• Journal of the Korea Knowledge Information Technology Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.11-23
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• 2018

This paper empirically investigates the factors that influence the consumer choice of an app market based on the rational choice theory. The app market is the only channel where a consumer can buy smartphone apps, which give various functional convenience and are considered to be a major contributor to the proliferation of smartphones. Analyses of 281 questionnaires show that usability and structural guarantees as benefit factors significantly influence the app market choice. From the cost perspectives, both monetary and non-monetary conversion costs are found to significantly influence the app market choice. On the other hand, customer trust, information quality, and market image were found to have no significant effect on app market selection. In particular, Korean app market platform providers (KT, LG U +) seem to be superior in terms of structural guarantees, such as customer center operation and damage compensation regulations, compared to overseas app market platform operators (Google). However, in the case of the Google App Market, it is pre-installed on all Android phones, so it is not inconvenient to install additional apps to use other app market. This is disadvantageous to domestic app market platform operators, and it is necessary to establish a policy solution point. In terms of operator costs, both monetary and non-monetary conversion costs have a significant impact on app market choice. In particular, non-monetary conversion costs have a negative impact on Korean app market platform operators. It can be explained that the service expectation level of the domestic app market is low and it is recognized that the time cost factor such as membership is large for new users to use. It seems to be necessary to improve the domestic app market business. Meanwhile, extant research on smartphone apps focuses on the purchase of apps themselves, but not on the selection of the app market itself. In order to fill in this gap, this study focuses on the determinants of app market selection, including the characteristics of an app market and the switching costs.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.3-19
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• 1991

This paper attempts to identify key determinants of long run movements of real M2 by using the Johansen procedure for estimating and testing cointegration relations. It turns out that the real M2 equation has been stable over the long run despite rapid changes in financial structure since 1975. Moreover, the real M2 equation can be reduced to a velocity equation with the opportunity cost variable, expected inflation less the weighted average rate paid on M2 deposits, being the key determinant. However, it does not work to use a market interest rate such as the yield on corporate bonds in place of expected inflation for calculation of the opportunity cost. In the U.S., a market interest rate can be used, but not in Korea. Presumably, two somewhat different reasonings can be used to explain this result. One is that the yield on corporate bonds may not adequately reflect the inflationary expectations due to regulations on movements in interest rates. The other is that M2 deposits are not readily substitutable with such assets as corporate bonds because of market segmentations, regulations, and so on. From the policymaker's point of view, this implies that the inflation rate is an important indicator of a policy response. On the other hand, policymakers do not regard movements of the yield on corporate bonds as an important policy indicator. Altogether, the role of interest rates has been quite limited in Korea because of incomplete interest rate liberalization, an underdeveloped financial system, implementation procedures of policy measures, and so on. The result that M2 velocity has a positive cointegration relation with expected inflation minus the average rate on M2 implies that frequent adjustments of the regulated rates on M2 will be necessary as market conditions change. As the expected inflation gets higher, M2 velocity will eventually increase, given that the rates on M2 do not change. This will cause higher inflation. If interest rates are liberalized, then increases in market interest rates will result in lagged increases in deposits rates on M2. However, in Korea a substantial portion of deposit rates are regulated and will not change without the authority's initiatives. A tight monetary policy will cause increases in a few market interest rates. But the market mechanism, upward pressure for interest rate adjustments, never reaches regulated deposit rates. Hence the overall effects of tight monetary policy diminish considerably, only causing distortions in the flow of funds. Therefore, frequent adjustments of deposit rates are necessary as market conditions such as inflationary expectations change. Then it becomes important for the policymaker to actively engage in adjusting regulated deposit rates, because the financial sector in Korea is not fully developed.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.153-195
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• 2010

