• Title/Summary/Keyword: Market System

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Returns and Resale Price Maintenance in Book Distribution (도서유통(圖書流通) 효율화(效率化)를 위한 공정거래정책(公正去來政策))

  • Shin, Kwang-shik
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.141-161
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    • 1991
  • Resale price maintenance has long been employed in book distribution, perhaps longer than for any other product. Another unusual practice in the book trade that has proven to be quite durable in spite of its substantial cost in real resources is the returns policy. Publishers typically grant the right to return unsold books within a stipulated time for full credit against future orders. This paper investigates the functions and effects of resale price maintenance in the book trade, and argues that resale price maintenance and returns are substitute methods of providing the same economic function. Resale price maintenance can be used to compensate booksellers for initially stocking books with uncertain prospects and for providing a conduit through which manufacturers acquire information about consumer demand (market testing services). Permitting the return of unsold books for full credit places a floor under retail prices and transfers a considerable portion of the cost of introducing a new product line back to the publisher. Both reflect publishers' needs to have their books displayed. In the U.S. returns privileges were first proposed in 1913, roughly coincident with the Macy decision outlawing RPM. Publishers slowly granted return privileges, which become nearly universal by 1970. The decline in margins in recent years has been accompanied by an increase in returns as the return policy served to substitute for lost margins on successful titles as a methods of compensating full-line booksellers. In contrast, returns privileges are unusual in countries where price maintenance in books has been practiced. These observations are consistent with our analysis. In Korea, resale price maintenance of books is practiced under an exception to Korean antitrust law. The availability of effective price maintenance is likely to reduce the use of returns programs. Since consumers prefer to obtain books at outlets where they know the books are likely to be stocked rather than taking a chance on stores that carry a more limited line, it also provides a strong incentive for booksellers to expand. But the privilege of resale price maintenance should be confined to books which publishers want to be price maintained. Resale price maintenance and returns system differ in the transactions costs associated with inventory holding, and publishers' judgement on the comparative advantage of the two schemes should be honored. Publishers should also remain free to authorize sales at discount at any time not to impair the ability of booksellers to dispose of product variants that prove unpopular.

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A Study on Practices and Improvement Factors of Financial Disclosures in early stages of IFRS Adoption - An Integrative Approach of Korean Cases: Embracing Views of Reporting Entities and Users of Financial Statements (IFRS 공시 실태 개선방안에 대한 소고 - 보고기업, 정보이용자 요인을 고려한 통합적 접근 -)

  • Kim, Hee-Suk
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.113-127
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    • 2012
  • From the end of 1st quarter of 2012, Korean mandatory firms had started releasing financial reports conforming to the K-IFRS(Korean adopted International Financial Reporting Standards). Major characteristics of IFRS, such as 'principles based' features, consolidated reporting, 'fair value' measurement, increased pressure for non-financial disclosures have resulted in brief and various disclosure practices regarding the main body of each statements and vast amount of note description requirements. Meanwhile, a host of previous studies on IFRS disclosures have incorporated regulatory and/or 'compete information' perspectives, mainly focusing on suggesting further enforcement of strengthened requirements and providing guidelines for specific treatments. Thus, as an extension of prior findings and suggestions this study had explored to conduct an integrative approach embracing views of the reporting entities and the users of financial information. In spite of all the state-driven efforts for faithful representation and comparability of corporate financial reports, an overhaul of disclosure practices of fiscal year 2010 and 2011 had revealed numerous cases of insufficiency and discordance in terms of mandatory norms and market expectations. As to the causes of such shortcomings, this study identified several factors from the corporate side and the users of the information; some inherent aspects of IFRS, industry/corporate-specific context, expenditures related to internalizing IFRS system, reduced time frame for presentation. lack of clarity and details to meet the quality of information - understandability, comparability etc. - commonly requested by the user group. In order to improve current disclosure practices, dual approach had been suggested; Firstly, to encourage and facilitate implementation, (1) further segmentation and differentiation of mandates among companies, (2) redefining the scope and depth of note descriptions, (3) diversification and coordination of reporting periods, (4) providing support for equipping disclosure systems and granting incentives for best practices had been discussed. Secondly, as for the hard measures, (5) regularizing active involvement of corporate and user group delegations in the establishment and amendment process of K-IFRS (6) enforcing detailed and standardized disclosure on reporting entities had been recommended.

