• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.67-93
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• 2009

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relations between financial constraints and dividend smoothing of innovative small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs) listed on Korea Securities Market and Kosdaq Market of Korea Exchange. The innovative SMEs is defined as the firms with high level of R&D intensity which is measured by (R&D investment/total sales) ratio, according to Chauvin and Hirschey (1993). The R&D investment plays an important role as the innovative driver that can increase the future growth opportunity and profitability of the firms. Therefore, the R&D investment have large, positive, and consistent influences on the market value of the firm. In this point of view, we expect that the innovative SMEs can adjust dividend payment faster than the noninnovative SMEs, on the ground of their future growth opportunity and profitability. And also, we expect that the financial unconstrained firms can adjust dividend payment faster than the financial constrained firms, on the ground of their financing ability of investment funds through the market accessibility. Aivazian et al.(2006) exert that the financial unconstrained firms with the high accessibility to capital market can adjust dividend payment faster than the financial constrained firms. We collect the sample firms among the total SMEs listed on Korea Securities Market and Kosdaq Market of Korea Exchange during the periods from January 1999 to December 2007 from the KIS Value Library database. The total number of firm-year observations of the total sample firms throughout the entire period is 5,544, the number of firm-year observations of the dividend firms is 2,919, and the number of firm-year observations of the non-dividend firms is 2,625. About 53%(or 2,919) of these total 5,544 observations involve firms that make a dividend payment. The dividend firms are divided into two groups according to the R&D intensity, such as the innovative SMEs with larger than median of R&D intensity and the noninnovative SMEs with smaller than median of R&D intensity. The number of firm-year observations of the innovative SMEs is 1,506, and the number of firm-year observations of the noninnovative SMEs is 1,413. Furthermore, the innovative SMEs are divided into two groups according to level of financial constraints, such as the financial unconstrained firms and the financial constrained firms. The number of firm-year observations of the former is 894, and the number of firm-year observations of the latter is 612. Although all available firm-year observations of the dividend firms are collected, deletions are made in the case of financial industries such as banks, securities company, insurance company, and other financial services company, because their capital structure and business style are widely different from the general manufacturing firms. The stock repurchase was involved in dividend payment because Grullon and Michaely (2002) examined the substitution hypothesis between dividends and stock repurchases. However, our data structure is an unbalanced panel data since there is no requirement that the firm-year observations data are all available for each firms during the entire periods from January 1999 to December 2007 from the KIS Value Library database. We firstly estimate the classic Lintner(1956) dividend adjustment model, where the decision to smooth dividend or to adopt a residual dividend policy depends on financial constraints measured by market accessibility. Lintner model indicates that firms maintain stable and long run target payout ratio, and that firms adjust partially the gap between current payout rato and target payout ratio each year. In the Lintner model, dependent variable is the current dividend per share(DPS_t), and independent variables are the past dividend per share(DPS_t-1) and the current earnings per share(EPS_t). We hypothesized that firms adjust partially the gap between the current dividend per share(DPS_t) and the target payout ratio(Ω) each year, when the past dividend per share(DPS_t-1) deviate from the target payout ratio(Ω). We secondly estimate the expansion model that extend the Lintner model by including the determinants suggested by the major theories of dividend, namely, residual dividend theory, dividend signaling theory, agency theory, catering theory, and transactions cost theory. In the expansion model, dependent variable is the current dividend per share(DPS_t), explanatory variables are the past dividend per share(DPS_t-1) and the current earnings per share(EPS_t), and control variables are the current capital expenditure ratio(CEA_t), the current leverage ratio(LEV_t), the current operating return on assets(ROA_t), the current business risk(RISK_t), the current trading volume turnover ratio(TURN_t), and the current dividend premium(DPREM_t). In these control variables, CEA_t, LEV_t, and ROA_t are the determinants suggested by the residual dividend theory