• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.159-164
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• 2024

Net surplus serves as a crucial indicator of how efficiently local governments utilize their resources. This study aims to analyze and categorize the patterns of net surplus across 75 local governments in Korea. By employing machine learning techniques such as K-means clustering and silhouette analysis, this research delves into surplus patterns, revealing insights that differ from those provided by traditional analytical methods. Machine learning enables a broader spectrum of discoveries, leading us to identify three distinct clusters in the net surplus of Korean local finances. The characteristics of these three clusters show that the wealthiest cities have the highest surplus ratios. In contrast, mid-sized municipalities, constrained by limited central government support and scarce local resources, exhibit the lowest surplus ratios. Interestingly, a significant number of cities maintain a median surplus ratio even under challenging fiscal conditions. Additionally, we identify critical thresholds that differentiate the three clusters: a grant-in-aid ratio of 19.31%, a debt ratio of 3.52%, and a local tax ratio of 25.58%. This identification of thresholds is a key contribution of our study, as these specific thresholds have not been previously addressed in the literature.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.41-67
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• 1991

Local autonomy of Korea's lower-level local council has been reinstated following elections last March for the first time in thirty years. Last June, we had elections for the upper-level local council. Mayors, governors, and administrative chiefs of cities, provinces and other local government bodies are slated for elections in the first half of next year. The impacts of local autonomy are taking effect in not only the political sphere, but also the administrative and economic spheres. In fact, it seems that some modification of all economic policy making and administration is inevitable. Since the initiation of local autonomy, in order to make the economy work more efficiently, it has become quite important to examine the impact of local autonomy on the national economy. The areas of local autonomy include independent legislative power, administrative power, organizational power, and most important of all, the independent public financial power of the local governments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of local autonomy on the national economy and ways of enhancing the role of local public finance to facilitate settlement and development of the local autonomy system. Local autonomy will contribute to the continuous growth of our economy, allow balanced development, and generate greater efficiency. However, local autonomy can also incur economic costs causing at times short-term price instability, inefficient resource allocation, through tax competition and tax exporting, and insolvency of local government due to abusive fiscal operation. To reduce these side effects, different alternatives must be considered. Local autonomy systems generally provide more efficient resource allocation than centralization. But in the model used in Chapter 3 of this paper, the relative efficiencies of both local autonomy and centralization are determined by comparing the elasticity of substitution between national public goods and local public goods. If the elasticity of substitution is bigger than one, centralization provides a more efficient resource allocation. The development of local autonomy could be attained through democratization of the local public finance system including the following three propositions. I) The independence of public financial power of local governments should be established over central government. Furthermore, a democratically operated scheme of intergovernmental fiscal coordination is especially necessary. 2) In the operation of local finance, direct democracy is needed to induce the voluntary participation of local residents. The residents can take part in planning both the local budget and the development of the community. To attain this goal, all the results of local finance operations should be made public. 3) Among economic ill-effects of the local autonomy system, the most serious one is the possibility of insolvency of local governments. Therefore, measures to limit abusive spending by the local governments should be introduced, such as the fiscal restraints system adopted in the United States.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.126-135
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• 2022

Decentralization is a structural characteristic surrounding the allocation of power within an organization and is discussed at the organizational, national and local levels. This study examined the evaluation and decentralization direction of decentralization of public officials to derive problems and development directions of decentralization in Korea. We also derive our decentralization task. The decentralization task is, first, the expansion of autonomy in organization composition. The organization of local governments shall be determined according to the details and amount of local affairs. Second, it is to secure autonomy in personnel management. It is desirable for local governments to handle local gardens and manpower management autonomously rather than central uniform control. However, it is necessary to leave the checks and supervision to the local council, civic groups, and local residents. Third, the expansion of fiscal decentralization. First of all, the tax rate should be determined by ordinance within the scope prescribed by law to expand the autonomous financial authority. Next, it is necessary to expand local finances through the conversion of national taxes to local taxes. Next, it is necessary to expand local income taxes and local consumption taxes. Decentralization requires cooperation between the central and local governments and participation of local residents and stakeholders, breaking away from central unilateral and short-term thinking.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.75-92
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• 1999

In this study, the present state of fiscal crisis for local governments after IMF is analyzed, firstly. its implications Characteristics of structural reform of finance after IMF bailout in Korea are examined, secondly. Since Korea was shocked by the currency crisis at the end of 1997, its local governments have also faced fiscal difficulties. The Depression of national and local economies led to decreases in tax revenues of local governments. And these shrunken revenues led to their expenditure cuts. Many investment plans were curtailed, and ordinary expenditures were also reduced sharply. The negative influences of the currency crisis on local government's finances can be examined in terms of fiscal revenue, fiscal spending, and debt burden. As a result many local governments are now experiencing fiscal stress, and some of them are even faced with fiscal crisis although the possibility of extreme measures, such as moratoriums or bankruptcies, is very slim. This is due in part to the weight of debt in local governments' budgets having remained small since the debt of local governments has been controlled by the central government. Another reason is that, central government, which functions as a lender of last resort for the local governments, will pay the debt for them. Also, without a legal system which stipulates the adjudication of bankruptcy for municipalities in Korea, local Korean governments have no legal right to declare bankruptcy. Although not a single municipality has fallen into insolvency, yet, this trend will continue to deepen as the recession continues and may lead to a situation where manu local governments fall into virtual bankruptcy in the near future, and its effects on society, as a whole, will be serious. Therefore, measures to prevent and overcome such an extreme situation are necessary, but both short-and long-term policies should be to cope with the current fiscal crisis and to prevent the deepening of the current situation.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.5 no.3 s.19
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• pp.114-119
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• 2004