The recent global financial crisis has been the outcome of, among other things, the mismatch between institutions and the reality of the market in the current global financial system. The International financial institutions (IFIs) that were designed more than 60 years ago can no longer effectively meet the challenges posed by the current global economy. While the global financial market has become integrated like a single market, there is no international lender of last resort or global regulatory body. There also has been a rapid shift in the weight of economic power. The share of the Group of 7 (G7) countries in global gross domestic product (GDP) fell and the share of emerging market economies increased rapidly. Therefore, the tasks facing us today are: (i) to reform the IFIs -mandate, resources, management, and governance structure; (ii) to reform the system such as the international monetary system (IMS), and regulatory framework of the global financial system; and (iii) to reform global economic governance. The main focus of this paper will be the IMS reform and the role of the Group of Twenty (G20) summit meetings. The current IMS problems can be summarized as follows. First, the demand for foreign reserve accumulation has been increasing despite the movement from fixed exchange rate regimes to floating rate regimes some 40 years ago. Second, this increasing demand for foreign reserves has been concentrated in US dollar assets, especially public securities. Third, as the IMS relies too heavily on the supply of currency issued by a center country (the US), it gives an exorbitant privilege to this country, which can issue Treasury bills at the lowest possible interest rate in the international capital market. Fourth, as a related problem, the global financial system depends too heavily on the center country's ability to maintain the stability of the value of its currency and strength of its own financial system. Fifth, international capital flows have been distorted in the current IMS, from EMEs and developing countries where the productivity of capital investment is higher, to advanced economies, especially the US, where the return to capital investment is lower. Given these problems, there have been various proposals to reform the current IMS. They can be grouped into two: demand-side and supply-side reform. The key in the former is how to reduce the widespread strong demand for foreign reserve holdings among EMEs. There have been several proposals to reduce the self-insurance motivation. They include third-party insurance and the expansion of the opportunity to borrow from a global and regional reserve pool, or access to global lender of last resort (or something similar). However, the first option would be too costly. That leads us to the second option - building a stronger globalfinancial safety net. Discussions on supply-side reform of the IMS focus on how to diversify the supply of international reserve currency. The proposals include moving to a multiple currency system; increased allocation and wider use of special drawing rights (SDR); and creating a new global reserve currency. A key question is whether diversification should be encouraged among suitable existing currencies, or if it should be sought more with global reserve assets, acting as a complement or even substitute to existing ones. Each proposal has its pros and cons; they also face trade-offs between desirability and political feasibility. The transition would require close collaboration among the major players. This should include efforts at the least to strengthen policy coordination and collaboration among the major economies, and to reform the IMF to make it a more effective institution for bilateral and multilateral surveillance and as an international lender of last resort. The success on both fronts depends heavily on global economic governance reform and the role of the G20. The challenge is how to make the G20 effective. Without institutional innovations within the G20, there is a high risk that its summits will follow the path of previous summit meetings, such as G7/G8.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.125-151
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• 1990

This paper reviews the economic liberalization experiences of the Southern Cone countries and draws some lessons from their experiences. The Southern Cone countries-Chile, Argentina and Uruguay-followed the different sequences in liberalization. Chile implemented the fiscal reform and the following comprehensive trade reform in the beginning of liberalization, but capital controls were maintained until 1979. Argentina and Uruguay placed more emphasis on the financial reform with the goods market reformed afterwards, but the fiscal sector was never reformed in Argentina. Since the serious inflation plagued the Southern Cone countries, they combined the economic liberalization scheme with the economic stabilization programmes which are based on the monetarist model. Although economic situations in the Southern Cone countries are quite different from those of Korea, we can learn many lessons from their experiences. First, the monetary and fiscal policies should consist of strict financial discipline to bring in the stable domestic inflation. Without the domestic stabilization, the financial liberalization could disturb the domestic economy as the capital inflows in particular generate a real exchange rate appreciation. Second, the monetary approach which is based on the full purchasing power parity and perfect capital mobility make stabilization as simple as a matter of the appropriate exchange rate policy and the proper rate of domestic credit creation. The unsuccessful experiences with monetarist stabilization in the Southern Cone countries suggest that the monetarist model cannot make real exchange rate and real interest rate stable with the trade and financial reform. Third, both the theory and practice have not yet provided a precise solution on the optimal sequencing and speed of the goods and financial market. Nonetheless, it seems desirable to keep the real exchange rate and the real interest rate stable by gradually opening up the current account and then the capital account.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.4359-4368
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• 2011

Among several macroeconomic missteps blamed for the recent global financial crisis including the social problems of income distribution and the lack of proper financial remedies, two of them have received particular attention: the global BOP(Balance of Payment) imbalance and the misguided monetary policy. Such BOP imbalance was blamed for massive foreign exchange investment flows from Asia into the U.S., triggering the financial and real estate bubble in America. The latter refers to the excessively loose monetary policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which pushed financial institutions and households into reckless investment behavior in search of higher returns. Given the abuse of certain innovative financial techniques and new investment instruments that have been created in recent decades, both collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and credit default swaps (CDS) enjoyed a symbiotic and toxic relationship prior to the financial crisis This paper is organized as follows: The first section analyzes the real causes of the recent financial crisis. The second details the role of CDOs and CDS. Then, to identify key determinants of the CDS spreads in an emerging capital market, the sample data of major Korean firms' CDS spreads are used to estimate the risk premium by utilizing the multiple regression analysis. The empirical test result indicates that Korean 3-year treasury bond rate(TYIELD), market to book value ratio(MV/BV), and assets size(INASSETS) are shown to demonstrate statistically significant influences on the changes of the CDS premium for sample firms.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.117-125
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• 2020

