• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.423-431
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• 2019

This study examines the effect of the liability limitation provision (LLP) adoption on firm's cost behavior. In April 2011, Korea introduced the LLP with the purpose of improving the management efficiency by mitigating the risks caused by the manager's failure to make decisions related to business operation. However, there are concerns that the adoption of LLP may lead the manager's moral hazard, so the need for empirical research to verify the effect of the LLP adoption is emphasized. In this study, we analyze the effect of the LLP adoption empirically, focusing on the cost behavior that is affected by the manager's decision making. From the empirical result, we find that LLP adopted companies have strengthened the cost stickiness of selling, general, and administrative costs rather than non-adopted companies. This suggests that the manager of LLP adopted company makes a more active decision to consider adjusting costs in order to prepare for future recovery in sales when sales is reduced. This study presents empirical evidence to prove the policy validity of the adoption of LLP, and we expect that our results can contribute to the capital market and academia.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.29-60
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• 2005

This paper investigates how firms adjust wages, employment and hours in response to demand shifts. It focuses on rigidities and asymmetries in such adjustments. Major findings are as follows. First, wage adjustments are fairly small compared with worker adjustments. Second, wage adjustments are asymmetric with respect to sales growth: there is no responsiveness of wage growth when sales are declining, while adjustments are significantly positive when sales are rising. On the contrary, worker adjustments are symmetric with respect to demand shifts. Third, while workers are linearly adjusted to the sales growth, some nonlinearity is observed in the wage adjustment. Fourth, hours are generally nonresponsive to demand shocks. Finally, union firms cut wages rather than workers in the face of negative demand shocks.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.311-342
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• 2015

We evaluate two main rationales of massive policy intervention of Lee Administration in the Korean transportation fuel market: high market share of domestic refineries, perceived by the Administration as the result of high market concentration, and asymmetry in price adjustment, perceived as the result of collusion. Domestic refineries, huge in capacity and located at seaports, maintain international competitiveness in price. Considering market openness offering preferential treatment to importers, they set domestic prices competitively on the basis of MOPS prices. Yet, the price competitiveness of domestic refineries is so high that they are able to sustain high market share. We confirm that the Korean before-tax consumer prices of gasoline and diesel are lower than Japan's and the weighted averages of 27 EU countries by as much as 159KRW and 21KRW per liter in the case of gasoline and 170KRW and 63KRW in the case of diesel. Price asymmetry is caused by diverse economic and managerial reasons and, as FTC (2005) states, price asymmetry does not immediately imply exercise of market power or collusion. We analyzed price asymmetry in Korea, Japan and 14 EU countries, and found asymmetry in Korea and 11 EU countries in the case of gasoline and in Korea and 8 EU countries in the case of diesel.