A road is an infrastructure that helps boost up growth of local economy, connections among local communities and living conditions. For South Korea the increase in infrastructures like roads now concentrates on specific regions, which causes regional imbalance. also, some areas are faced with the overall weakness of local economy such as decrease in local tax revenues, slowdown in industrial and economic growth of regions, and the low independence of local finances because lack of roads, a basis of local economic growth, make big and smaller business reluctant to invest in localities. In addition, even though the power-centralized age turns to a decentralized age, the preference of development policies by the existing economic size rather than those of nationwide balanced development gets the economic gap of localities deeply-rooted; moreover, disparity of local wealth has a tendency to even differentiate the overall quality of living. The paper intends to analyze relations between road development and local economy focused on road construction, one of requisites to balance national development and accelerate local economy.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.275-282
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• 2008

We are facing that we promptly meet the needs of the times which demand a local decentralization. We must consider, above all, the relations between central government and local government to carry out local decentralization or devolution successfully. In this respect, it is needed to enter into a relationship of intergovernmental function allocation. On this basis of this regard, we have to come up with right intergovernmental financial relations. Given this fact, this study will produce intergovernmental relation model, and then analyze our intergovernmental financial relation positively based on three criteria, such as intergovernmental power relations, role distribution between central government and local government, and the allocation of tax resources. Analysis shows that our intergovernmental financial relation belongs to a management.decentralization model generally.

• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.153-197
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to look at the development and status of Danish Agricultural Advisory Service (DAAS) and to find some implications on Korean agricultural and rural extension. Agriculture is main industry contributed to economic growth in Denmark. Main factors of this success would be strong farmers' organizations, commercial co-operatives, farmers' active participation in training and education, and independent advisory service owned and managed by farmers. DAAS has unique developmental history. First service was started by local farmer's organization in 1871. Farmers themselves wanted to start advisory service in order to improve the quality of butter. National center of DAAS was established in 1971 in order to disseminate knowledge to local centers, to develop new activities and computer programs, and to deliver in-service training of local advisors. In 2010, one national center with 550 employees and 32 local centers with 2,900 employes are serving for 48,000 farms. The service covers almost all farmers' needs such as production, finance, tax, buildings, crops, livestock, organic production, environment, legal matter. DAAS Academy tries to offer relevant, just-in-time training activities in order to develop the competences of advisors effectively.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.267-284
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• 2005

This study analyzes the effects of localities' competitiveness which can contribute to employment growth in industries, on economic development in the local jurisdictions. For this analysis, such competitiveness is measured by competitive shares calculated from the application of a shift-share method to the employment growth in industries each locality witnessed over the 1990s. And we use annual population growth rate and average annual per capita income (substituted by per capita head tax derived from income tax) of the early 2000s as variables of local economic development. The analysis targets 167 local jurisdictions in Korea for the employment growth in industries, and is mainly placed in a spatial econometric setting. The results of analysis are as follows : The competitive share of manufacturing has the effect of increasing annual population growth rate whereas that of construction has a negative effect on the population growth rate. As well, the competitive shares of manufacturing and of construction negatively influence average annual per capita income while that of community, social and personal services positively affects the income.

• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.649-672
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• 2012

The government established Special Accounts for Balanced National Development in 2005, and the Metropolitan Council has enacted and executed ordinance relevant to special accounts to relieve regional unbalanced growth and to promote regional balanced growth. This study derived a political implication through the comparison analysis of the background of establishment and its purpose, the selection criteria of support target, finance scale and tax revenue finance, appropriation target and finance distribution, etc. on the basis of Chungcheongnam-do Special Accounts for Balanced Development and Jeollabuk-do Eastern part Special Accounts among the special accounts implemented in metropolitan council. The major conclusions of this study are as follows. First, the transition from the concept of balanced development to specialized development is necessary for the development of distressed region. Second, the pure wastefulness ratio of the local government's tax revenue finance of special accounts designed concentrating upon special accounts for Wide-area Autonomous Communities development should be gradually expanded. Third, Special Accounting budget should be supported to promote specialized development through the selection and concentration centering around comparatively advantageous resource within the region. Fourth, the strategic special accounts budget application system of cities and counties to utilize the projects of the government and the province to achieve the goal of cities and counties should be prepared.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.7
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• pp.343-348
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• 2020

So far, research into multinational bank' overseas expansion has focused on foreign direct investment in the financial services industry. However, this study focused its existing theories on multinational banks on decision-making related to the type of overseas advancement of local financial institutions. For research, four environmental factors were considered: the scale of foreign direct investment, the scope of financial services that can be provided according to the rules of the host country, the corporate tax rate of the host country, and the level of development of the host country's banking industry. Through Kotra, data on the total amount of claims from 2010 to 2014 and the regulatory status for the country's financial industries were obtained. Hypothesis are built around theories and survey factors and has been demonstrated through regression analysis. Results show that Korean financial institutions tend to expand as legally independent subsidiaries where the corporate tax rate of the host country is relatively low. Contrary to the previous studies based on the U.S. banking corporates, results show that Korean banks tend to expand in forms of branches to the host countries with high level of banking system development.