and the agency theory, ROA_t and RISK_t are the determinants suggested by the dividend signaling theory, TURN_t is the determinant suggested by the transactions cost theory, and DPREM_t is the determinant suggested by the catering theory. Furthermore, we thirdly estimate the Lintner model and the expansion model by using the panel data of the financial unconstrained firms and the financial constrained firms, that are divided into two groups according to level of financial constraints. We expect that the financial unconstrained firms can adjust dividend payment faster than the financial constrained firms, because the former can finance more easily the investment funds through the market accessibility than the latter. We analyzed descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, and median to delete the outliers from the panel data, conducted one way analysis of variance to check up the industry-specfic effects, and conducted difference test of firms characteristic variables between innovative SMEs and noninnovative SMEs as well as difference test of firms characteristic variables between financial unconstrained firms and financial constrained firms. We also conducted the correlation analysis and the variance inflation factors analysis to detect any multicollinearity among the independent variables. Both of the correlation coefficients and the variance inflation factors are roughly low to the extent that may be ignored the multicollinearity among the independent variables. Furthermore, we estimate both of the Lintner model and the expansion model using the panel regression analysis. We firstly test the time-specific effects and the firm-specific effects may be involved in our panel data through the Lagrange multiplier test that was proposed by Breusch and Pagan(1980), and secondly conduct Hausman test to prove that fixed effect model is fitter with our panel data than the random effect model. The main results of this study can be summarized as follows. The determinants suggested by the major theories of dividend, namely, residual dividend theory, dividend signaling theory, agency theory, catering theory, and transactions cost theory explain significantly the dividend policy of the innovative SMEs. Lintner model indicates that firms maintain stable and long run target payout ratio, and that firms adjust partially the gap between the current payout ratio and the target payout ratio each year. In the core variables of Lintner model, the past dividend per share has more effects to dividend smoothing than the current earnings per share. These results suggest that the innovative SMEs maintain stable and long run dividend policy which sustains the past dividend per share level without corporate special reasons. The main results show that dividend adjustment speed of the innovative SMEs is faster than that of the noninnovative SMEs. This means that the innovative SMEs with high level of R&D intensity can adjust dividend payment faster than the noninnovative SMEs, on the ground of their future growth opportunity and profitability. The other main results show that dividend adjustment speed of the financial unconstrained SMEs is faster than that of the financial constrained SMEs. This means that the financial unconstrained firms with high accessibility to capital market can adjust dividend payment faster than the financial constrained firms, on the ground of their financing ability of investment funds through the market accessibility. Futhermore, the other additional results show that dividend adjustment speed of the innovative SMEs classified by the Small and Medium Business Administration is faster than that of the unclassified SMEs. They are linked with various financial policies and services such as credit guaranteed service, policy fund for SMEs, venture investment fund, insurance program, and so on. In conclusion, the past dividend per share and the current earnings per share suggested by the Lintner model explain mainly dividend adjustment speed of the innovative SMEs, and also the financial constraints explain partially. Therefore, if managers can properly understand of the relations between financial constraints and dividend smoothing of innovative SMEs, they can maintain stable and long run dividend policy of the innovative SMEs through dividend smoothing. These are encouraging results for Korea government, that is, the Small and Medium Business Administration as it has implemented many policies to commit to the innovative SMEs. This paper may have a few limitations because it may be only early study about the relations between financial constraints and dividend smoothing of the innovative SMEs. Specifically, this paper may not adequately capture all of the subtle features of the innovative SMEs and the financial unconstrained SMEs. Therefore, we think that it is necessary to expand sample firms and control variables, and use more elaborate analysis methods in the future studies.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.207-212
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• 2013