This paper aims to investigate FDI attractive factors, which are important to formulate policies to attract Korean direct investment into Vietnam. Based on the literature review and the results of interview with 27 Korean investors in Vietnam, we determined the model of variables attracting Korea's FDI into Vietnam. It is used to assess the impact of attractive factors belonging to three groups of variables to support investment decision; they are macroeconomics variables (including market size factor, labor cost factor, and market openness factor), policies variables (including monetary policy factor and tax rate gap factor), and microeconomics variables (geographic advantage factor representative by location). This research also utilized a relatively new quantitative research method based on the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (ARDL) with the time data chain from 1995 to 2017 of Korean FDI into Vietnam. It analyzes long-term relationships between dependent variables and independent variables. The result of this study indicates that there are three positive factors (low wages, trade openness and government policy) explaining the FDI flows in the long term. The result also shows that incentive tax policy has had a positive impact on Korean FDI, which has satisfied the aim of seeking efficiency of Korean investors.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.36
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• pp.259-283
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• 1998

This research is based on the assumption that Korea's social consensus among two sides of industry and government on Feb. 2 '98 was not just temporary response to the economic crisis caused by International Monetary Fund financial fund. Some arguments on the applicability of social democracy and corporatism and D. Donnison's perspective on Democratic Socialism are employed in search of an appropriate social consensus model for Korean situation. In the process of analyzing Korean situation in historical context it becomes apparent that there is embryo of stable social consensus beyond the level of tentative social cooperation to overcome the economic crisis. The next step applying the social consensus model to the employment policy for people with disability levels up empirical and theoretical validity of this research. It casts some implications for disability labour market which demands another kind of social consensus among people with disability, employers and the government. These implications include a desirable solution for hard lives of unemployed people with disability in economic difficulties and current policy issues facing Korean government.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.464-473
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• 2008

Winter migratory birds gather in paddy rice fields to feed shed rice grains. The Korean Ministry of Environment has practiced a policy program Contract on Paddy Field Management (CPFM) during winter fallow since 2002. This program starts with a contract between local governments and farmers, and the government pays a differential subsidy to farmers who finish spreading rice straw, cultivating barley, letting the whole rice plant without harvest, and submerging paddy fields for winter migratory birds. As more local governments have operated CPFM program, the total area on the contract and subsidy budget has increased yearly since 2002. This program could have its stable position as a successful policy by giving profits to farmers. With the program extended, the population of winter migratory birds has been greatly. For the evaluation of environmental performance of a policy, we analyzed this CPFM program by introducing some indicators in the form of Driving Force-State-Response Framework. The indicators were composed of 3 categorized indicators; the area of paddy land contracted under this program as 'driving force' indicator, population of birds, the number of bird species and the amount of feces as 'state' indicators, and the size of monetary support, the number of farmers or local governments participating, and public perception as 'response' indicators. The contract area of paddy field under CPFM could be a good biodiversity indicator reflecting potential performance of this policy measure in the light of its linkage to the population of winter migratory birds. And the share of CPFM land of the whole agricultural land might also be used as a useful indicator of policy evaluation for improvement of wildlife diversity. The 'state' indicators such as population of birds and the number of bird species could be matched to 'driving force' indicator, but the total CPFM area of each site could not reflect the effect of areas under different management practices. However, the amount of bird feces could reflect differences in environmental performance with management practices as 'state' indicators. The development of indicators indicating 'response' such as farmers' behavior, public perception, and policy makers' willingness is also needed to support a successful implementation and improvement of this policy measure with the development of 'performance' indicators integrating all these indicators.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.99-145
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• 2003