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A Case Study: ICT and the Region-based Sharing Economy of a Start-up Social Enterprise (ICT 기반 지역 공유경제형 사회적 기업 사례 연구)

  • Roh, Taehyup
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.157-175
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    • 2016
  • Under the market economy of capitalism, several limitations reveal the inequity and redistribution problem of wealth, inefficiency of over-manufacturing and over-consumption, pollution of the natural environment, and the constraint of human liberty and dignity. The new challenge of symbiotic relationships that encourage individual corporations coincides with the need to practice social responsibility and share values to overcome these limitations. Social economy and the social enterprises that simultaneously pursue the making of corporate private profits and the realization of social values have been suggested and disseminated as alternative social value creators. Furthermore, the concept of a sharing economy, which refers to the sharing of things rather than owning them, is growing traction as a new paradigm of capitalism. However, these efforts of social enterprises have fallen short against the conflicts between private profit and social values. This study deals with the case of a start-up social corporation, "Purun Bike Sharing Inc.," which is based on a regional sharing economy business model about bike rental services that use Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This corporation pursues harmonic management to achieve a balance between private profit and social value. Its corporate mission is to achieve sharing, coexistence, and contribution for public welfare. This mission is a possible idea for use in the local community network as a core key for sustainable social enterprises. The model can also be an alternative approach to overcome the structural friction in the social corporation. This study considers the case of Purun Bike Sharing as a sustainable way to practice a sharing economy business model based on a regional cooperation network, which can be combined with social value, and to apply ICT to a sharing economy system. It also examines the definition and current state of social enterprises and the sharing economy, and the cases of the sharing economy business model for the review of prior research.

Perspective of breaking stagnation of soybean yield under monsoon climate

  • Shiraiwa, Tatsuhiko
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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    • 2017.06a
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    • pp.8-9
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    • 2017
  • Soybean yield has been low and unstable in Japan and other areas in East Asia, despite long history of cultivation. This is contrasting with consistent increase of yield in North and South America. This presentation tries to describe perspective of breaking stagnation of soybean yield in East Asia, considering the factors of the different yields between regions. Large amount of rainfall with occasional dry-spell in the summer is a nature of monsoon climate and as frequently stated excess water is the factor of low and unstable soybean yield. For example, there exists a great deal of field-to-field variation in yield of 'Tanbaguro' soybean, which is reputed for high market value and thus cultivated intensively and this results in low average yield. According to our field survey, a major portion of yield variation occurs in early growth period. Soybean production on drained paddy fields is also vulnerable to drought stress after flowering. An analysis at the above study site demonstrated a substantial field-to-field variation of canopy transpiration activity in the mid-summer, but the variation of pod-set was not as large as that of early growth. As frequently mentioned by the contest winners of good practice farming, avoidance of excess water problem in the early growth period is of greatest importance. A series of technological development took place in Japan in crop management for stable crop establishment and growth, that includes seed-bed preparation with ridge and/or chisel ploughing, adjustment of seed moisture content, seed treatment with mancozeb+metalaxyl and the water table control system, FOEAS. A unique success is seen in the tidal swamp area in South Sumatra with the Saturated Soil Culture (SSC), which is for managing acidity problem of pyrite soils. In 2016, an average yield of $2.4tha^{-1}$ was recorded for a 450 ha area with SSC (Ghulamahdi 2017, personal communication). This is a sort of raised bed culture and thus the moisture condition is kept markedly stable during growth period. For genetic control, too, many attempts are on-going for better emergence and plant growth after emergence under excess water. There seems to exist two aspects of excess water resistance, one related to phytophthora resistance and the other with better growth under excess water. The improvement for the latter is particularly challenging and genomic approach is expected to be effectively utilized. The crop model simulation would estimate/evaluate the impact of environmental and genetic factors. But comprehensive crop models for soybean are mainly for cultivations on upland fields and crop response to excess water is not fully accounted for. A soybean model for production on drained paddy fields under monsoon climate is demanded to coordinate technological development under changing climate. We recently recognized that the yield potential of recent US cultivars is greater than that of Japanese cultivars and this also may be responsible for different yield trends. Cultivar comparisons proved that higher yields are associated with greater biomass production specifically during early seed filling, in which high and well sustained activity of leaf gas exchange is related. In fact, the leaf stomatal conductance is considered to have been improved during last a couple of decades in the USA through selections for high yield in several crop species. It is suspected that priority to product quality of soybean as food crop, especially large seed size in Japan, did not allow efficient improvement of productivity. We also recently found a substantial variation of yielding performance under an environment of Indonesia among divergent cultivars from tropical and temperate regions through in a part biomass productivity. Gas exchange activity again seems to be involved. Unlike in North America where transpiration adjustment is considered necessary to avoid terminal drought, under the monsoon climate with wet summer plants with higher activity of gas exchange than current level might be advantageous. In order to explore higher or better-adjusted canopy function, the methodological development is demanded for canopy-level evaluation of transpiration activity. The stagnation of soybean yield would be broken through controlling variable water environment and breeding efforts to improve the quality-oriented cultivars for stable and high yield.

