• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.237-245
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• 2020

The development of information and communication technology (ICT) provides many opportunities for businesses to increase productivity, to have better relationships with customers and suppliers, and to develop new products more efficiently and effectively. However, recently, there have been claims that ICT development in a country would increase income inequality of the country. In this debate, we examine the impact of ICT development on the income inequality at the country level. Data of 28 OECD countries were used for our study. According to results of the analysis, a country with a higher level of ICT development is likely to have a lower the level of income inequality. There have been many concerns that development of ICTs may result in a higher level of income inequality mainly because wealthy companies or individuals can more affordable to utilize advanced ICT and ICTs have replaced labor. However, there has been no such identified impact, at least in recent OECD countries. Rather, we can expect ICT development to play a role in lowering income inequality of a country.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.8 no.spc1
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• pp.433-450
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• 2005

This paper empirically traces out the determinants of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) progress. Using cross-national evidence, it is found that a country's income level and its distribution affect the ICT progress, through their influences on home market demand pattern. This result holds even when controlling for other variables that affects ICT progress and a sub-sample of less developed countries. Based on the findings, it is possible to conjecture that ICT progress can be a plausible reason for the income polarization in the world. In addition, a country with higher levels of human capital accumulation and financial development is positively associated with the ICT progress, although the effects depend on the sample and model specifications. However, these results are based on crude theoretical backgrounds and estimations, which require for further studies in the future.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.27-53
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• 2008

This paper investigates factors determining the level of nontraditional activities at banks around the world. Specifically, the paper examines what kinds of firm-specific and country-specific characteristics determine the level of noninterest income using a comprehensive multi-country database. This paper focuses beyond the traditional U.S. based analyses and provides detailed asset-liability management practices of banks around the world.The findings suggest that banks' size and loan loss provision, explicit deposit insurance, banking restriction, banking freedom ranking of respective countries, the extent of state and foreign ownership, governance, and transparency of the country have positive effects on the level of nontraditional activities. Greater dependence on traditional lending and financing, market based economy, and multiple bank supervisory bodies in the country have negative associations with noninterest income. The economic development of country however affects the extent of the relationship.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.88-109
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• 2019

Purpose - This paper examines the effects of host country's non-economic factors on foreign affiliate's financial and operational performance. Design/Methodology - Using Korean-owned foreign affiliate-level data, we employ various measures that represent host country's non-economic factors and examine their effects on foreign affiliate's performance. We further investigate the effects of local top managers and local middle managers on the impact of country's non-economic factors on foreign affiliate's performance. Findings - We find that local top managers are effective in increasing foreign affiliate's financial performance by dealing with institutional and cultural factors, particularly in high-income countries, while local middle managers are effective in increasing affiliate's operational performance by responding to the changes in doing business factors, particularly in low-income countries. Originality/value - Considering that most of previous FDI studies focus on examining host country's economic factors on firm's FDI decision, our findings suggest that country's non-economic factors are strongly associated with actual business performance of foreign affiliates.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.721-730
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• 2020

This study investigates the impact of the country's governance on the revenue efficiency of 108 Islamic banks from 26 countries offering Islamic banking and finance products services. The technical efficiencies of individual Islamic banks have been analyzed using the Data Envelopment Analysis method. The data will be pooled across the selected countries and utilize the intermediation approach. The Ordinary Least Square estimation method is employed to examine the impact of country supervision and regulation on the technical efficiency of Islamic banks. As robustness check, the study examines the impact of the level of bank regulations and supervision on the efficiency of Islamic banks operating in different income-level countries. The results found that the stricter the supervisory power, the less strict capital requirement, the tighter the restrictions on non-banking activities, and the stricter the private monitoring enhance statistically significantly the level of efficiency of Islamic banks. In upgrading the regulations and supervision of the Islamic banks, the existing regulatory framework based on the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) must be complemented with the prescriptions on Islamic banking or Shariah compliance diligently, so that the Islamic banks could be regulated accurately and further improve the technical efficiency of their operations.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.529-540
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• 2020

