Decomposition of Changes in Korean Wage Inequality, 1998–2007

South Korea experienced a steep increase in wage inequality between the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the global financial crisis in 2008. This paper investigates the causes of the sharp change during that time period by looking at the contributions of changes in the distributions of schooling and unionization. The effects are estimated applying two robust distributional function based decomposition methods on Korean Labor and Panel Survey data for the time period 1998–2007. The results suggest changes in the distribution of schooling can explain about 10 % of the changes in the 90/50 percentile wage gap. The declining unionization rate does not have much impact on the upward trend of Korean wage inequality. In addition, aggregate decomposition results suggest that changes in labor force composition can explain a significant proportion of the total wage changes in the upper-tail of the distribution. Based on our findings we provide a list of policy recommendations to address the wage inequality issue in Korea.     

What makes hybrid insourcing successful: A new public–private partnership model for social welfare services

Outsourcing has been a key policy tool for delivering a range of social services, and regarded as more effective than insourcing or direct government provision. At the same time, it has also caused many delivery issues such as principal‐agent problems, a lack of policy coordination, and poor‐quality welfare services. While the pendulum continues to swing between insourcing and outsourcing, we aim to propose a new public–private partnership model called the “hybrid insourcing model” and examine which factors influence the performance of the model. In South Korea, around 2010, the local government in Namyangju City was the first to implement the “Hope Care Center model,” a kind of hybrid insourcing model, which has been praised for its innovation and widely emulated by central and local governments. Our analysis utilizes data collected between December 2017 and January 2018 from public sector employees and civilian staff in Namyangju and a comparable city, A. From this, we draw a number of implications, both for theory and for policy. We argue that, for public–private partnerships, active cooperation and equality are the biggest factors in contributing to positive performance. These work alongside leaders with a clear vision and with employees' positive attitude.     

略论方以智的太极观--从"一两之辨"看方以智"一在二中"、"舍二则无一"的思维方式

太极观在宋明理学史上占有重要地位。方以智的太极观注重太极范畴的逻辑展开方式 ,以太极为理气统一体 ,从太极和仪象的关系 ,推广到太极和天地万物的关系 ,进而讨论了本体和现象的问题。据此 ,他否认易学中的义理学派的世界观 ,即理作为独立自存的实体 ,脱离象数而存在 ,从而得出离现象别无本体的结论。一方面扬弃了朱熹的理为太极说 ,一方面也发展了张载以来的气为太极说 ,成为宋明哲学中唯物主义本体论的代表之一。     

Point estimation after early stopping in a repeated measures trial

When the individual measurements are statistically independent, the maximum likelihood estimator calculated at the end of a sequential procedure overestimates the underlying effect. There are many clinical trials in which we are interested in comparing changes in responses between two treatment groups sequentially. Lee and DeMets (1991, JASA 86, 757–762) proposed a group sequential method for comparing rates of change when a response variable is measured for eaeh patient at successive follow-up visits. They assumed that the response follows the linear mixed effects model and derived the asymptotic joint distribution of the sequentially computed statistics. In this article, we consider the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), the median unbiased estimator (MUE) and the midpoint of a 100(1-α)% confidence interval as point estimators for the rate of change in the linear mixed effects model, and investigate their properties by Monte Carlo simulation.     

南北韩经济合作的现状与课题

本文作者以其个人观点和视角,表述了朝鲜半岛南北双方经济合作的现状,就如何推进半岛南北交流合作作了相应阐释,其目的是探求保障韩国国家利益和半岛长远利益的最佳方法。     

Do we need the constant term in the heterogenous autoregressive model for forecasting realized volatilities?

No-constant strategy is considered for the heterogenous autoregressive (HAR) model of Corsi, which is motivated by smaller biases of its estimated HAR coefficients than those of the constant HAR model. The no-constant model produces better forecasts than the constant model for four real datasets of the realized volatilities (RVs) of some major assets. Robustness of forecast improvement is verified for other functions of realized variance and log RV and for the extended datasets of all 20 RVs of Oxford-Man realized library. A Monte Carlo simulation also reveals improved forecasts for some historic HAR model estimated by Corsi.     

Material hardship and depression among low‐income households in South Korea: Differences by household type

With the recent trend of growing poverty in South Korea, low‐income households, particularly elderly‐ and single‐headed households, are at high risk of experiencing material hardship and depression. However, less is known about the association between material hardship and depression by household type in Korea. Using data (N = 2,913) from the Korean Welfare Panel Study and employing several methodological approaches to address the omitted variables bias, this study examined: (i) the association between material hardship and depression among low‐income households, and (ii) whether the association differed by household type. We found that experiencing material hardship was associated with a higher likelihood of being depressed. In addition, we also found that the association between material hardship and depression differed by household type. The magnitude of the association was most pronounced in single‐ and elderly‐headed households. Policy implications to improve well‐being among low‐income households were discussed.     

Leadership across hierarchical levels: Multiple levels of management and multiple levels of analysis

We examined differences in leadership influence processes, perceptions, and multiple levels-of-analysis effects between close and distant charismatic and contingent reward leadership across three hierarchical levels in 13 Korean companies. Multi-source data revealed that followers' commitment to the leader mediated relationships between leadership and followers' attitudinal, behavioral, and performance outcomes in close situations, but not in distant relationships. Leadership at higher levels of management was positively related to leadership at the next lower level, which in turn related to follower outcomes at the lowest echelon. Multivariate within and between analysis indicated multiple-level effects differing by leader–follower distance and for the variables of interest.     

Quality of earnings: A key factor in financial planning

This paper presents the results of an empirical study based on the premise that, among companies with the same nominal earnings, those with higher quality of earnings will be more highly valued by investors. The price-earnings ratio should be higher for companies with better quality of earnings and lower for companies with poorer quality of earnings. The test is performed by estimating regression equations relating the price-earnings ratio to quality of earnings factors. The study should prove to be of significant value to financial decision-makers in formulating their long range plans.     

Changing the default setting for information privacy protection: What and whose personal information can be better protected?

With Internet service providers (ISPs) increasingly demanding personal information to develop personalized services, people have become more vulnerable to privacy infringement. As a way to protect individuals’ privacy, industrialized countries have implemented a “notice-and-consent” requirement, meaning an ISP must obtain users’ consent to collect personal information in the course of the ISP's business. Drawing on prospect theory and earlier work on information privacy and behavioral science, in this study, we administered an online survey experiment to test whether the giving of consent differs between ‘opt-in’ and ‘opt-out’ frames. The framing effect was found to be moderated by personal information type, people's attitudes toward privacy, and people's privacy infringement experience. The results indicate that the opt-in frame better protects users’ information privacy, and the framing effect is magnified when the targeted information concerns online activities, when users have weakly held privacy attitudes, and when users have less experience of privacy infringement.