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The Study on Consummer Behaviour of Poultry meat and Egg (닭고기와 계란의 소비에 대한 조사 연구)

  • 남두희;오세정
    • Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.81-91
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    • 1988
  • The purpose of this research is to analyze the tendencies of poultry consumption in Korea. The information used is the data collected three times during the period from Sept. 1, 1985 to April 30, 1987 throughout the major cities. Those who participated in the survey are 2, 598 including housewives, nutritionists, cookers, group feeding institutions, woman's organizations, and the students of doing nutrition-related studies. Consumer preferences for poultry meat and eggs tend to move toward high quality and more strict sanitary standards. Following this line of consumer preference changes, the poultry product marketing supported by cold chain system is rapidly developing. Household consumption of poultry meat largely consists of hi-and semi-broilers but the household demand for these two broilers tends to decrease steadily over time. In general poultry meat consumption appears to be affected by consumer taste rather than market factors such as prices. In addition consumer choices are quite different depending on poultry meat parts which are preferred in order of drum sticks, wings, and breasts. In particular drum sticks are most preferred than any other parts. An important problem in poultry production is related to consumption seasonality since large part of poultry meat consumption is concentrated during the summer season. Another problem is associated with little development of cooking methods. At present there are two types of primary commercial cooking techniques, fries and samgaetang (boiled chicken with jinsang and rice). For promoting domestic poultry meat disposal and reducing the demand seasonality, new cooking methods should be developed and followed by more aggresive advertisements. In domestic egg trade, smaller packing units(i.e., 10 eggs per unit) tend to bi preferred to large ones (i.e., 30 eggs per unit). In consumers egg purchasing decisions nearness to the shops and convenience appear to be important factors. For egg shell colors consumers recognize that there is no difference in nutritional values. However, survey results show that consumers highest preference lies in eggs with brown color. Eggs are most popular among children and preferred in order of middle-and high-school students, 17-25 age people, and adults. Egg prices are concieved relatively cheap to its nutritional values. In house-holds eggs are consumed in the forms of fries, side dishes, and lunch basket dishes. However, high level of cholesterol content in eggs appears to be an important problem in promoting eggs consumption.

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CHANGES IN WATER USE AND MANAGEMENT OVER TIME AND SIGNIFICANCE FOR AUSTRALIA AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA

  • Knight, Michael J.
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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    • 1997.11a
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    • pp.3-31
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    • 1997
  • Water has always played a significant role in the lives of people. In urbanised Rome, with its million people. sophisticated supply systems developed and then fled with the empire. only to be rediscovered later But it was the industrial Revolution commencing in the eighteenth century that ushered in major paradigm shifts In use and altitudes towards water. Rapid and concentrated urbanisation brought problems of expanded demands for drinking supplies, waste management and disease. The strategy of using water from local streams, springs and village wells collapsed under the onslaughts of rising urban demands and pollution due to poor waste disposal practices. Expanding travel (railways. and steamships) aided the spread of disease. In England. public health crises peaks, related to water-borne typhoid and the three major cholera outbreaks occurred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century respectively. Technological, engineering and institutional responses were successful in solving the public health problem. it is generally accepted that the putting of water into pipe networks both for a clean drinking supply, as well as using it as a transport medium for removal of human and other wastes, played a significant role in towering death rates due to waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid towards the end of the nineteenth century. Today, similar principles apply. A recent World Bank report Indicates that there can be upto 76% reduction in illness when major water and sanitation improvements occur in developing countries. Water management, technology and thinking in Australia were relatively stable in the twentieth century up to the mid to late 1970s. Groundwater sources were investigated and developed for towns and agriculture. Dams were built, and pipe networks extended both for supply and waste water management. The management paradigms in Australia were essentially extensions of European strategies with the minor adaptions due to climate and hydrogeology. During the 1970s and 1980s in Australia, it was realised increasingly that a knowledge of groundwater and hydrogeological processes were critical to pollution prevention, the development of sound waste management and the problems of salinity. Many millions of dollars have been both saved and generated as a consequence. This is especially in relation to domestic waste management and the disposal of aluminium refinery waste in New South Wales. Major institutional changes in public sector water management are occurring in Australia. Upheveals and change have now reached ail states in Australia with various approaches being followed. Market thinking, corporatisation, privatisation, internationalisation, downsizing and environmental pressures are all playing their role in this paradigm shift. One casualty of this turmoil is the progressive erosion of the public sector skillbase and this may become a serious issue should a public health crisis occur such as a water borne disease. Such crises have arisen over recent times. A complete rethink of the urban water cycle is going on right now in Australia both at the State and Federal level. We are on the threshold of significant change in how we use and manage water, both as a supply and a waste transporter in Urban environments especially. Substantial replacement of the pipe system will be needed in 25 to 30 years time and this will cost billions of dollars. The competition for water between imgation needs and environmental requirements in Australia and overseas will continue to be an issue in rural areas. This will be especially heightened by the rising demand for irrigation produced food as the world's population grows. Rapid urbanisation and industrialisation in the emerging S.E Asian countries are currently producing considerable demands for water management skills and Infrastructure development. This trend e expected to grow. There are also severe water shortages in the Middle East to such an extent that wars may be fought over water issues. Environmental public health crises and shortages will help drive the trends.

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The Behavior Analysis of Exhibition Visitors using Data Mining Technique at the KIDS & EDU EXPO for Children (유아교육 박람회에서 데이터마이닝 기법을 이용한 전시 관람 행동 패턴 분석)

  • Jung, Min-Kyu;Kim, Hyea-Kyeong;Choi, Il-Young;Lee, Kyoung-Jun;Kim, Jae-Kyeong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.77-96
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    • 2011
  • An exhibition is defined as market events for specific duration to present exhibitors' main products to business or private visitors, and it plays a key role as effective marketing channels. As the importance of exhibition is getting more and more, domestic exhibition industry has achieved such a great quantitative growth. But, In contrast to the quantitative growth of domestic exhibition industry, the qualitative growth of Exhibition has not achieved competent growth. In order to improve the quality of exhibition, we need to understand the preference or behavior characteristics of visitors and to increase the level of visitors' attention and satisfaction through the understanding of visitors. So, in this paper, we used the observation survey method which is a kind of field research to understand visitors and collect the real data for the analysis of behavior pattern. And this research proposed the following methodology framework consisting of three steps. First step is to select a suitable exhibition to apply for our method. Second step is to implement the observation survey method. And we collect the real data for further analysis. In this paper, we conducted the observation survey method to obtain the real data of the KIDS & EDU EXPO for Children in SETEC. Our methodology was conducted on 160 visitors and 78 booths from November 4th to 6th in 2010. And, the last step is to analyze the record data through observation. In this step, we analyze the feature of exhibition using Demographic Characteristics collected by observation survey method at first. And then we analyze the individual booth features by the records of visited booth. Through the analysis of individual booth features, we can figure out what kind of events attract the attention of visitors and what kind of marketing activities affect the behavior pattern of visitors. But, since previous research considered only individual features influenced by exhibition, the research about the correlation among features is not performed much. So, in this research, additional analysis is carried out to supplement the existing research with data mining techniques. And we analyze the relation among booths using data mining techniques to know behavior patterns of visitors. Among data mining techniques, we make use of two data mining techniques, such as clustering analysis and ARM(Association Rule Mining) analysis. In clustering analysis, we use K-means algorithm to figure out the correlation among booths. Through data mining techniques, we figure out that there are two important features to affect visitors' behavior patterns in exhibition. One is the geographical features of booths. The other is the exhibit contents of booths. Those features are considered when the organizer of exhibition plans next exhibition. Therefore, the results of our analysis are expected to provide guideline to understanding visitors and some valuable insights for the exhibition from the earlier phases of exhibition planning. Also, this research would be a good way to increase the quality of visitor satisfaction. Visitors' movement paths, booth location, and distances between each booth are considered to plan next exhibition in advance. This research was conducted at the KIDS & EDU EXPO for Children in SETEC(Seoul Trade Exhibition & Convention), but it has some constraints to be applied directly to other exhibitions. Also, the results were derived from a limited number of data samples. In order to obtain more accurate and reliable results, it is necessary to conduct more experiments based on larger data samples and exhibitions on a variety of genres.