Since the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in March 2011, critical views on the increase in operation of nuclear power plants including the safety and the economic feasibility thereof have been expanding across the world. In these circumstances, we are to find out solutions to the controversial questions on whether nuclear power plants are economically more feasible than other energy sources, while the safety thereof is fully maintained. Thereby, nuclear power plants will play a key role as a sustainable energy source in the future as well as at present. To measure the social safety level that Korean people are actually feeling after the Fukushima accident, a method of cost-benefit analysis called the Contingent Valuation Method(CVM) was used, whereby we wanted to estimate the amount of expenses the general public would be willing to pay for the safety based on their acceptance rather than the social safety. As a result of calculating the trade-off value of the economic feasibility versus the safety in nuclear power plants through the survey thereon, it caused the nuclear power generation cost to be increased by 4.75 won/kWh. Reflecting this on the current power generation cost of 39.11 won/kWh would increase the cost to 43.86 won/kWh. It is thought that this potential cost is still more competitive than the coal-fired power generation cost of 67 won/kWh. This result will be available as a basic data for the 2nd Energy Basic Plan to be drawn up this year, presenting policy implications at the same time.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.214-222
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• 2015

Jeju International Airport has become the most delayed airport in Korea, due to increased demand in air passengers and unexpected local weather condition. Observing the demands continuously grow for a decade, the airport is expected to be saturated in the near future. As a part of effort to prepare effective and timely measure for this expected situation, airport planners seeks the annual runway capacity, i.e., the appropriate number of flight operations in a given year with tolerable delay. In practice, the FAA formula is frequently adopted for the capacity estimation. The method, however, has intrinsic issues: 1) the hourly capacity imbedded in the formula is not clearly defined and thus the estimated value is vulnerable to be subjective judgement, and 2) the formula doesn't consider aircraft delay resulted from runway congestion. In this paper, we explain a novel method for estimating the daily runway capacity and then converting to the annual capacity taking into account the aircraft delay. In this paper, average delay of aircraft was measured using microscopic air traffic simulation model. Daily capacity of the runways were analyzed based on the simulation outputs and the method to assess the yearly capacity is introduced. Using a microscopic simulation model named TAAM, we measure the average aircraft delay at various levels of flight demand, and then estimate the practical daily runway capacity. The estimated daily and annual runway capacities of Jeju airport are about 460 operations a day which is equal to 169,000 operations year. The paper discusses how to verify the simulation model, and also suggests potential enhancement of the method.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.493-503
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• 2019

This study presents a new method of estimating the size distribution of river bed gravel through image processing. The analysis was done in two steps; first the individual grain images were analyzed and then the grain particle segmentation of river-bed images were processed. In the first part of the analysis, the relationships (long axes, intermediate axes and projective areas) between grain features from images and those measured were compared. For this analysis, 240 gravel particles were collected at three river stations. All particles were measured with vernier calipers and weighed with scales. The measured data showed that river gravel had shape factors of 0.514~0.585. It was found that the weight of gravel had a stronger correlation with the projective areas than the long or intermediate axes. Using these results, we were able to establish an area-weight formula. In the second step, we calculated the projective areas of the river-bed gravels by detecting their edge lines using the ImageJ program. The projective areas of the gravels were converted to the grain-size distribution using the formula previously established. The proposed method was applied to 3 small- and medium- sized rivers in Korea. Comparisons of the analyzed size distributions with those measured showed that the proposed method could estimate the median diameter within a fair error range. However, the estimated distributions showed a slight deviation from the observed value, which is something that needs improvement in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.102-115
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• 2015

Several emergy researches have been carried out to estimate the value of marine ecosystem services in Korea over the last decade. Their results cannot be compared mainly due to inconsistency in emergy-money ratios used to convert emergy unit into monetary unit. This study aimed at providing a standardized format for the emergy evaluation of the Korean economy and environment for different emergy evaluations to be compatible. Even though the area of the continental shelf increased in this study compared to those of previous studies, areaweighted average tidal range for the entire continental shelf of Korea resulted in smaller tidal range, decreasing the final emergy input from tide. However, emergy inputs from nonrenewable resources and purchased goods and services increased with new categorization and use of more detailed data, combined with updated unit emergy values. This led to higher emergy-money ratio for the Korean economy, indicating that previous emergy valuations might have overestimated the contributions of marine ecosystem to the real wealth of the Korean society. The base year for gross domestic product used in the emergy evaluation needs to be clearly indicated due to its impact on the calculation of the emergy-money ratio. A standardized emergy table for the Korean economy will contribute to ensuring consistency among future emergy researches on the valuation of marine ecosystem services.

• Korean small business review
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.19-41
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• 2020

In Korea, punitive damages were introduced in the 2011 Fair Transactions in Subcontracting Act(FTSA), and in 2019 the Patent Act, Trade Secret Protection Act(TSPA), Industrial Technology Protection Act(ITPA), and Mutually Beneficial Cooperation Act(MBCA). In punitive damages, the judgment of 'intentional' is especially important, and it is necessary to refer to US precedents since there is no accumulated case. Major Company can avoid intentional counseling through the advice of lawyers, but SMEs may have to punish punitive damages due to a lack of awareness of the system. In the case of TSPA, ITPA, FTSA, and MBCA, except for Patent Act, the provisions related to proof of damage have not been well maintained yet. Therefore, the data submission order system of these laws needs to be revised to the level of patent Act need to be. TSPA needs to be amended in the future to estimate the amount of the royalties in estimating the amount of damages so that it can receive the 'reasonably' estimated amount rather than the usual amount. On the other hand, ITPA, FTSA, and MBCA do not have any provisions for the estimation of damages. Besides, it is difficult to evaluate the technology value in the case of leakage or deodorization of new technologies. Therefore, valuation needs to be carried out by a credible institution along with the development of a model for calculating damages.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1295-1301
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• 2015

