• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-31
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• 2008

Various opinions have been suggested to explain the slump in equipment investment, such as increased government regulations, shareholder-oriented management by expanded foreign equity investment, response against M&A threats, conservative investment trends seen after a series of bankruptcy of large conglomerates (amidst crumbling myth of "Too Big to Fail"), and financial restructuring. Some also argued that the increased uncertainty in business environment is mainly responsible for conservative management, though there are few domestic studies made regarding the situation. But, in other countries, including the U.S., studies have shown that more volatility is seen now surrounding stock prices, profitability, and sales growth rate reflecting business performance. Also, there are other studies showing such expanded volatility have led to conservative management by businesses. In this regard, this study reviews the volatility conditions of business performance of Korean companies based on profitability, and then attempts to analyze the impact on investment brought on by increased volatility. Each company's profitability volatility used here is from the standard deviation of companies for the past five years. As a profitability indicator, the ROA (= operating profit/total asset) is used. According to the analysis, profitability volatility has remarkably increased from the mid 3% in 1994 to low 5% in 2005. Profitability volatility of the Korean companies has expanded to a great extent since the financial crisis. The crisis might have served to raise the volatility in the macroeconomic conditions. If increased volatility observed during the economic crisis had gradually declined after the crisis, the situation could be interpreted as a temporary phenomenon, not to be too concerned over. But, this was not the case for Korea. The volatility level, after the crisis, has not dropped back to its pre-crisis level. Hence, in the Korea's case, high volatility cannot be explained by the impact of financial crisis. Not only that, the fact that such expansion is seen in every industrial sector indicates that this phenomenon cannot be explained by the composition change of industries alone. An undergoing study shows that with a rapid spread of globalization, industries fiercely competing with China experience more volatility. Such increased volatility tends to contract investment, and since the crisis the impact of volatility on investment has slightly increased. It is noteworthy that this study only includes a part of 'uncertainty' that could be measured statistically. For instance, the profitability volatility indicator used in this study is unable to reflect all the effects that the tacit reduction of protection by the government or regulations might have made. So, the result here also indicates that other 'uncertain' factors not mentioned in this study may have served to contract investment sentiment. It would be impossible for policies to completely remove uncertainties measured by profitability volatility, but at least it is necessary to put effort to reduce the macroeconomic volatility in the future economic management. Stabilized macroeconomic management may not be enough to diminish all volatility that occurs within each company, but it would make a meaningful contribution in encouraging investment.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.25-43
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• 2002

This study focuses on the factors that make the financing decision of private hospitals in Korea. Data used in this study were collected from 98 hospitals with complete general data of current status as well as financial statements. They were chosen from the 138 hospitals that passed the accreditation process by the Korean Hospital Association from 1996 to 2000 for the purpose of accrediting training hospitals. The dependent variables in this study consist of total liabilities to total assets, borrowings to total assets. The independent variables are ownership, hospital type, teaching status, location, bed size, period of establishment, asset structure, profitability, growth, tax shields, volatility of profit, competition(market concentration), and other factors. The major findings of this study are as follows. The factors found to have significant effect on liabilities to total assets are teaching status(-), asset structure(-), profitability(-), tax shields(+), and business risk(-). University hospitals have less liabilities than the non-university hospitals. It was also confirmed that high profitability, high fixed asset, high volatility of profit and low tax shields results in decrease in liabilities. The factors that significantly affect on borrowings to total assets are teaching status(-), period of establishment(-), volatility of profit(-) and competition(+).

