011

High-speed railway raises global interests with the growing concerns on the green development and the green energy. However, since most of the infrastructure investment of Korea was focused on the highway projects for last forty years, the investment on the railway has been limited around 40~50% of that of the highway projects. In addition, due to the world economy crisis and unsatisfactory support of existing policy for the private investment project, the private investment is given a small deal of weight on the social overhead capital investment. Meanwhile, despite the world high-speed railway market is growing rapidly and the Korean contractors have won the international construction contracts over 70 billion USD, past records of railway projects are very rare. Therefore, it is required to develop strategies for encouraging private investment in the domestic market to achieve efficient high-speed railway development and for advancing into foreign high-speed railway market. This study carried out data collection and market analysis for both domestic and foreign market respectively. Through a structured questionnaire survey and expert interviews, contractors' perceptions on the high-speed railway market and needs for the government support are collected. Summary of strategies drawn from this study are as follows: 1) carrying out BTL high-speed railway projects and revising related policies; 2) upwarding incentive level for the private pre-investment projects considering the contractors' credit rating; 3) carrying out Honam-Jeju submarine railway project; 4) establishing a efficient consortium model for foreign market; 5) improving the capacity of the Korea Railway Association that support Korean contractors' foreign advancement; and 6) expand the budget for Global Infra-fund.

• Survey Research
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.1-32
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• 2009

This study examines the changes of income, everyday life and living condition of consumer in the aftermath of financial crisis. In this period financial crisis was the crucial factor behind various social problems such as the dissolution of families and individuals. This research explores the range and degree of impact on individuals and social groups after the financial crisis. We explore the social mobility in terns of maintaining middle class and falling into the lower class measured by middle class identification. The 60% of the middle class before the financial crisis maintained the middle class position and the rest of people left out of middle class and fell into lower class. The 60% of those who has been maintained and has just became the members of middle class were college - educated people. The great part of people whose income and assets has increased after financial crisis belongs to college - educated group. Many of those whose income have decreased belong to the high school educated group and blow, the older than 50 years old, self - employed without employee and unpaid family employee. Those whose income and assets decreased and those who experienced downward mobility have undergone changes in everyday life and living conditions as a consumer. Many of them experienced the unemployment, nonpayment or credit - delinquency, dissolution of family, worsening health condition, depression, feeling the impulse to commit suicide simultaneously. The poor consumer disposition, reduction of living expenses, sound consumer culture have expanded to people since economic crisis. The middle class reported that the cost of private education often goes beyond the family ability to pay. The lower class has suffered from the cost of living. In a meanwhile luxury goods preference, consumer consciousness for status symbol have continuously increased among all the classes since 1997. Thus fluctuations of one's income and social mobility during past 10 years were some of the major determinants which brought about the various damaging life events, changes of living conditions and everyday lives as a consumer.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.181-208
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• 2010

In July 2007, Korean government has passed "The Capital Market and Financial Investment Services Act" to further develop the capital markets and the Act was to become effective in February 2009. Using a large sample of Korean firms, we have examined (i) the effect of underwriting activities on the firm value (bond spread) comparing commercial bank and investment bank, and (ii) the determinants of the firm value changes following underwriting activities of bank. To test our goal, we collected a wide range of samples of data for bond issuing activities executed by Korean firms listed on the Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) between 2000 and 2003. Our paper is distinguished from previous studies on this subject in a way that we analyzed the effect of corporate bond underwriting activities with regard to commercial banking and investment banking. Initially, we set up a hypothesis that "Certification View" and "Conflict-of-interest View" are major driving forces behind cross-firm differences in performance following bond issuance. We find that, in general, underwriting by investment bank (securities company) brings a positive effect on the firm value (spread between bench mark rate and bond issuing rate). This result indicates that firm value has been negatively affected by the bank underwriting and provides the evidence for "Conflict-of-interest View" in Korea. Our studies have also revealed that any change in firm value following bond issuance is positively related with the firm size (total asset), operating performance, liquidity (cashflow), and equity ownership by foreign investors. Overall, our results support the view that bank underwriting activities can play an important role in determining firm value and financial strategies under "The Capital Market and Financial Investment Services Act" of 2007.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.79-99
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• 2015