Background: Cancer imposes a significant economic burden on individuals, families and society. The purpose of this study was to estimate the economic burden of cancer using the healthcare claims and cancer registry data in Korea in 2009. Materials and Methods: The economic burden of cancer was estimated using the prevalence data where patients were identified in the Korean Central Cancer Registry. We estimated the medical, non-medical, morbidity and mortality cost due to lost productivity. Medical costs were calculated using the healthcare claims data obtained from the Korean National Health Insurance (KNHI) Corporation. Non-medical costs included the cost of transportation to visit health providers, costs associated with caregiving for cancer patients, and costs for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Data acquired from the Korean National Statistics Office and Ministry of Labor were used to calculate the life expectancy at the time of death, age- and gender-specific wages on average, adjusted for unemployment and labor force participation rate. Sensitivity analysis was performed to derive the current value of foregone future earnings due to premature death, discounted at 3% and 5%. Results: In 2009, estimated total economic cost of cancer amounted to $17.3 billion at a 3% discount rate. Medical care accounted for 28.3% of total costs, followed by non-medical (17.2%), morbidity (24.2%) and mortality (30.3%) costs. Conclusions: Given that the direct medical cost sharply increased over the last decade, we must strive to construct a sustainable health care system that provides better care while lowering the cost. In addition, a comprehensive cancer survivorship policy aimed at lower caregiving cost and higher rate of return to work has become more important than previously considered.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.1061-1070
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• 2023

Over the last few years, lead-free inorganic metal perovskites have gained impressive ground in empowering satellites in space exploration owing to their material stability and performance evolution under extreme space environments. The present work has examined the versatility of eight such perovskites as space radiation shielding materials by computing their photon, charged particles and neutron interaction parameters. Photon interaction parameters were calculated for a wide energy range using PAGEX software. The ranges of heavy charged particles (H, He, C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si and Fe ions) in these perovskites were estimated using SRIM software in the energy range 1 keV-10 GeV, and that of electrons was computed using ESTAR NIST software in the energy range 0.01 MeV-1 GeV. Further, the macroscopic fast neutron removal cross-sections were also calculated to estimate the neutron shielding efficiencies. The examined shielding parameters of the perovskites varied depending on the radiation type and energy. Among the selected perovskites, Cs₂TiI₆ and Ba₂AgIO₆ displayed superior photon attenuation properties. A 3.5 cm thick Ba₂AgIO₆-based shield could reduce the incident radiation intensity to half its initial value, a thickness even lesser than that of Pb-glass. Besides, CsSnBr₃ and La_0.8Ca_0.2Ni_0.5Ti_0.5O₃ displayed the highest and lowest range values, respectively, for all heavy charged particles. Ba₂AgIO₆ showed electron stopping power (on par with Kovar) better than that of other examined materials. Interestingly, La_0.8Ca_0.2Ni_0.5Ti_0.5O₃ demonstrated neutron removal cross-section values greater than that of standard neutron shielding materials - aluminium and polyethylene. On the whole, the present study not only demonstrates the employment prospects of eco-friendly perovskites for shielding space radiations but also suggests future prospects for research in this direction.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.64-77
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• 2017

Domestic railway station calculates average number of passenger per day by considering future regional society and development of industrial economy etc, is carrying out designs on railway station scale. However, problems are being suggested situationally because selected average passenger data does not consider passengers having been diversified for a year. For representative example, confusion of Gwangju-Songjeong Railway Station got worse due to passengers whose number is more than original plan since the opening. Therefore, this study quotes the concept of design hourly factor using in designing roads to consider passengers having been diversified for a year in railway field. In order to calculate factor, collecting railway passenger data and also estimate, reliability verification were executed by using exponential model and 3rd equation model. As a result of deducing design hourly factor through inflection point calculation, utilizing exponen tial model is analyzed to well reflect the value of design hourly factor on railway passengers.