A digital Audio Watermarking Algorithm using 2D Barcode (2차원 바코드를 이용한 오디오 워터마킹 알고리즘)

  • Bae, Kyoung-Yul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.97-107
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    • 2011
  • Nowadays there are a lot of issues about copyright infringement in the Internet world because the digital content on the network can be copied and delivered easily. Indeed the copied version has same quality with the original one. So, copyright owners and content provider want a powerful solution to protect their content. The popular one of the solutions was DRM (digital rights management) that is based on encryption technology and rights control. However, DRM-free service was launched after Steve Jobs who is CEO of Apple proposed a new music service paradigm without DRM, and the DRM is disappeared at the online music market. Even though the online music service decided to not equip the DRM solution, copyright owners and content providers are still searching a solution to protect their content. A solution to replace the DRM technology is digital audio watermarking technology which can embed copyright information into the music. In this paper, the author proposed a new audio watermarking algorithm with two approaches. First, the watermark information is generated by two dimensional barcode which has error correction code. So, the information can be recovered by itself if the errors fall into the range of the error tolerance. The other one is to use chirp sequence of CDMA (code division multiple access). These make the algorithm robust to the several malicious attacks. There are many 2D barcodes. Especially, QR code which is one of the matrix barcodes can express the information and the expression is freer than that of the other matrix barcodes. QR code has the square patterns with double at the three corners and these indicate the boundary of the symbol. This feature of the QR code is proper to express the watermark information. That is, because the QR code is 2D barcodes, nonlinear code and matrix code, it can be modulated to the spread spectrum and can be used for the watermarking algorithm. The proposed algorithm assigns the different spread spectrum sequences to the individual users respectively. In the case that the assigned code sequences are orthogonal, we can identify the watermark information of the individual user from an audio content. The algorithm used the Walsh code as an orthogonal code. The watermark information is rearranged to the 1D sequence from 2D barcode and modulated by the Walsh code. The modulated watermark information is embedded into the DCT (discrete cosine transform) domain of the original audio content. For the performance evaluation, I used 3 audio samples, "Amazing Grace", "Oh! Carol" and "Take me home country roads", The attacks for the robustness test were MP3 compression, echo attack, and sub woofer boost. The MP3 compression was performed by a tool of Cool Edit Pro 2.0. The specification of MP3 was CBR(Constant Bit Rate) 128kbps, 44,100Hz, and stereo. The echo attack had the echo with initial volume 70%, decay 75%, and delay 100msec. The sub woofer boost attack was a modification attack of low frequency part in the Fourier coefficients. The test results showed the proposed algorithm is robust to the attacks. In the MP3 attack, the strength of the watermark information is not affected, and then the watermark can be detected from all of the sample audios. In the sub woofer boost attack, the watermark was detected when the strength is 0.3. Also, in the case of echo attack, the watermark can be identified if the strength is greater and equal than 0.5.

A Study on the Improvement of the Existing Technology Valuation Solutions;focused on high technology based start-up company (현행 기술가치 평가모형의 개선 방안에 관한 연구;신기술 창업기업의 경우를 중심으로)