The objective of this research paper is to study the simultaneous relationship between fiscal decentralization, corruption, and income inequality among Vietnamese provinces. We use a balanced panel data set of 63 provinces/cities in Vietnam in the period from 2011 to 2018. The study used 3SLS-GMM (Three Stage Least Squares - Generalized Method of Moments estimator) and GMM-HAC (Generalized Method of Moments - Heteroskedastic and Autocorrelation Consistent estimator). Empirical evidence shows a strong simultaneous relationship: increased corruption will increase regional income disparities, income inequality, and increase fiscal decentralization. In addition, the results also suggest that an increase in per-capita income will reduce the level of corruption, or better control corruption of each province. The degree of increase in income inequality, which reduces fiscal decentralization, is the same for trade liberalization. All demonstrate that there is a simultaneous relationship between fiscal decentralization, corruption, and income inequality. In a region of high public governance quality, fiscal decentralization positively effects its economic growth. This issue will indirectly increase income inequality between provinces within a country. Our findings imply that a country's fiscal decentralization strategy should be linked to improving corruption control and local governance effectiveness, indirectly improving income inequality between localities or regions.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.15
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• pp.6303-6309
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• 2015

Differences in socioeconomic status (SES) such as income levels may partly explain why breast cancer screening (BCS) disparities exist in countries where health care services are free or heavily subsidized. However, factors that contribute to such differences in SES among women living in well resourced Middle East countries are not fully understood. This quantitative study investigated factors that influence SES and BCS of Arab women. Understanding of such factors can be useful for the development of effective intervention strategies that aim to increase BCS uptake among Arab women. Using data from a cross-sectional survey among 1,063 Arabic-speaking women in Qatar, age 35+, additional data analysis was performed to determine the relationship between socioeconomic indicators such as income and other factors in relation to BCS activities. This study found that income is determined and influenced by education level, occupation, nationality, years of residence in the country, level of social activity, self-perceived health status, and living area. Financial stress, unemployment, and unfavorable social conditions may impede women's participation in BCS activities in well resourced Middle East countries.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.101-118
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• 2020

This study aims to quantify the effects of non-tariff measures (NTMs) on exports in the Korean manufacturing industry. To do this, we employ product-level export data that includes information about whether or not a product is affected by NTMs. One of the main results is that NTMs (SPS/TBT) on average led to reduction in Korean exports. However, the effects of NTMs differed depending on the income level of the NTM-imposing country. The NTMs imposed by high-income countries, such as U.S.A. and Japan, were found to impede Korean exports, whereas the export effect of NTMs imposed by low-income countries such as China was found to not be statistically significant. In addition, the results analyzed based across industries, income level, and types of NTMs are as follows. First, NTMs imposed on textile-related products generally hindered exports regardless of the type of NTMs, but its negative impact on exports was noticeable in the case of NTMs originating from high-income countries. On the other hand, chemical product-related NTMs were found to lead to an increase in Korean exports, and it had a positive effect in the case of SPS imposed by low-income countries. In other industries except for textile- and chemical-related products, the effects of NTMs on exports were either statistically insignificant or showed inconsistent patterns.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.439-445
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to measure respondent's demographic characteristics, respondent's attitudes toward chicken, and factor influencing on the level of perceived helpfulness of country of origin in predicting the quality of chicken. The data was collected through a consumer survey during the March 2006. A total number of 250 meat consumers living in Suncheon, the eastern part of Chonnam, were randomly selected as respondents. Eleven respondents did not complete the survey instrument, resulting in a final sample size of 239. All estimations were carried out using chi-square, correlation, and logistic procedure of SAS package. The results are as follows. The level of perceived helpfulness of country of origin in predicting the quality of chicken was significantly different by age and occupation of demographic variables, and was significantly correlated with respondent informed of attitude variables. The proportional odds assumption of model was not violated at p<0.05. The effects of income, occupation and respondent informed on the level of perceived helpfulness of country of origin in predicting the quality of chicken. The results from this study could be useful in developing marketing and health promotion strategies, as well as government trade policy.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.35-48
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• 2015

The aim of this study is to compare country output and citation impact as well as to assess the level of interdisciplinarity in the field of tribology research during the period 1998-2012, based on the SCOPUS database. Macro-level scientometric indicators such as growth rate, share of international collaborative papers, citation per paper, share of un-cited papers, and publication efficiency index were employed. Further, the Simpson Index of Diversity was used to measure the level of interdisciplinarity. The performance of top countries contributing more than 1000 papers during the study period was discussed. Contributions and share of continents and countries by income groups were examined. Further research contributions and citation impact of selected country groups were analyzed. This study reveals that high levels of interdisciplinarity exist in tribology research. Asia outperforms the other world regions and China contributes most of the papers (25%), while the United States receives most of the citations (22%).