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.33-41
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• 2010

A lot of researches find negative volatility risk premium in options market. We can make a trading profit by exploiting the negative volatility premium. This study proposes negative volatility risk premium hypotheses in the KOSPI 200 stock price index options market and empirically test the proposed hypotheses with intra-day short straddle strategy. This strategy sells both at-the-money call option and at-the-money put option at market open and exits the position at market close. Using MySQL 5.1, we create our database with 1 minute option price data of the KOSPI 200 index options from 2004 to 2009. Empirical results show that negative volatility risk premium exists in the KOSPI 200 stock price index options market. Furthermore, intra-day short straddle strategy consistently produces annual profits except one year.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.19-35
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• 2010

This study explores the effects of technology innovation activity on a profitability and the default risk of firms. Sample for this study consists of manufacturing firms listed on the Korea Stock Exchange from 1st January 2000 to 31st December 2007. We use of R&D ratio as a proxy of technology innovation activity. The default probability proxied for the default risk of firms is measured by the Merton's (1974) model where accounts for a market value of firms and a volatility of it. This study provides evidence that technology innovation activity has a positive effect on a profitability, but a negative effect on the default risk of firms. Our study also finds the significant mediation effect of profitability that the enhancement in profitability resulting from technology innovation activity lowers the default risk of firms.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.46-54
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• 2020

This study aims to develop and analyze the performance of a selective option straddle strategy based on forecasted volatility to improve the weakness of typical straddle strategy solely based on negative volatility risk premium. The KOSPI 200 option volatility is forecasted by the SVM model combined with the asymmetric volatility spillover effect. The selective straddle strategy enters option position only when the volatility is forecasted downwardly or sideways. The SVM model is trained for 2008-2014 training period and applied for 2015-2018 testing period. The suggested model showed improved performance, that is, its profit becomes higher and risk becomes lower than the benchmark strategies, and consequently typical performance index, Sharpe Ratio, increases. The suggested model gives option traders guidelines as to when they enter option position.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.37-45
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• 2015

Purpose - This paper's aim is to investigate whether or not gross profitability explains the cross-sectional variation of the stock returns in the Korean stock market. Gross profitability is an alternative profitability measure proposed by Novy-Marx in 2013 to predict cross-sectional variation of stock returns in the US. He shows that the gross profitability adds explanatory power to the Fama-French 3 factor model. Interestingly, gross profitability is negatively correlated with the book-to-market ratio. By confirming the gross profitability premium in the Korean stock market, we may provide some implications regarding the well-known value premium. In addition, our empirical results may provide opportunities for the fund distribution industry to promote brand new styles of funds. Research design, data, and methodology - For our empirical analysis, we collect monthly market prices of all the companies listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) of the Korea Exchanges (KRX). Our sample period covers July1994 to December2014. The data from the company financial statementsare provided by the financial information company WISEfn. First, using Fama-Macbeth cross-sectional regression, we investigate the relation between gross profitability and stock return performance. For robustness in analyzing the performance of the gross profitability strategy, we consider value weighted portfolio returns as well as equally weighted portfolio returns. Next, using Fama-French 3 factor models, we examine whether or not the gross profitability strategy generates excess returns when firmsize and the book-to-market ratio are controlled. Finally, we analyze the effect of firm size and the book-to-market ratio on the gross profitability strategy. Results - First, through the Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regression, we show that gross profitability has almost the same explanatory power as the book-to-market ratio in explaining the cross-sectional variation of the Korean stock market. Second, we find evidence that gross profitability is a statistically significant variable for explaining cross-sectional stock returns when the size and the value effect are controlled. Third, we show that gross profitability, which is positively correlated with stock returns and firm size, is negatively correlated with the book-to-market ratio. From the perspective of portfolio management, our results imply that since the gross profitability strategy is a distinctive growth strategy, value strategies can be improved by hedging with the gross profitability strategy. Conclusions - Our empirical results confirm the existence of a gross profitability premium in the Korean stock market. From the perspective of the fund distribution industry, the gross profitability portfolio is worthy of attention. Since the value strategy portfolio returns are negatively correlated with the gross profitability strategy portfolio returns, by mixing both portfolios, investors could be better off without additional risk. However, the profitable firms are dissimilar from the value firms (high book-to-market ratio firms); therefore, an alternative factor model including gross profitability may help us understand the economic implications of the well-known anomalies such as value premium, momentum, and low volatility. We reserve these topics for future research.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.349-356
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• 2021

