• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.177-215
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• 2018

Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and his "America First" trade agenda ignite a second round of interest in mega-free trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific. Countries are evaluating alternative trade policy actions in a post-TPP era. Using national real GDP gains estimated by a modified GTAP model to construct "preference ordering" for 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations members and their six regional dialogue partners, this paper comes up with several policy-oriented findings. First, when multilateral agreements are not possible, countries are better off with a regional trading agreement than without one. Second, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is likely to have higher beneficial impacts than the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Third, for dual-track countries, implementing both agreements is better than each separately. Fourth, impacts of open regionalism are likely to be higher than those of a closed and reciprocal one. Going forward, this paper argues that countries should adopt a "multi-track, multi-stage" approach to trade policy.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.3-25
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• 2022

East Asia's Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force in 2022 as the world's largest free trade agreement. RCEP was concluded, signed and brought into force in the face of major international uncertainty and is a significant boost to the global trading system. RCEP brings Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand into the same agreement with the ten member ASEAN group at its centre. It keeps markets open and updates trade and investment rules in East Asia, a major centre of global economic activity, at a time of rising protectionism when the WTO itself is under threat. The agreement builds on ASEAN's free trade agreements and strengthens ASEAN centrality. One of the pillars of RCEP is an economic cooperation agenda which has its antecedents in ASEAN's approach to bringing along its least developed members and builds on the experience of capacity building in APEC and technical cooperation under the ASEAN Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement. There is an opportunity to create a framework that facilitates deeper economic cooperation that involves experience-sharing, extending RCEP's rules and membership at the same time as strengthening political cooperation. The paper suggests some areas that might be best suited to cooperation - that is confidence and trust building instead of or before negotiation - and discusses how non-members may be engaged and the membership expanded. Options such as multilateralising provisions and becoming a platform for policy convergence and coordinating unilateral reforms are canvassed.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.121-132
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• 2022

The uncertainty regarding inventory may impart dynamic impacts on corporate-level financial decisions. Among others, a decision about capital investment is a crucial decision that requires overall financial stability. Following these theoretical notions, the current study aims to identify possible consequences of inventory volatility relating to corporate capital investment decisions. We employed ten years of data (2010-2019) of non-financial sector firms to achieve the objective. The Driscoll-Kraay model was used to quantify the regression. The statistical results imply that inventory volatility negatively influences capital investment decisions due to information asymmetry about the current financial position. Additionally, more volatility brings discrepancies in managers' investing decisions to fulfill the possible demand options of capital investment that require processing the inventory. However, based upon the statistical findings, it is suggested to corporate managers that they should consider the financial sensitivity of enterprises regarding inventory volatility. Thus, the current study introduces new thoughts regarding inventory volatility and its empirical role in determining capital investment.

• Clinical Endoscopy
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.143-154
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• 2023

Advanced malignant hilar biliary obstruction (MHBO) with inaccessible papilla poses a significant challenge to endoscopists, as drainage of multiple liver segments may be warranted. Transpapillary drainage may not be feasible in patients with surgically altered anatomy, duodenal stenosis, prior duodenal self-expanding metal stent, and after initial transpapillary drainage, but require re-intervention for draining separated liver segments. Endoscopic ultrasound-guided biliary drainage (EUS-BD) and percutaneous trans-hepatic biliary drainage are the feasible options in this scenario. The major advantages of EUS-BD over percutaneous trans-hepatic biliary drainage include a reduction in patient discomfort and internal drainage away from the tumor, thus reducing the possibility of tissue or tumor ingrowth. With innovations, EUS-BD is helpful not only for bilateral communicating MHBO but also for non-communicating systems with bridging hilar stents or isolated right intra-hepatic duct drainage by hepatico-duodenostomy. EUS-guided multi-stent drainage with specially designed cannulas and guidewires has become a reality. A combined approach with endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography for re-intervention, interventional radiology, and intraductal tumor ablative therapies has been reported. Stent migration and bile leakage can be minimized with proper stent selection and technique, and stent blocks can be managed with EUS-guided interventions in a majority of cases. Future comparative studies are required to establish the role of EUS-guided interventions in MHBO as rescue or primary therapy.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.65-67
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• 2012