The prediction of bankruptcy has been extensively studied in the accounting and finance field. It can have an important impact on lending decisions and the profitability of financial institutions in terms of risk management. Many researchers have focused on constructing a more robust bankruptcy prediction model. Early studies primarily used statistical techniques such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and logit analysis for bankruptcy prediction. However, many studies have demonstrated that artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, such as artificial neural networks (ANN), decision trees, case-based reasoning (CBR), and support vector machine (SVM), have been outperforming statistical techniques since 1990s for business classification problems because statistical methods have some rigid assumptions in their application. In previous studies on corporate bankruptcy, many researchers have focused on developing a bankruptcy prediction model using financial ratios. However, there are few studies that suggest the specific types of bankruptcy. Previous bankruptcy prediction models have generally been interested in predicting whether or not firms will become bankrupt. Most of the studies on bankruptcy types have focused on reviewing the previous literature or performing a case study. Thus, this study develops a model using data mining techniques for predicting the specific types of bankruptcy as well as the occurrence of bankruptcy in Korean small- and medium-sized construction firms in terms of profitability, stability, and activity index. Thus, firms will be able to prevent it from occurring in advance. We propose a hybrid approach using two artificial neural networks (ANNs) for the prediction of bankruptcy types. The first is a back-propagation neural network (BPN) model using supervised learning for bankruptcy prediction and the second is a self-organizing map (SOM) model using unsupervised learning to classify bankruptcy data into several types. Based on the constructed model, we predict the bankruptcy of companies by applying the BPN model to a validation set that was not utilized in the development of the model. This allows for identifying the specific types of bankruptcy by using bankruptcy data predicted by the BPN model. We calculated the average of selected input variables through statistical test for each cluster to interpret characteristics of the derived clusters in the SOM model. Each cluster represents bankruptcy type classified through data of bankruptcy firms, and input variables indicate financial ratios in interpreting the meaning of each cluster. The experimental result shows that each of five bankruptcy types has different characteristics according to financial ratios. Type 1 (severe bankruptcy) has inferior financial statements except for EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) to sales based on the clustering results. Type 2 (lack of stability) has a low quick ratio, low stockholder's equity to total assets, and high total borrowings to total assets. Type 3 (lack of activity) has a slightly low total asset turnover and fixed asset turnover. Type 4 (lack of profitability) has low retained earnings to total assets and EBITDA to sales which represent the indices of profitability. Type 5 (recoverable bankruptcy) includes firms that have a relatively good financial condition as compared to other bankruptcy types even though they are bankrupt. Based on the findings, researchers and practitioners engaged in the credit evaluation field can obtain more useful information about the types of corporate bankruptcy. In this paper, we utilized the financial ratios of firms to classify bankruptcy types. It is important to select the input variables that correctly predict bankruptcy and meaningfully classify the type of bankruptcy. In a further study, we will include non-financial factors such as size, industry, and age of the firms. Thus, we can obtain realistic clustering results for bankruptcy types by combining qualitative factors and reflecting the domain knowledge of experts.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.40 no.6 s.275
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• pp.420-427
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• 2007

Background: Postpneumonectomy empyema (PPE) due to bronchopleural fistula (BPF) can be a surgical challenge for surgeons. We analyzed the follow-up outcomes after performing omentopexy and thoracoplasty for the treatment of PPE with BPF after pneumonectomy. Material and Mehod: Between December 1991 and January 2006, 9 patients underwent BPF closure using an omental pedicled flap for the treatment of PPE with BPF after pneumonectomy. There were 7 males and 2 females (mean age: $45.9{\pm}9$ years). The patients were followed up for a mean of 58 months (median: 28 months, range: $6{\sim}169$). When we performed omentopexy, the surgical procedures for empyema were thoracoplasy for 8 patients and the Clagett procedure for 1 patient. Thoracoplasty was performed for the latter patient due to recurrence of empyema, Result: For the 8 patients who were treated by omentopexy and thoracoplasty, there was 1 operation-related death due to sepsis. During follow up, 1 patient, who was treated by omentopexy and a Clagett procedure, died of acute hepatitis 40 months postoperatively. The early mortality was 11.1% (8/9). Of the 8 patients, including the 1 late death patient, successful closure of the BPF were achieved in all patients (8/9) and the empyema was cured in 7 patients (7/8). Conclusion: The BPF closure using an omental pedicled flap was an effective method for treating PPE with BPF due to 75-destroyed lung, and thoracoplasty with simultaneous omentopexy was effective and safe for removing dead space if the patient was young and in a good general condition.