Quasi-fiscal activities (QFAs) refer to those activities that public corporations carry out to achieve policy objectives of the government. QFAs often lead to the understatement of the government involvement in the economy and the overstatement of its financial balance, thereby lowering fiscal transparency and hiding fiscal risks. Central banks, as public corporations, perform various QFAs in many countries. I define QFAs in this case as those activities that are not directly related to the intrinsic function of central banks, whose responsibility lies in the administration of monetary policy and the provision of banking services for the government and commercial banks. In Korea, the Bank of Korea (BOK) has been an active source of QFAs. Of particular importance are the policy loans to commercial banks to promote their lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises and others. The outstanding stock of policy loans increased rapidly in the aftermath of the recent economic crisis, and stood at 7.6 trillion won (20 percent of the reserve money) at the end of 2002. Another important QFA by BOK stems from the transfer of part of its profits to the central government. The accumulated transfer during 1998-2002 amounted to 9.9 trillion won. My calculation shows that if these and other QFAs had been carried out by the government as explicit fiscal activities, the consolidated central government financial balance would have been below the actual balance by about 0.5 percent of GDP in each year since the economic crisis. It is suggested that the QFAs by BOK be reduced in coming years not only to enhance fiscal transparency but also to expand the flexibility of BOK's reserve management. Abolishing policy loans and minimizing transfers to the government would be the first step in this direction. BOK should also consider paying interest on the government deposit held in BOK.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.193-212
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• 2011

Mobile instant messaging service is surfacing to an important keyword in the mobile market together with popularization of Smart phones. Mobile instant messaging service in Korea has become popular to the degree of 87.9% usages from total Smartphone holders, and it is expected that using populations will be more enlarged afterwards if considering a fact that its populations of Smartphone is continuously being increased after exceeding 10 million persons (Trend Monitor, June 2011). In the instant messaging market where competitions have been deepened day by day, raising customer's royalties will be the key for company's business survivals and goals of corporate marketing strategies. It could be said that understanding on which factors affect to customer retentions and royalties is very important. Specially, as changing status is being progressed very quickly in case of innovative mobile services like the instant messaging service, research necessities on how many do consumers use the services after accepting them, how much do consumers use them variously, and whether does it connect to long-term relations have been increased, but studies on such matters are in insufficient situations actually. Therefore, this study examined on which effects were affected to use-diffusion and loyalty factors from perceived customer vales' factors having been occurred after accepting the mobile instant messaging service, namely 'functional value', 'monetary value', 'emotional value', and 'social value'. Also, the study looked into what kind of roles do the service usage and using variety play to service's continued using intents as a loyalty index, recommending intents to others, and brand switching intents. And then the study laid the main purpose in trying to provide implications for enhancing customer securities and royalties on the mobile instant messaging service through research's results. The research hypotheses are as follows; H1: Perceived values will affect influences to royalties. H2: Use-Diffusion will affect influences to loyalty. H3: Perceived value will affect influences to loyalty. H4: The use-diffusion will play intermediating roles between perceived values and loyalty. Total 276 cases among collected 284 ones were used for the statistical analysis by SPSS ver. 15 package. Reliability, Factor analysis, regression were done. As the result of research, 'monetary value' and 'emotional value' affected to 'usage' among perceived value factors, and 'emotional value' was appeared as affecting the largest influence. Besides, the usage affected to constant-using intents and recommending intents to others, and using varieties were displayed as affecting to recommending intents to others. On the other hand, 'Using' and 'Using diversity' were appeared as not affecting to 'brand switching intentions'. Meanwhile, as the result of recognizing about effects of perceived values on the loyalty, it was appeared such like 'continued using intents' affected to'functional value', 'monetary value', and 'social value' first, and also 'monetary value', 'emotional value', and 'social value' affected to 'recommending intents to others'. On the other hand, it was shown such like only 'social value' affected influences to 'brand switching intents', and thus contrary results with the factor 'constant-using intents' were displayed. So, it seems that there are many applications to service provides who are worrying about marketing strategies for making consumer retains (constant-using) and new consumer's inductions (brand-switching intents). Finally, as a result of looking into intermediating roles of the use-diffusion factor in relations between conceived values and royalties at hypothesis 4, 'using' and 'using diversity' were displayed as affecting significant influences all together. Regarding to research result's implications, for expanding and promoting continued uses of the mobile instant messaging service by service providers: First, encouraging recognitions on the perceived value connected to users' service usage are necessary. Second, setting up user's use-diffusion strategies are required so as to enhance the loyalty after understanding a fact that use-diffusion patterns affecting to the service's loyalty are different. Finally, methods of raising customer loyalties and making constant relationships have to be grouped by analyzing on what are the customer value's factors that can satisfy users in competitive alterations.