We have discovered copy number variations (CNVs) in 3,578 Korean individuals with the Affymetrix Genome-Wide SNP array 5.0, and 4,003 copy number variation regions (CNVRs) were defined in a previous study. To explore the details of the variants easily in related studies, we built a database, cataloging the CNVs and related information. This system helps researchers browsing these variants with gene and structure variant annotations. Users can easily find specific regions with search options and verify them from system-integrated genome browsers with annotations.

• Asian Oncology Nursing
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.20-25
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• 2011

Purpose: The study was aimed to review and understand the meaning of cancer cachexia. Methods: Using the keywords "cachexia" and "cancer cachexia" 30 oncology research published from 1974 to 2009 were selected for the review. Results: The mechanism of cancer cachexia has not been fully understood, but various pathogenesis appears to be involved in the development cachexia including altered metabolism of carbohydrate, lipid, and protein associated with cytokines and hormone. As a result, muscle strength, food intake and resting energy expenditure (REE) are reduced. Most medications for the treatment of cachexia show debating results except some drugs such as megace. Supportive care including nutritional education, nursing care, and social support are found another effective treatment options. Conclusion: The results of this study would help oncology nurses to understand the mechanism of cancer cachexia and its management.

• Journal of applied mathematics & informatics
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• v.12 no.1_2
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• pp.335-349
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• 2003

Almost all business are affected by the weather so that weather derivatives has been traded to hedge weather risk. Since the weather itself is not an asset with a market price, some analysts believe that the Black-Scholes equation could not be used appropriately to price weather derivative options. But some weather derivatives can be considered as an Asian option, we revisit the Black-scholes model. Numerical solution of the Black-Scholes equation has a significant error at the money option or around the money option, it is necessary to adopt adaptive mesh near to the strike value. Here we propose a numerical method with an adaptive grid refinement.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.117-131
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• 2016

This study introduces the concepts on the phase-shifting phenomenon of financial markets, which was firstly used in econophysics area and explains how the phase-shifting behavior is studied in the fields of business management and finance. Specifically, we explain how the phases of financial markets are extremely changed under some external conditions, do an extensive literature review, and carry out case studies focusing on the 3 major financial crisis events including the 87 October crash, 97 Asian financial crisis, and 2007 global financial crisis. We also empirically examine the phase-shifting behavior of the Korean ELW products that has a similar payoff structure to the KOSPI200 options.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.243-273
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper is to identify learning in games in experimental economic settings, and apply their results to real multilateral trade negotiations, such as the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) in the World Trade Organizations (WTO). This paper argues that the structure of games including a veto player (Veto games) is similar to the WTO/DDA negotiations in that the players do not possess identical power. This paper's main contribution to the literature involves showing that learning about power is dominant over learning from simple repetition in Veto games. Additionally, this paper shows that players are concerned about how much they have gained in previous games in Veto games, although their memories generally do not last beyond the next game, and thus they tend to be selfish as they have less shares. Based on these results, there is a possibility to be more generous in the distribution of benefits by allowing players without veto power to retain special rights so that they would not be totally powerless. It also shows the necessity of having "respite" in the process of negotiations and policy options for choosing partners for winning coalitions.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.553-566
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• 2021

In the over-the-counter market, option's buyers could have a problem for default risk caused by option's writers. In addition, many participants try to maximize their benefits obviously in investing the financial derivatives. Taking all these circumstances into consideration, we deal with the vulnerable power options under a constant elasticity variance (CEV) model. We derive an analytic pricing formula for the vulnerable power option by using the asymptotic analysis, and then we verify that the analytic formula can be obtained accurately by comparing our solution with Monte-Carlo price. Finally, we examine the effect of CEV on the option price based on the derived solution.