  • Yang, Tai-Shik;Min, Kyung-Se
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.2 no.2
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    • pp.93-120
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    • 2007
  • To promote the commercialization of high technology based start-up company, it is essential to activate technology trading for the Innovative Small & Medium companies which eager to acquire technology competitiveness through technology trading and facilitate financial system which provide Small & Medium companies with technology commercialization money. This study focus on enhancing credibility of technology valuation solutions through the improvement of the existing technology valuation solutions. The existing technology valuation solutions in practice have deficiency in reasonable valuation because of subjective technology factor's calculation. And the commercialization risk of high technology based start-up companies cannot be fully reflected in the existing valuation solutions. The high risk of technology commercialization acts as a hurdle in the facilitation of providing money for the start-up companies. The improved new model will have more acceptable objectivity and reasonably reflect the commercialization risk of start-up companies. The new model has two distinctive features compared to existing solutions. The new model newly adopts commercialization success factor which reflects the risk of high technology based start-up company. And the new model excludes technology factor which is controversial among interested parties. The exclusion of technology factor will improve the objectivity of technology valuation and the adoption of commercialization success factor will solicit investor and capitalist who concern the high risk of technology based start-up companies. In conclusion, the improved new model is expected to activate technology trading and facilitate the money market through which high technology based start-up companies raise commercialization money.

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How to Reflect Sustainable Development, exemplified by the Equator Principles, in Overseas Investment (해외투자(海外投資)와 지속가능발전 원칙 - 프로젝트 파이낸스의 적도원칙(赤道原則)을 중심으로 -)

  • Park, Whon-Il
    • THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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    • v.31
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    • pp.27-56
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    • 2006
  • Today's financial institutions usually take environmental issues seriously into consideration as they could not evade lender liability in an increasing number of cases. On the international scene, a brand-new concept of the "Equator Principles" in the New Millenium has driven more and more international banks to adopt these Principles in project financing. Sustainable development has been a key word in understanding new trends of the governments, financial institutions, corporations and civic groups in the 21st century. The Equator Principles are a set of voluntary environmental and social guidelines for sustainable finance. These Principles commit bank officers to avoid financial support to projects that fail to meet these guidelines. The Principles were conceived in 2002 on an initiative of the International Finance Corporation(IFC), and launched in June 2003. Since then, dozens of major banks, accounting for up to 80 percent of project loan market, have adopted the Principles. Accordingly, the Principles have become the de facto standard for all banks and investors on how to deal with potential social and environmental issues of projects to be financed. Compliance with the Equator Principles facilitates for endorsing banks to participate in the syndicated loan and help them to manage the risks associated with large-scale projects. The Equator Principles call for financial institutions to provide loans to projects under the following circumstances: - The risk of the project is categorized in accordance with internal guidelines based upon the environmental and social screening criteria of the IFC. - For Category A and B projects, borrowers or sponsors are required to conduct a Social and Environmental Assessment, the preparation of which must meet certain requirements and satisfactorily address key social and environmental issues. - The Social and Environmental Assessment report should address baseline social and environmental conditions, requirements under host country laws and regulations, sustainable development, and, as appropriate, IFC's Environmental, Health and Safety Guidelines, etc. - Based on the Social and Environmental Assessment, Equator banks then make agreements with borrowers on how they mitigate, monitor and manage the risks through a Social and Environmental Management System. Compliance with the plan is included in the covenant clause of loan agreements. If the borrower doesn't comply with the agreed terms, the bank will take corrective actions. The Equator Principles are not a mere declaration of cautious banks but a full commitment of lenders. A violation of the Principles in the process of project financing, which led to an unexpected damage to the affected community, would not give rise to any specific legal remedies other than ordinary lawsuits. So it is more effective for banks to ensure consistent implementation of the Principles and to have them take responsible measures to solve social and environmental issues. Public interests have recently mounted up with respect to environmental issues on the occasion of the Supreme Court's decision (2006Du330) on the fiercely debated reclamation project at Saemangeum. The majority Justices said that the expected environmental damages like probable pollution of water and soil were not believed so serious and that the Administration should continue to implement the project seeking ways to make it more environment friendly. In this case, though the Category A Saemangeum Project was carried out by a government agency, the Supreme Court behaved itself as a signal giver to approve or stop the environment-related project like an Equator bank in project financing. At present, there is no Equator bank in Korea in contrast to three big banks in Japan. Also Korean contractors, which are aggressively bidding for Category A-type projects in South East Asia and Mideast, might find themselves in a disadvantageous position because they are generally ignorant of the environmental assessment associated with project financing. In this regard, Korean banks and overseas project contractors should care for the revised Equator Principles and the latest developments in project financing more seriously. It's because its scope has expanded to the capital cost of US$10 million or more across all industry sectors regardless of developing countries or not. It should be noted that, for a Korean bank, being an Equator bank is more or less burdensome in a short-term period, but it must be conducive to minimizing risks and building up good reputation in the long run.

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