This study comprehensively investigates whether there is an impact of risk, size, profitability, earnings per share, dividend yield, and book-to-market equity on the stock prices of Jordanian banks listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) for the period 2006-2018. To mitigate endogeneity concerns and to control for within-bank dynamics, panel data fixed effects estimations are used. This study shows that size (SIZE), profitability (ROA), dividend yield (DY) and book-to-market equity (BE/ME) ratios are statistically significant determinants of stock prices. The risk (RISK) factor measured by volatility of ROA has a positive and significant effect on the stock prices, while earnings per share has minimum influence on the stock prices. The results show that ROA has a significant and positive effect and provides the largest effect among all variables used in this study, while the RISK factor has a positive and significant effect. In contrast, SIZE, DY, and BE/ME have a significant negative effect on stock prices. The paper presented new evidence showing that ROA is a better determinant of stock prices in Jordanian banks, and RISK significantly affects stock prices. The researcher recommends using a factor of profitability represented by ROA which has a significant positive effect on the stock prices in Jordanian banks and applying the ROA variable to other sectors.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.117-126
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• 2019

This study conducted correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis using financial statements, loan structure, ROA and ROA volatility of domestic commercial banks, regional banks and special banks for the past five years (2012 ~ 2016). The result is as follows. First, as a result of correlation analysis, bank's ROA is positively related to household loans and SME loans, but it is negatively correlated with the ratio of loans to large companies, sector bias, and loan loss provision ratio. Second, ROA volatility was negatively related to household loans and SME loans, but it was positively correlated with large corporate loans, sector bias ratio, and loan loss provision ratio. Third, as a result of the regression analysis, the variables that have a statistically significant effect on the ROA volatility of banks were household loans, SME loans, and large enterprise loans. From these empirical results, special banks with high volatility in profits need to diversify loan types and sectors in order to achieve business performance outside of policy finance. and Especially, Suhyup Bank and Nonghyup Bank, which have a large commercial role, have a large size per unit by focusing on short-term profit and Rather than focusing on large companies or large loans that are easy to obtain financial information, it is necessary to focus management capabilities on household loans and SME loans by developing capabilities such as screening techniques.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.61-72
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• 2011

This study suggests a DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis) based model to evaluate the value of corporate stock. The model integrating PER(Price-Earning Ratio), PBR(Price-BookValue Ratio), PSR(Price-Sales Ratio) and volatility in DEA structure has an advantage of overcome the limitation of traditional financial ratio based models. In order to show the effectiveness of the suggested model. we compare the performance of portfolio composed by DEA approach with those of portfolios made by traditional approaches such as PER, PBR, and PSR in terms of stock return and volatility. Specifically, we use the data of all the enterprises listed on the S&P 500 in the U.S. in 2007 and 2009 as the sample data for the experiments. The results of the experiments show that the performance of the DEA approach is clearly better than those of other approaches. Particularly, in sharply plummeting market, the performance of the DEA approach is shown to be prominently better than those of other approaches as the DEA approach reflects investment risk as well as profitability and growth. The DEA score combining the existing investment indices may serve as a useful barometer for selecting a stable and profitable portfolio.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.10
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• pp.147-158
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• 2021

Due to COVID-19, the risk of price volatility in commodity and equity markets increases. The research and application of hedging is the most effective way to reduce the market risk. Hedging is a risk management strategy employed to offset losses in investments by taking an opposite position in a related asset. We use K-means and hierarchical clustering methods to cluster companies and futures products respectively, and analyze the relationship between the number of hedging firms, regional distribution, nature of firms, capital distribution, company size, profitability, number of local Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs), regional location, and listing time. The study shows that listed companies with large scale and good profitability invest more money in hedging, while state-owned enterprises' participation in hedging is more likely to be affected by the company size and the number of local futures commission merchants, and private enterprises are more likely to be affected by the company profitability and the regional location. Listed companies are more willing to choose long-listed and mature futures products for hedging. We also provide policy advice based on our conclusion. So far, there is no study on the characteristics of hedging. This paper fills the gap. The results provide a basis and guidance for people's investment and risk management. Using clustering analysis in hedging study is another innovation of this paper.